Coupa makes margins multiply through its community-generated AI and industry-leading total spend management platform for businesses large and small. Coupa AI is informed by trillions of dollars of direct and indirect spend data across a global network of 10M+ buyers and suppliers. We empower you with the ability to predict, prescribe, and automate smarter, more profitable business decisions to improve operating margins.
Why join Coupa?
- Pioneering Technology: At Coupa, we're at the forefront of innovation, leveraging the latest technology to empower our customers with greater efficiency and visibility in their spend.
- Collaborative Culture: We value collaboration and teamwork, and our culture is driven by transparency, openness, and a shared commitment to excellence.
- Global Impact: Join a company where your work has a global, measurable impact on our clients, the business, and each other.
Learn more on
Life at Coupa blog and hear from our employees about their experiences working at Coupa.
The Impact of a Principal Engineer/Architect at Coupa:
The Architect serves as a technical authority and strategic leader, driving the transformation into an AI-first QE organization. This role is responsible for architecting and developing custom AI testing frameworks and proprietary AI tools designed specifically to test, evaluate, and validate AI-driven products, ensuring high reliability, performance, and scalability across enterprise systems.
What You'll Do:
AI Frameworks & Tool Development
● AI Product Test Frameworks: Design, architect, and build custom test automation frameworks and evaluation pipelines for golden data sets & real time production data explicitly engineered to test non-deterministic AI models and AI-native applications.
● Custom AI Tooling Creation: Develop proprietary AI-driven tooling, including synthetic data generators, LLM evaluation harnesses, prompt regression suites, and self-healing test automation engines.
● Cross-Department Tooling Standards: Provide technical leadership on the design and adoption of AI test tools and automation strategies extending across multiple product departments.
Scope of Position & Strategic Impact
● Strategic Architectural Direction: Lead critical, multi-dimensional initiatives that define the technical and business direction of quality engineering across the enterprise.
● Executive Technical Advice: Provide expert technical advice and counsel to executive leadership on broader company initiatives and AI safety/quality gates.
● Critical Problem Resolution: Solve complex design issues and critical technical bottlenecks that impact future products, AI capabilities, and business growth.
Knowledge, Innovation & Practice Creation
● AI Quality Practice Evolution: Continually evaluate current quality practices and invent new AI-first strategies to systematically test AI hallucinations, model drift, bias, and output accuracy.
● Cross-Discipline Expertise: Apply subject matter expertise across software architecture, machine learning pipelines, data engineering, and test automation.
● Groundbreaking Methods: Employ innovative, groundbreaking testing methodologies and frameworks to evaluate next-generation AI features.
Supervision, Leadership & Communication
● Organizational Goal Setting: Help define long-term organizational goals, establishing ROI benchmarks for internal AI testing tools and framework adoption.
● Engineering Mentorship & Influence: Provide specialized technical guidance, and mentorship to senior engineers across cross-functional teams & influence the adoption of AI Tools across teams.
● Industry Representation: Build internal decision-maker networks and represent the company as a technical spokesperson at external AI and quality engineering industry forums.
What You Will Bring to Coupa:
● Minimum of 10 years experience working as Principal Engineer or Architect with recent 2-4 years of experience in building AI Tooling, Agentic testing frameworks, Eval Pipelines, Architecting real time production data feedback loops & Data Quality standards etc.
● Architectural Experience: Proven experience in technical architectural leadership for complex enterprise platforms.
● Must-Have Technical Expertise: Advanced fluency in programming languages and deep knowledge of building the "connective tissue" between non-deterministic AI outputs and deterministic enterprise systems.
● AI Tool & Framework Engineering: Hands-on experience shipping LLM-powered features and building custom test frameworks, model evaluation harnesses, or automated testing tools.
● Agentic Frameworks: Familiarity with or hands-on experience using open-standard agentic architectures (e.g., LangChain, AutoGen, MCP).
● The "Builder" Mindset: A strong drive to build side projects and the ability to move rapidly from a blank page to functional, "pluggable" AI components.
● Strategic Problem Solving: Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, including the ability to debug complex systems by relying on logs, traces, and evals rather than guessing.
● Technical Leadership: Experience leading cross-functional teams, managing stakeholders (exec-level, cross-region), and providing technical agility in an evolving environment.
The successful candidate’s starting salary will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location.
At Coupa, we are 100% committed to creating and nurturing an environment that supports your physical, mental, and community well-being. We offer a comprehensive suite of benefits designed to help you and your family thrive:
Global Well-Being Perks (For All Employees Globally)
- Global Wellness Days: Enjoy two designated, company-wide paid wellness days off each year (typically the first Friday in March and the last Friday in September) so the entire global team can unplug, step away, and recharge together .
- Birthday Time-Off: Celebrate your day! Coupa provides a paid day off on your birthday or another day of your choice within your birthday month .
- Volunteer Time Off (VTO): Giving back is in our DNA. We offer 40 hours of paid VTO annually to support the community initiatives and volunteer programs you are passionate about .
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Access free, confidential, 24/7/365 counseling and resources for emotional support, work-life solutions, financial advice, legal guidance, and support for new parents .
- Business Travel Protection: Travel with peace of mind. Zurich Travel Assist provides medical, safety, pre-trip planning, and emergency support during any business travel .
- Referral Bonus Program: Share the Coupa experience! Receive generous monetary referral bonuses when you successfully refer talented friends or acquaintances who are hired into open roles .
Please note: In addition to these global well-being perks, Coupa offers highly competitive, location-specific benefits packages (which include comprehensive medical/dental insurance, retirement/pension plans, and life or accident protection) tailored to your primary work location. Your recruiter will walk you through the specific regional benefits package for this role during the interview process.
Coupa complies with relevant laws and regulations regarding equal opportunity and offers a welcoming and inclusive work environment. Decisions related to hiring, compensation, training, or evaluating performance are made fairly, and we provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified candidates and employees.
Please be advised that inquiries or resumes from recruiters will not be accepted.
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