Principal Engineer - Java Full Stack-Generative AI, Agentic AI

About this role:

Wells Fargo is seeking a Principal Engineer to provide enterprise-level technical leadership for the architecture, design, engineering, and modernization of mission-critical Financial Crimes and Risk Management platforms. 

In this role, you will:

• Act as an advisor to leadership to develop or influence applications, network, information security, database, operating systems, or web technologies for highly complex business and technical needs across multiple groups

• Lead the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas or the enterprise, delivering solutions that are long-term, large-scale and require vision, creativity, innovation, advanced analytical and inductive thinking

• Translate advanced technology experience, an in-depth knowledge of the organizations tactical and strategic business objectives, the enterprise technological environment, the organization structure, and strategic technological opportunities and requirements into technical engineering solutions

• Provide vision, direction and expertise to leadership on implementing innovative and significant business solutions

• Maintain knowledge of industry best practices and new technologies and recommends innovations that enhance operations or provide a competitive advantage to the organization

• Strategically engage with all levels of professionals and managers across the enterprise and serve as an expert advisor to leadership

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education

Desired Qualifications 

• Strong hands-on experience in Java ecosystem technologies, including Core Java, Spring Boot, REST APIs, microservices, concurrency, and performance optimization. 

• Strong experience in frontend architecture and development using React or Angular, JavaScript or TypeScript, HTML, and CSS, with the ability to build secure, accessible, resilient, and scalable enterprise user experiences. 

• Proven experience designing, building, modernizing, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production. 

• Strong understanding of object-oriented design, domain-driven design, microservices architecture, API design, event-driven systems, integration patterns, and distributed computing. 

• Hands-on experience delivering Generative AI solutions using large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector databases, prompt engineering, evaluation approaches, and agent orchestration frameworks. 

• Experience integrating AI capabilities into enterprise platforms, backend services, digital workflows, and engineering processes in a secure, resilient, governed, and supportable manner. 

• Experience defining architecture and integration patterns for machine learning-enabled systems, model services, data pipelines, and scalable deployment. 

• Experience with cloud-native architecture, containers, orchestration platforms, infrastructure automation, CI/CD, DevSecOps, observability, and site reliability engineering practices. 

• Experience designing highly available and resilient systems with appropriate recovery, fault-tolerance, capacity, performance, monitoring, and operational-support patterns. 

• Demonstrated ability to identify and eliminate redundant technologies, overlapping capabilities, duplicate solutions, and fragmented engineering patterns across multiple domains. 

• Experience creating reusable platforms, common services, reference architectures, accelerators, or engineering frameworks that can be adopted by multiple teams. 

• Demonstrated curiosity about emerging technology concepts and the ability to evaluate their practical application to business problems. 

• Awareness of emerging areas such as digital assets, harness engineering, loop engineering, newer AI models, intelligent automation, modern data platforms, and next-generation development practices. 

• Experience working in Financial Crimes, Risk Management, banking, financial services, or another highly regulated environment. 

• Understanding of regulatory, security, privacy, model risk, data governance, audit, resiliency, and operational-risk considerations relevant to enterprise technology solutions. 

• Ability to connect engineering decisions to business results, customer outcomes, regulatory obligations, risk reduction, operational efficiency, and return on investment. 

• Ability to balance strategic architecture with hands-on technical engagement, including prototyping, design validation, code review, and complex problem resolution. 

• Strong executive communication skills. Ability to explain complex engineering issues, alternatives, risks, and recommendations in concise business language. 

• Demonstrated ability to influence decisions without direct authority and establish alignment across product, engineering, architecture, security, risk, and business stakeholders. 

• Experience mentoring engineers, developing technical talent, raising engineering standards, and building communities of practice. 

• Evidence of technical thought leadership through patents, publications, conference participation, external engineering forums, open-source contribution, industry engagement, or equivalent internal influence. ​

Job Expectations 

• The Principal Engineer will shape next-generation digital platforms and intelligent systems across Java-based distributed applications, modern web technologies, cloud-native platforms, machine learning, Generative AI, and Agentic AI. The role will ensure that solutions meet the highest standards of scalability, security, resiliency, operability, regulatory alignment, and engineering excellence within a complex banking environment. 
• This role operates in a highly competitive and rapidly evolving technology environment where business expectations, regulatory requirements, customer needs, and technological innovation continue to accelerate. Success requires an exceptional engineering leader who continuously learns, adapts, innovates, and applies emerging technologies to create meaningful business advantage. The individual must maintain deep expertise in existing technologies while proactively identifying, evaluating, and adopting new engineering approaches, architectural patterns, and industry innovations that improve business outcomes. 
• The Principal Engineer is expected to develop deep expertise in the Financial Crimes and Risk Management domain and become a recognized authority on how technology can be applied to solve business problems within the domain. This includes understanding regulatory requirements, operational processes, customer impacts, industry trends, emerging risks, and technology opportunities. The individual will use this knowledge to apply the latest technologies, tools, engineering practices, and solution patterns to deliver increasingly efficient, scalable, and valuable business outcomes. 
• Operate as an enterprise Principal Engineer and not solely as the architect for an individual application, product, or delivery team. 
• Operate with a growth mindset in a highly competitive technology landscape. Continuously build expertise in emerging technologies, industry trends, business domains, and engineering practices. 
• Build and continuously deepen expertise in Financial Crimes and Risk Management. Apply that expertise when forming architecture decisions, technology strategies, and engineering priorities. 

• Maintain deep expertise in primary technical disciplines. Develop sufficient knowledge of adjacent disciplines to make sound end-to-end decisions. 

• Be self-motivated in identifying and learning emerging technologies, concepts, engineering methods, and industry practices. 

• Evaluate how emerging capabilities can be responsibly applied to Financial Crimes and Risk Management. Convert relevant concepts into practical experiments, reusable patterns, and scalable solutions. 

• Maintain a relentless focus on technology leadership to help Wells Fargo remain competitive in the application of technology within Financial Crimes and Risk Management. 

• Benchmark internal solutions against industry-leading practices. Identify opportunities to leapfrog conventional approaches through innovation, simplification, automation, reuse, artificial intelligence, and engineering excellence. 

• Demonstrate consistent focus on business outcomes. Ensure technology solutions improve efficiency, control effectiveness, resiliency, scalability, user experience, risk management, or return on investment. 

• Look across Financial Crimes domains and the wider technology organization for redundant platforms, duplicated services, overlapping capabilities, and inconsistent engineering patterns. 

• Proactively recommend consolidation, reuse, standardization, simplification, or retirement opportunities when they improve enterprise outcomes. 

• Balance innovation with regulatory obligations, security requirements, resource constraints, operational readiness, and long-term supportability. 

• Demonstrate the courage to challenge existing assumptions, architectural decisions, technology choices, operating models, and established approaches. Support challenges with evidence, technical reasoning, business context, and viable alternatives. 

• Bring a clear and independent technical point of view. Remain open to diverse perspectives and credible challenges. 

• Influence senior leaders and cross-functional stakeholders through expertise, trust, clarity, and strategic judgment. 

• Communicate complex technology matters in simple language. Tailor depth, framing, and recommendations to each audience. 

• Maintain regular hands-on engagement with critical designs, code, prototypes, engineering standards, technical investigations, and production concerns. 

• Establish architecture direction without becoming a delivery bottleneck. Enable teams through principles, reusable patterns, decision frameworks, and appropriate delegation. 

• Drive engineering excellence across security, resiliency, performance, observability, automation, testability, maintainability, accessibility, and operational readiness. 

• Mentor engineers across levels and organizational boundaries. Create opportunities for others to develop technical judgment and leadership capability. 

• Contribute to recruiting, developing, and retaining diverse engineering talent. 

• Share knowledge through technical forums, reusable documentation, architecture communities, publications, and appropriate external industry engagement. 

• Promote Wells Fargo engineering excellence through credible technical leadership and active contribution to the wider engineering community. 

• Establish measurable outcomes for major technical initiatives. Assess success through business value, risk reduction, reuse, simplification, reliability, engineering productivity, and sustainable adoption. 

• Represent engineering perspectives in strategic planning and executive discussions. Contribute to multi-year technology direction across Financial Crimes and Risk Management. 

Posting End Date: 

*Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.

We Value Equal Opportunity

Wells Fargo is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Employees support our focus on building strong customer relationships balanced with a strong risk mitigating and compliance-driven culture which firmly establishes those disciplines as critical to the success of our customers and company. They are accountable for execution of all applicable risk programs (Credit, Market, Financial Crimes, Operational, Regulatory Compliance), which includes effectively following and adhering to applicable Wells Fargo policies and procedures, appropriately fulfilling risk and compliance obligations, timely and effective escalation and remediation of issues, and making sound risk decisions. There is emphasis on proactive monitoring, governance, risk identification and escalation, as well as making sound risk decisions commensurate with the business unit’s risk appetite and all risk and compliance program requirements.

Candidates applying to job openings posted in Canada: Applications for employment are encouraged from all qualified candidates, including women, persons with disabilities, aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Accommodation for applicants with disabilities is available upon request in connection with the recruitment process.

Applicants with Disabilities

To request a medical accommodation during the application or interview process, visit Disability Inclusion at Wells Fargo.

Drug and Alcohol Policy

Wells Fargo maintains a drug free workplace.  Please see our Drug and Alcohol Policy to learn more.

Wells Fargo Recruitment and Hiring Requirements:

a. Third-Party recordings are prohibited unless authorized by Wells Fargo.

b. Wells Fargo requires you to directly represent your own experiences during the recruiting and hiring process.