Cybersecurity AI Principal Engineer

About this role:

Wells Fargo is seeking a Principal Engineer as part of the Cybersecurity AI team to help design and evolve VoltAIre, a Cyber AI platform intended to provide secure, highly available, scalable, isolated, and resilient execution environments for a broad range of Cyber AI workloads.

VoltAIre spans Google Cloud and on-premises cloud (OCP) and supports workloads including SAST and DAST vulnerability scanners, knowledge assistants, AI-enabled applications, and other emerging Cyber AI capabilities. The platform is designed to support workloads across experimentation, on-demand execution, and business-as-usual production environments.

This role combines platform architecture, distributed systems, application architecture, cloud infrastructure, and hands-on software engineering. The Principal Engineer will help determine how applications should be designed, where workloads should run, and the appropriate infrastructure, isolation, resiliency, scalability, and technology patterns for each workload.

In this role, you will:

• Act as an advisor to leadership to develop and influence architecture across applications, cloud infrastructure, networking, information security, data platforms, Kubernetes, and distributed systems for highly complex Cyber AI workloads.
• Provide technical leadership for the evolution of VoltAIre, establishing reusable platform capabilities and architectural patterns for Cyber AI workloads across cloud and on-premises environments.
• Design and influence Cyber AI applications, including vulnerability scanners, knowledge assistants, security services, and AI-enabled applications, from application architecture through production deployment and operation.
• Evaluate workload characteristics and make fit-for-purpose architecture decisions across security, isolation, availability, scalability, resiliency, performance, operational complexity, and cost.
• Define workload deployment and isolation patterns spanning shared Kubernetes clusters with namespace-based isolation, dedicated clusters, separate regions, and separate infrastructure or cloud providers.
• Design highly available and resilient architectures supporting elastic scaling, active/active, active/passive, and disaster recovery patterns appropriate to workload requirements.
• Provide architectural direction across Kubernetes, load balancing, application networking, compute, storage, SQL and NoSQL technologies, observability, and distributed application design.
• Design and re-engineer critical software components where performance, security, concurrency, reliability, or resource efficiency require deeper systems-level engineering
• Establish and evolve platform capabilities for logging, monitoring, telemetry, observability, security, adaptive runtime optimization, and intelligent workload routing.
• Lead the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique technical challenges requiring evaluation across applications, infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, and enterprise technology environments.
• Translate advanced technology experience and business requirements into long-term, scalable engineering solutions while clearly articulating architectural alternatives and trade-offs.
• Drive solutions from architecture and prototyping through implementation, production deployment, troubleshooting, and continuous optimization.
• Maintain knowledge of emerging technologies and engineering practices across cloud-native platforms, distributed systems, cybersecurity, Generative AI, Agentic AI, and systems engineering, and recommend innovations that advance platform capabilities.
• Strategically engage with engineers, architects, product teams, cybersecurity partners, and leadership across the enterprise and serve as an expert technical advisor.
• Mentor senior and staff engineers and help establish reusable engineering patterns and practices across platform and application engineering.

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education.
• 7+ years of senior engineering experience, including architecture and hands-on delivery of large-scale platforms, distributed applications, and production systems.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with cloud architectures, including Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, AWS, or comparable enterprise cloud technologies.
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, and operating applications and services on Kubernetes or comparable container orchestration platforms.
• Experience with distributed systems and application architecture, including networking, load balancing, APIs, data flows, concurrency, persistence, scalability, and failure handling.
• Experience designing solutions using SQL and/or NoSQL data technologies and evaluating technology choices based on workload and production requirements.
• Experience designing highly available and resilient production systems, including scaling, redundancy, failure recovery, and disaster recovery considerations.
• Demonstrated ability to work at both hands-on technical depth and strategic architecture level, translating complex technical decisions and trade-offs for engineering teams and leadership.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience designing platforms that support multiple workloads or tenants with different requirements for security, isolation, availability, scalability, performance, and resiliency.
• Experience with hybrid or multi-cloud architectures spanning public cloud and on-premises infrastructure.
• Strong software engineering background in one or more languages such as Rust, Go, Python, Java, or comparable languages, with systems programming experience particularly valuable.
• Experience designing and operating large-scale Kubernetes platforms, distributed workloads, and cloud-native applications through production.
• Experience with observability platforms and practices, including logging, metrics, monitoring, telemetry, tracing, and production troubleshooting.
• Experience designing active/active, active/passive, regional redundancy, disaster recovery, and other high-availability patterns.
• Experience with application and infrastructure performance engineering, capacity management, elastic scaling, and runtime optimization.
• Experience working within agile product operating models in large enterprise environments, including agile software delivery and cloud infrastructure.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor senior and staff engineers and raise the technical engineering bar across an organization.
• Proven strategic thinking, analytical problem-solving, and sound technical judgment, including the ability to evaluate alternatives and make pragmatic architectural trade-offs.
• Demonstrated curiosity and an innovation mindset for advancing Generative AI, Agentic AI, and Cyber AI capabilities within regulated enterprise environments.
• Experience with cybersecurity platforms, vulnerability management, SAST, DAST, security scanners, AI/ML platforms, or compute-intensive distributed workloads.
• Strong organizational savvy and customer centricity, with the ability to navigate complex enterprise environments and align technology decisions to business and cybersecurity outcomes.
• Financial services or other highly regulated industry experience is beneficial.

Job Expectations:

• This position offers a hybrid work schedule.
• This position is not eligible for Visa sponsorship.
• Demonstrate proficiency in using AI‑assisted development and analysis tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot and approved code‑centric agents)
• Leverage AI to accelerate system design, coding, testing, analysis, and troubleshooting
• Apply strong technical judgment when validating and integrating AI‑assisted outputs into solutions
• Understand and account for model limitations, security risks, and operational considerations
• Apply AI responsibly in development and production environments
• Ensure AI usage aligns with security, compliance, privacy, and ethical standards

Salary Ranges:

• $159,000 - $254,000 - Charlotte, NC
• $191,000 - $305,000 - Menlo Park, CA

Pay Range

Reflected is the base pay range offered for this position. Pay may vary depending on factors including but not limited to demonstrated examples of prior performance, skills, experience, or work location. Employees may also be eligible for incentive opportunities.
$159,000.00 - $305,000.00

Benefits

Wells Fargo provides eligible employees with a comprehensive set of benefits, many of which are listed below. Visit Benefits - Wells Fargo Jobs for an overview of the following benefit plans and programs offered to employees.

• Health benefits
• 401(k) Plan
• Paid time off
• Disability benefits
• Life insurance, critical illness insurance, and accident insurance
• Parental leave
• Critical caregiving leave
• Discounts and savings
• Commuter benefits
• Tuition reimbursement
• Scholarships for dependent children
• Adoption reimbursement

Posting End Date:

9 Nov 2026

*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.

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.

c. Please be prepared to provide accurate information and supporting documentation in connection with any lawful employment and education verification conducted by Wells Fargo.