Sr Principal Applied AI Engineer

Position Overview

The work we do at Autodesk touches nearly every person on the planet. By creating software tools for making buildings, machines, and even the latest movies, we influence and empower some of the most creative people in the world to solve problems that matter.

Autodesk is seeking a Senior Principal AI/ML Engineer, Multimodal and Agentic Construction Intelligence to help define and deliver the next generation of AI applications across Autodesk Construction Cloud.

This is a unique senior technical leadership role for someone who can operate across natural language understanding, computer vision, multimodal AI, and agentic systems, while staying grounded in the realities of construction workflows and customer needs. We are looking for a leader who understands how to build intelligent systems that reason over project data, drawings, specifications, RFIs, issues, schedules, photos, and site context, and turn those capabilities into real product experiences that create measurable value for construction teams.

This is not a pure research scientist role. It is an engineering and applied AI leadership role for someone with a proven track record of shipping AI and ML systems in the construction space, partnering closely with product and design, mentoring engineers and ML practitioners, and shaping both technical direction and workflow impact.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead technical strategy for multimodal and agentic AI capabilities across Autodesk Construction Cloud

• Drive the architecture and delivery of intelligent systems that combine NLU, retrieval, computer vision, multimodal reasoning, and agentic workflows

• Build and evolve AI applications that work across construction data such as specifications, drawings, RFIs, issues, submittals, schedules, meeting content, photos, and field observations

• Partner closely with Product, UX, Engineering, and domain stakeholders to identify high-value construction workflows and turn them into scalable AI features

• Shape the design of agentic systems that can retrieve, reason, summarize, recommend, and take workflow-aware actions in trusted and governed ways

• Lead the development of evaluation harnesses, benchmark suites, and quality frameworks for multimodal and agentic AI systems

• Help define how AI systems should behave in construction contexts, including grounding, evidence, permissions, traceability, fallback behavior, and human-in-the-loop controls

• Drive technical direction for reusable AI services and platform capabilities that can support multiple construction workflows and product surfaces

• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, data scientists, and ML engineers, and help raise the bar for architecture, experimentation, engineering quality, and technical judgment

• Influence roadmap decisions through strong partnership with product leadership and by connecting technical investments to customer value and business outcomes

• Represent Construction in broader Autodesk AI platform conversations and help ensure construction workflows shape platform patterns and standards

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, Information Systems or equivalent industry experience

• At least 8 years of industry experience in software engineering, AI/ML systems, computer vision, applied AI, or related domains

• Proven track record of building and shipping AI or ML systems in the construction, AEC, BIM/VDC, project controls, field operations, or construction technology space

• Strong experience across multiple AI domains, including a combination of:

  • natural language understanding or LLM applications

  • computer vision or multimodal AI

  • retrieval, search, or document intelligence

  • agentic workflows or orchestration systems

• Strong software engineering and systems design fundamentals, including production-quality implementation, APIs, cloud services, testing, observability, and operational reliability

• Demonstrated ability to work closely with Product and cross-functional partners to define requirements, evaluate tradeoffs, and ship high-impact customer-facing capabilities

• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers, leading technical direction, and operating as a force multiplier across teams

• Strong communication skills and the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building multimodal AI systems that connect text, drawings, images, site photos, metadata, and workflow context

• Experience with LLM applications, RAG, tool use, knowledge systems, agent orchestration, or MCP-style architectures

• Experience with computer vision techniques such as document understanding, image classification, detection, segmentation, visual grounding, OCR, or vision-language models

• Experience designing ML-ready representations for AEC data, including the ability to understand, structure, and choose appropriate representations for models working with complex design and construction data.

• Experience designing evaluation frameworks for AI systems, including workflow quality, response quality, retrieval quality, precision, recall, latency, and trust metrics

• Experience with permissions-aware retrieval, governance, responsible AI practices, and evidence-based user experiences

• Experience building AI systems for construction workflows such as document management, specifications, submittals, issues, quality, safety, inspections, coordination, field reporting, preconstruction, or project controls

• Experience building shared services or platform capabilities that support multiple AI applications or teams

• Experience working with product managers and designers to translate domain pain points into shipped AI product capabilities

• Familiarity with construction ontologies, connected project data, BIM/CAD artifacts, and the operational realities of project delivery

The Ideal Candidate

• Is equally credible with product leaders, engineers, ML practitioners, and construction-domain experts

• Has real construction-domain judgment, not just generic AI experience

• Can move fluidly between NLU, CV, multimodal, and agentic AI problem spaces without being limited to one specialty

• Understands that the hardest part of construction AI is often workflow fit, trust, traceability, and operational adoption, not only model quality

• Has a strong record of mentoring others and building technical depth across a team

• Brings both strategic thinking and hands-on technical credibility

• Knows how to turn ambiguous opportunities into clear product bets, measurable experiments, and durable engineering systems

• Very advanced expert roles that provide advice relevant to their subject matter expertise to senior leaders

• Jobs at this level reflect sophisticated subject matter expertise and consultative capabilities

• Development of novel, highly innovative solutions is often required.
  • Recognized as experts within a discipline, and also apply working knowledge of the theories and concepts in other related disciplines

• Lead the resolution of complex problems within own discipline, often with the need to integrate cross-functional processes and outcomes

• Anticipate business challenges that could have significant impact on Autodesk's operational and financial success, and proactively develop solutions to address them

• Provide input to functional strategies related to own discipline

• Influence leaders within own function to adopt solutions, establish priorities, and allocate resources

• May lead teams or projects with broad visibility

About Autodesk

Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software – from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.

We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk – it’s at the core of everything we do. Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.

When you’re an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!

Benefits

From health and financial benefits to time away and everyday wellness, we give Autodeskers the best, so they can do their best work. Learn more about our benefits in the U.S. by visiting https://benefits.autodesk.com/

Equal Employment Opportunity

At Autodesk, we're building a diverse workplace and an inclusive culture to give more people the chance to imagine, design, and make a better world. Autodesk is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic. We also consider for employment all qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

Diversity & Belonging

We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/diversity-and-belonging

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