Position Overview Autodesk is at the forefront of transforming the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry by embedding advanced AI and foundation models into cloud-native platforms like AutoCAD, Revit, Construction Cloud, and Forma. As a Senior Principal Machine Learning Engineer Lead, you will take on the role of a technical leader and delivery owner for complex, high-impact ML initiatives that span foundation models, reinforcement learning, data systems, and large-scale ML platforms. This position allows you to operate at the intersection of applied research, engineering, and product development, setting technical direction while being hands-on in tackling areas of high complexity and risk.
Responsibilities
- Technical Strategy & Leadership: Define the long-term technical vision for Generative AI and Foundation Model infrastructure within the AEC Solutions team. Influence architectural decisions across the organization.
- End-to-End Delivery: Lead the design, development, and delivery of sophisticated ML systems. Own the complete lifecycle from model architecture selection and data strategy to distributed training and production deployment.
- Foundation Model Engineering: Drive the creation of large-scale training pipelines. Collaborate with Research Scientists to translate experimental ideas into scalable, effective code.
- Scalability & Infrastructure: Architect solutions for distributed training on massive compute clusters. Identify and resolve bottlenecks in data processing and model parallelism to maximize training throughput.
- Mentorship & Influence: Mentor Principal and Senior engineers, encouraging a culture of technical ownership, rigorous experimentation, and best practices.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with Data Engineering, Platform, and Research teams to integrate extensive multimodal AEC data into model development workflows.
- Operational Excellence: Establish standards for model evaluation, versioning, monitoring, and MLOps best practices to ensure reproducibility and reliability in a high-stakes production environment.
Minimum Qualifications
- Master's or PhD in AI/ML-related fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, or Computational Linguistics.
- 10+ years of experience in machine learning or AI, demonstrating a strong track record of technical leadership and hands-on implementation.
- Experience mentoring engineers and leading technical projects in a cross-functional environment.
- Proven history of managing the delivery of large-scale ML systems from conception to production.
- Expert knowledge of deep learning architectures (Transformers, Diffusion models) and modern frameworks (PyTorch is a must).
- Hands-on experience with distributed training frameworks and techniques in HPC or cloud environments (AWS/Azure).
- Strong Python proficiency, focusing on performance profiling, debugging, and constructing robust, maintainable production code.
- Excellent capability to convey complex technical concepts to executive leadership and cross-functional partners.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience training large foundation models in distributed computing environments.
- Familiarity with designing data pipelines for multimodal datasets at the terabyte/petabyte scale (using tools such as Spark, Iceberg).
- Experience creating internal developer platforms for ML, utilizing tools like Kubernetes, Slurm, or Metaflow.
- A portfolio showcasing the successful translation of academic research into deliverable product features.
- Background in AEC or computational geometry, with experience in 3D data representations (BIM, CAD, meshes, point clouds).
The Ideal Candidate is someone who owns outcomes, not just components. They have operated ML systems at real scale and possess strong technical judgment shaped by practical experience. This person thrives in ambiguous problem spaces and drives clarity, enjoys mentoring senior engineers, and is motivated by delivering impactful results at scale.
Benefits From health and financial benefits to time off for wellness, we provide Autodeskers with everything they need to do their best work. Learn more about our benefits.
Salary Transparency For U.S. based roles, we expect a starting base salary between $165,000 and $296,450. Offers depend on experience and geographic location and may exceed this range. Along with base salaries, our compensation package may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.
Equal Employment Opportunity Autodesk is committed to creating a diverse workplace and inclusive culture, giving everyone the chance to imagine, design, and create a better world. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other legally p