Principal Software Engineer - Emerging Technology & AI - Remote

CSAA Insurance Group (CSAA IG), a AAA insurer, is one of the leading personal lines property and casualty insurance groups in the United States. Here, every employee shapes our mission. We build innovative, human-centered solutions that help AAA members prevent, prepare for, and recover from life’s uncertainties. You will join a collaborative, inclusive culture where your strengths have room to grow and your ideas can drive real impact. Step into a role where you can contribute to our shared success through meaningful work.

We are actively hiring for a Principal Software Engineer - Emerging Technology & AI - Remote Your Role As a Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as a senior, hands-on technical leader focused on emerging technology and AI experimentation. You will design rapid prototypes, proofs of concept, and pilots; evaluate platforms, integrations, and architecture; and translate successful concepts into scalable solutions for delivery teams. Partnering across technology and the business, you will help shape technical standards, mentor engineers, solve complex challenges, and introduce innovative technologies and practices that improve development, quality, and delivery.

Your Work Technical Leadership

• Demonstrates exceptional proficiency in evaluating and applying artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI (GenAI), agentic AI, and other emerging technologies in enterprise use cases.
• Serves as a senior hands-on technical resource for Emerging Tech Labs, independently translating ambiguous opportunities into technical hypotheses, experiments, prototypes, and recommendations.
• Provides advanced technical guidance across experiments and pilots while influencing technology choices, architecture patterns, and enterprise adoption decisions.
• Partners with Enterprise Architecture to evaluate platform fit, integration strategy, security implications, governance considerations, and reusable patterns.
• Mentors engineers and technical partners through advanced knowledge sharing while remaining an individual contributor with direct responsibility for technical execution.

Design and Architecture

• Leads the technical design of proof-of-concepts, prototypes, and controlled pilots across a diverse range of technologies, platforms, and enterprise use cases.
• Builds sufficient working software and integrations to validate technical feasibility, architecture assumptions, platform capabilities, and key risks without over-engineering experiments as production applications.
• Creates concise design artifacts, experiment documentation, technical decision records, and reusable patterns that meet Enterprise Architecture and engineering standards.
• Evaluates APIs, cloud services, AI platforms, data sources, vendor products, and emerging technology frameworks through hands-on technical testing.
• Supports technical transition of validated concepts to the appropriate engineering, platform, or delivery teams with clear architecture and implementation guidance.

Code Quality and Review

• Writes high-quality, maintainable prototype code and applies appropriate engineering practices for the scope and risk of each experiment.
• Uses modern build, integration, testing, source control, and automation practices to ensure experiments are reproducible, secure, and technically credible. Conducts technical reviews of prototype code and integrations and provides actionable feedback to improve quality, reliability, and reuse.
• Problem-Solving and Troubleshooting
• Diagnoses and resolves sophisticated technical issues across applications, APIs, cloud services, AI platforms, data sources, and integration layers.
• Identifies practical approaches for testing technologies where established enterprise patterns may not yet exist, clearly documenting assumptions, tradeoffs, constraints, and risks. Determines when an experiment has produced sufficient evidence to recommend scaling, further evaluation, deferral, or stopping.

Innovation and Improvement

• Remains at the forefront of emerging technologies and methodologies, including AI/ML, GenAI, agentic AI, intelligent document processing, and related enterprise platforms.
• Identifies technologies and technical patterns that warrant enterprise experimentation and evaluates their relevance, maturity, limitations, and potential value.
• Converts experiment takeaways into reusable technical guidance, platform recommendations, reference patterns, s…