Senior Principal Software Engineer - AI tools and Adoption

Yahoo is seeking a Senior Principal/Staff Software Engineer to lead their AI adoption initiative across the Engineering organization. This role involves transforming engineering practices by integrating AI tools to enhance productivity and drive measurable business impact.

Responsibilities:

• Drive Cultural Transformation: Lead the evolution from AI-curious to AI-native engineering practices across all relevant teams
• Champion Change Management: Convert skeptics into advocates through data-driven demonstrations of value and hands-on enablement including Proof of concept
• Tool Evaluation & Selection: Continuously assess emerging AI tools (Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, etc.) and make data-driven recommendations based on Mail legacy Infrastructure
• Measure & Accelerate Adoption: Establish KPIs, track progress of adoption, and implement interventions to accelerate uptake
• Build Communities of Practice: Lead and create forums for knowledge sharing, celebrate wins, and foster peer-to-peer learning
• Architecture & Integration: Design technical frameworks for integrating AI tools into existing development workflows and CI/CD pipelines
• Virtual Engineer Implementation: Lead proof-of-concepts for coding agents in standardized tasks across various mail teams
• Security & Compliance: Partner with Paranoids (Security) and Legal teams to ensure AI tool usage protects IP and meets compliance requirements
• Technical Standards: Establish best practices, guidelines, and guardrails for AI-assisted development
• Performance Optimization: Analyze and optimize the technical performance and cost-efficiency of AI tool deployments
• Innovation Pipeline: Maintain awareness of cutting-edge AI developments and identify opportunities for competitive advantage
• Remove Barriers: Identify and systematically eliminate technical, cultural, and process obstacles to AI adoption
• Communicate Impact: Regularly present adoption metrics, success stories, and ROI to engineering leadership and executives

Requirements:

• Have experience with latest AI tech - Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot
• 10+ years of software engineering experience with proven expertise across multiple programming languages and paradigms
• Deep hands-on experience with AI-powered development tools (GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, etc.)
• Strong understanding of LLMs, prompt engineering, and AI model capabilities/limitations
• Experience with CI/CD, DevOps practices, and modern software development workflows
• Track record of evaluating and implementing new technologies at scale
• Proven ability to drive technical initiatives across large engineering organizations
• Experience leading without authority and influencing senior technical leaders
• Track record of successful change management in engineering contexts
• Demonstrated ability to convert technical innovations into business value
• Experience driving tool adoption across diverse technical teams
• Strong communication skills with the ability to create compelling narratives for different audiences
• Patience and empathy when working with skeptics and late adopters