Senior Principal Software Engineer - AI tools and Adoption

Yahoo is seeking a Senior Principal Software Engineer to lead their AI adoption initiative across the Engineering organization. This role involves driving productivity improvements among engineers through AI-driven development practices and transforming engineering competencies to integrate AI tools effectively.

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