Principal AI Engineer

Who We Are: We’re a high-growth software company with a big mission : empowering K-12 district teams to do more with less. At LINQ, we get K12. That’s why we help districts transform K-12 school operations with best-in-class, cloud-based software solutions built to help districts return more resources to classrooms. Integrating finance, HR, nutrition management, and payments into a single, secure platform, LINQ reduces administrative burden. LINQ is trusted by 30% of school districts across the U.S. to help them operate more efficiently and serve over 1 billion meals to 17 million students annually, process payroll for 364,000 educators, administrators, and staff, and engage with millions of families through the free LINQ Connect app. Our team? They’re talented, committed, and fiercely loyal problem-solvers. At LINQ, you’ll find challenging and meaningful work, a team that respects and uplifts one another, and a commitment to constant improvement. Our customers love us because we’re attentive, patient, communicative, and solutions focused. They know they can count on us to not only anticipate their needs but to deliver the right answer every time. LINQ’s Values: • Act with Integrity & Build Trust: Trust is the foundation of our company. We operate with the highest standards of integrity, both internally and externally. We believe in transparency, honesty, and accountability. Building a culture where trust is earned and maintained. • Deliver Excellence: We consistently exceed our clients’ expectations. In every interaction, we strive to anticipate needs, provide swift solutions, and go the extra mile to relentlessly impress our customers. We communicate clearly, consistently, and in a timely way to cultivate lasting relationships. • Embrace Challenges: We embrace a growth mindset. Challenges offer opportunities to learn, grow, and improve. Continuous learning keeps us relevant and effective to ensure our solutions remain on the leading edge of innovation. • Collaborate & Act as One Team: Diverse skills, ideas, and perspectives are our strength. Through open communication, shared goals, and a spirit of unity and mutual respect, we collaborate to achieve excellence, drive innovation, and propel our company forward as a cohesive force. Why This Role Exists LINQ is building AI into the way we work — not as a layer on top, but as part of how every team operates. We need a builder to lead that work from the inside. This is an embedded role. You will sit with teams across LINQ — starting with Go-to-Market and Customer Experience — map how they work today, simplify the workflows that slow them down, and ship the agents that take real work off people’s plates. You’ll package what you build as reusable skills the rest of LINQ can adopt, instrument the results, and hand it back. Then you move to the next team. You will also help define how LINQ’s internal agent platform takes shape — the orchestration patterns, the skills library, and the evaluation discipline that make agent work compound across teams. The patterns you set become how LINQ runs on AI at scale. This is not a research role, a strategy role, or a program management role. You will be expected to ship things, measure whether they worked, and iterate. You will be the technical substance behind LINQ’s AI transformation; we have leaders who own the strategy and the program ops, and you will partner closely with them. What You’ll Own Build the Agents (50%) Embed with teams across LINQ to learn how the work actually gets done, where the friction lives, and where agents can meaningfully simplify it. The unit of work is real workflows, not novelty demos. Design and ship multi-step, tool-using agents that take work off people’s plates. Build with the right tools for the job — foundation model APIs, MCP servers, agent frameworks (LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Anthropic tool use patterns, or whatever fits the problem). Bias toward production-ready, not demo-ready. Build durable, not disposable. The agent you ship to CX should leave behind reusable skills the next team can pick up, not a black box that only you understand. Think in primitives and patterns, not scripts. Take evals and guardrails seriously. You know why a 95%-reliable agent is sometimes worse than a 70%-reliable one with a clear handoff, and you build accordingly. Instrument what you build. Define the metrics, stand up the dashboards, and prove the impact in time saved, errors avoided, or work that no longer needs doing. Hand it back. Train the team, document the patterns, and transition ownership to an internal champion or sustaining team so you can move to the next workflow. First-six-month focus areas: Go-to-Market (sales motion, pipeline hygiene, RFP support) and Customer Experience (support deflection, ticket triage, knowledge management). Other functions follow. Shape the Platform (20%) Help define LINQ’s internal agent platform — how agents are built, evaluated, deployed, and observed. Set the patterns that the rest of LINQ’s AI work compounds against. Establish the skills pattern — how reusable agent capabilities get packaged, versioned, evaluated, and shared across teams. This becomes the unit of leverage across LINQ. Shape the orchestration approach — how agents discover tools, hand off to each other, escalate to humans, and remain observable when things go wrong. Use existing frameworks where they fit; build only what we genuinely need. Evaluate and recommend AI tooling: foundation models, agent frameworks, MCP servers, automation platforms, eval and observability tooling. Make clear build-vs-buy-vs-integrate recommendations. Enable Everyone Else (20%) Co-launch an internal AI champions network alongside our Senior Director of Operations. You will own the technical substance — agent templates, reusable skills, evaluation harnesses, MCP integrations — that champions take back to their teams. Run office hours, workshops, and enablement sessions calibrated to the audience — engineers one day, finance leaders the next. Translate what you ship into business-relevant language. Surface success stories. Build the momentum. Strategy Partnership & Governance (10%) Partner with the CTO on LINQ’s AI strategy and adoption roadmap; produce the proof points, case studies, and metrics that inform our board and investor narrative. Work with Security and Compliance to ensure every agent and tool you ship meets FERPA, COPPA, PCI, and CCPA requirements. We operate in a regulated environment; this is non-negotiable. Track the AI vendor, model, and agent-platform landscape and bring informed recommendations to LINQ’s leadership. What This Role Is Not To save everyone time, this role is not: An ML or MLOps engineering role. We are not training models. A research role. We apply what exists; we do not publish papers. A Solutions Architect or Sales Engineer role. You will work with internal teams, not customers. A Product Manager role. You will not own a product roadmap. A Technical Program Manager role. You will not coordinate other people’s work; you will do the work. Required 8+ years building production software. The bulk of this role is shipping, and you should be comfortable doing it without a team behind you. Direct experience building agents — multi-step, tool-using LLM workflows running in a production or near-production context. You’ve thought about evals, guardrails, failure modes, cost, and handoff to humans. Working knowledge of the modern agent stack: foundation model APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI, or equivalent), at least one agent framework (LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Anthropic tool use, or similar), MCP, and evaluation tooling. Track record of driving adoption of new tools and practices across an organization, with measurable results to show for it. Strong fluency across the stack: scripting, light app development, API integrations, data pipelines, evaluation harnesses. You can build the thing, not just specify it. Exceptional written and verbal communication. You can explain an eval result to a CFO and debug a tool-call chain with an engineer in the same afternoon. Comfort with ambiguity. You will define the path, not walk one that’s already paved. Experience in a PE-backed, multi-product SaaS environment, or somewhere with comparable operational complexity. Preferred Experience shaping an internal AI or agent platform — orchestration, skills libraries, eval pipelines, observability. Familiarity with the SKILL.md / agent-skill pattern, or equivalent approaches to packaging reusable agent capabilities. Experience building MCP servers or other integrations that connect LLMs to real enterprise systems. Background in developer experience, internal tools, platform engineering, or forward-deployed engineering. Experience in K–12 education technology or another regulated vertical (healthcare, fintech, government), and familiarity with FERPA, COPPA, SOC 2, or HIPAA. Fluency in JavaScript or TypeScript, React, Node.js, and AWS — our primary stack. Track record of standing up and scaling internal programs or communities of practice. Career Path This is currently an individual contributor role with a clear path to growth. As LINQ scales its internal AI capability, this position has the potential to evolve into a player-coach role leading a small near- or offshore team focused on internal AI tooling and platform. We are hiring the builder first; the team will follow the work. Compensation Base salary range: $190,000 – $220,000, depending on experience and location. This role is eligible for an annual performance bonus, long-term incentive participation, and LINQ’s full benefits package. About LINQ LINQ is a K–12 cloud software company trusted by 30% of U.S. school districts, powering 1B school meals annually, 364K payrolls, and 3.5M families through LINQ Connect. We simplify the operational complexity of running a school district so educators can focus on what matters: students. We’re PE-backed, ~$100M ARR, and in the middle of a meaningful transformation—modernizing our platform, unifying our product portfolio, and embedding AI across everything we do. This is not an innovation lab. This is a real business with real customers, and AI is how we earn the right to scale. LINQ is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Why You'll Love Working With Us 🌎 Flex Your Workspace: Work remote from one of our eligible states across the US, or if you’re near Austin three days in office a week! 💰 Planning Your Future: Our 401(k) plan comes with a 4% employer match on total earnings (not just your base salary). 💸 Performance Pays Off: Whether it’s a company bonus or target sales commission, your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. 🌴 Vacation Your Way: Our flexible Open Paid Time Off Plan lets you take the time you need, when you need it. 👶 Paid Parental Leave: Take the time you need to welcome your new addition – We’ve got you covered! 🎉 Ten Paid Corporate Holidays: Enjoy a little extra downtime to relax and recharge with the ten paid holidays each year. ❤️ Giving Back: Feel good while doing good – 16 paid volunteer hours to support the causes that matter most to you. #LINQCares 🏥 Benefits That Have Your Back (And Teeth, Too!): Rock-solid medical, dental and vision coverage. Pick your vibe: a low deductible PPO and pair with an FSA or a HDHP with a sweet HSA – with contributions from LINQ. Dental perks that even cover braces for the kiddos. 💪 Wellness Perks: Employer-paid Short-Term Disability, Long Term Disability, Basic Life, and AD&D insurance. Gym reimbursements and tons of extra savings on travel assistance, employee assistance, and even pet insurance options. 🎁 Rewards For Referrals: Got an amazing candidate in your network? Send them our way and earn a referral bonus when they join the team! EOE Statement/Accommodation Notice: As a federal contractor and equal employment opportunity employer, LINQ adheres to all applicable laws and regulations regarding employment practices, ensuring that all qualified individuals receive consideration for employment based on their qualifications. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, pregnancy, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected category under applicable federal, state, and local law. To learn more about your rights and protections under federal law, please refer to the EEOC Equal Employment Opportunity Poster at the following link: https://www.eeoc.gov/poster If you’d like to view a copy of the company’s state or federally required affirmative action plans or policy statement, please email [email protected] . If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request a reasonable accommodation as part of the employment selection process, please contact [email protected] . This email address is reserved solely for job seekers with disabilities requesting accessibility assistance or an accommodation in the job application process. 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