Senior Principal Software Engineer - AI tools and Adoption

Yahoo
United States of America

About the job

Yahoo Mail is the ultimate consumer inbox with hundreds of millions of users. Its the best way to access your email and stay organized from a computer, phone or tablet. With its beautiful design and lightning fast speed, Yahoo Mail makes reading, organizing, and sending emails easier than ever.Yahoo Mail is seeking a Senior PrincipalStaff Software Engineer to lead our AI adoption initiative across the Engineering organization. You will be the driving force behind improving our 400+ engineers productivity by transforming development practices embedded with AI.

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 CICD 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

Qualifications

Minimum

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 CICD, 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

Preferred

No preferred qualifications listed.