Top Remote Principal Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Lead design and prototyping of generative AI experiences for autonomy development; drive UX for Hivemind products; perform user research, collaborate with CTO and product leads, and deliver reference implementations and integrations across full-stack web and edge systems.

Develop, maintain, and optimize mission-critical backend APIs and scalable cloud services for web and mobile clients. Implement secure, high-performance systems, automated tests, observability, and technical documentation. Mentor peers, follow best practices, and support a proof-of-concept launch and fundraising activities as a volunteer contributor.

Volunteer Principal Full Stack Engineer to lead and contribute across frontend and backend (React/React Native, Node.js, MongoDB). Own feature development, mentor engineers, collaborate with product/design, ship scalable code, and support CI processes. Must commit 4+ hours weekly and attend a weekly standup; first task includes launching a fundraising campaign.

Volunteer Principal Front End Developer to build React/React Native web and mobile features, mentor engineers, implement scalable full‑stack solutions, ensure cross‑browser compatibility and testing, work with Node/MongoDB/AWS, attend weekly standups, and support a fundraising launch. Minimum 4 hours/week commitment.

Leads UX strategy and design for an API developer platform, including APIs, documentation, SDKs, portals, and AI tools. Partners with Product and Engineering to shape API contracts, conduct developer research, prototype workflows, establish scalable design standards, and optimize the journey from discovery through successful API use, debugging, and monitoring. Influences senior stakeholders, tracks developer experience metrics, and mentors designers.

Provides senior technical leadership for high-voltage substation and underground transmission projects from planning through construction. Responsibilities include developing and reviewing specifications, evaluating designs, preparing plans and estimates, ensuring regulatory compliance, resolving technical issues, supporting procurement and contracts, mentoring engineers, and coordinating with clients, consultants, contractors, and vendors. The role may also involve technical reports, public or executive presentations, and expert testimony.

Leads complex power generation control systems projects, including planning, scheduling, design, programming, and implementation of hardware and software solutions. Focuses on turbine controls, instrumentation, electrical systems, and DCS/PLC integration. Contributes to proposals, technical scopes, estimates, and resource planning while coordinating with clients, contractors, and internal teams. The role is remote or hybrid and requires approximately 15–30% domestic and local travel.

Leads the design, integration, implementation, commissioning, and lifecycle improvement of enterprise OT, telemetry, and SCADA solutions across global data centers. Translates operational and customer requirements into secure, scalable architectures; integrates field devices, BMS/EPMS, Ignition, Azure services, messaging, APIs, and data platforms; troubleshoots multidisciplinary issues; leads testing and modernization; and mentors engineers and stakeholders.

Founding engineer responsible for architecting and building core product components, writing scalable Python code, designing and maintaining AI/ML infrastructure, implementing testing and CI/CD best practices, shipping backend production systems, collaborating on product roadmap, and mentoring future engineers.

Leads the roadmap, architecture, security, and organizational adoption of CI/CD and release infrastructure. Designs scalable release gates, hardens supply chains, directs engineers through complex projects, manages severe incidents, and drives cross-functional technical alignment. The role remains hands-on through code reviews, prototyping, debugging, documentation, mentorship, and design reviews while primarily achieving impact through team leadership.

Designs, deploys, maintains, and secures cloud solutions across AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI. Develops automation using Bash, PowerShell, and Python; monitors and tunes cloud platforms; maintains documentation and operating procedures; advises implementation teams; supports migrations and infrastructure buildouts; resolves escalations; and collaborates with internal and external stakeholders.

Design, build, and operate distributed storage and file-system platforms for cloud-scale AI training and inference. Architect storage and caching for Kubernetes and GPU workloads, improve performance, reliability, observability, and resiliency, diagnose cross-layer production issues, and lead architecture reviews. Partner across infrastructure, networking, operating systems, and AI platform teams while mentoring engineers and shaping long-term storage strategy.

Lead the architecture, technical strategy, and roadmap for Microsoft's Windows ML compiler stack. Design high-performance compiler infrastructure, execution engines, optimization frameworks, and developer tools supporting CPU, GPU, and NPU workloads. Drive NPU enablement, graph optimization, scheduling, memory management, code generation, and hardware abstraction. Partner with silicon vendors and internal teams, influence AI hardware and platform strategy, lead cross-team initiatives, and mentor engineers developing on-device and generative AI capabilities.

Own the architecture and technical direction of NodeZero’s database platform. Design scalable PostgreSQL and graph-based data systems, multi-tenant schemas, partitioning, replication, indexing, and zero-downtime migrations. Establish database standards, governance, performance practices, and migration tooling while writing production code. Mentor engineers, lead architecture reviews, and collaborate across data, inventory, API, and security teams to ensure reliable, isolated, and scalable data infrastructure.

Design, develop, customize, and administer ServiceNow ITSM applications. Build scripts, workflows, interfaces, reports, and dashboards; integrate ServiceNow with external systems using REST and SOAP. Provide troubleshooting and end-user support, analyze requirements, improve processes, and support testing and deployments. Serve as a senior technical authority by leading customer engagements, technical documentation, demonstrations, innovation initiatives, stakeholder collaboration, and mentoring junior staff.

Develop and optimize GPU kernels, compilers, runtimes, and distributed inference systems for large language model serving. Improve latency, throughput, reliability, and hardware efficiency through profiling and low-level performance optimization. Integrate scalable improvements into production systems, collaborate across model, infrastructure, compiler, and hardware teams, and mentor engineers. Principal-level contributors additionally lead cross-stack initiatives and create reusable performance capabilities across models and hardware generations.

Leads architecture and hands-on development for AI frameworks, performance systems, benchmarking, and developer tools. Investigates issues across models, compilers, runtimes, services, and accelerator hardware; improves model onboarding, runtime performance, reliability, hardware utilization, and Azure efficiency. Establishes scalable measurement and observability capabilities, influences cross-team technical strategy, delivers production solutions, and mentors engineers while advancing engineering quality and maintainability.

Work with customers and cross-functional teams to design, build, and deliver cloud-based solutions. Lead design, identify dependencies, mentor engineers, act as DRI and on-call, and improve availability, reliability, observability, and performance. Contribute to open-source assets and collaborate with Microsoft product teams to produce extensible, maintainable code and scalable solution patterns.

Provides technical leadership for AI framework and model-serving initiatives at cloud scale. Owns architecture, roadmaps, performance optimization, benchmarking, observability, and multi-release execution across models, compilers, runtimes, services, GPUs, and silicon. Leads cross-team alignment, makes architectural decisions, mentors engineers, performs hands-on implementation and debugging, and drives measurable improvements in model onboarding, runtime performance, reliability, hardware utilization, and Azure capacity efficiency.

Own the architecture, implementation, and operational excellence of major Azure Boost DPU software components. Develop low-level systems software spanning operating systems, virtualization, networking, storage, device management, and hardware interfaces. Lead complex cross-functional initiatives, optimize hyperscale performance and reliability, resolve system-level issues, establish engineering practices, influence platform architecture, and mentor engineers across Azure infrastructure teams.

Lead architecture and hands-on development for Microsoft's virtualization platform, focusing on hypervisor and VMM capabilities. Design, implement, and optimize systems software across Windows, Linux, macOS, Azure, and containers. Improve performance, security, reliability, testing, and operational readiness; diagnose low-level hardware/software issues; enable virtualization on new silicon; mentor engineers; and influence platform strategy across teams and hardware partners.

Lead architecture and hands-on development of Microsoft's AI Safety Platform, building observability, detection, investigation, threat-hunting, and distributed data-processing capabilities. Design attack detection infrastructure, correlate high-volume telemetry, apply AI security research, conduct security and privacy reviews, and partner across engineering, science, and incident response teams. Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership for complex AI security systems.

Lead end-to-end red team and adversary emulation operations across cloud, identity, network, endpoint, hardware, and operational security environments. Develop offensive tooling, implants, and AI-driven autonomous agents for reconnaissance, exploitation, and post-exploitation. Serve as a technical lead for customer engagements, brief security executives, collaborate with blue teams and threat intelligence organizations, establish operational standards, and mentor senior operators.

Work on end-to-end AI performance for LLMs: benchmark and optimize inference on GPUs and Microsoft silicon, build tooling for performance insights and model porting, implement and test components in AI/DNN frameworks, and collaborate with internal and external partners to reduce hardware footprint and accelerate deployments.

Lead the architecture and hands-on development of agentic observability capabilities for Kubernetes and Linux. Build production-quality software, interpret systems telemetry using eBPF, mentor engineers, coordinate cross-team delivery, support open-source initiatives, and participate in on-call operations. The role focuses on safe, observable, and evaluable AI-agent workflows, distributed systems reliability, and technical leadership across engineering teams.