Principal Staff AI Engineer, Premium AI
Software Engineering, Data Science
Sunnyvale, CA, USA
USD 207k-340k / year + Equity
Posted on Feb 14, 2026
Company Description
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We’re also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that’s built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed.
Join us to transform the way the world works.
Job Description
Team Overview:
The Premium AI teams work on many highly visible products at LinkedIn, including solutions related to job search, profile customization, new user acquisition (product growth), and more.
Technologies span across Generative AI, LLMs, multi-task learning, deep learning, NLP, and more. Many of these solutions are enterprise level and this team partners closely with Notifications AI, Jobs, and other teams. We are also improving our Small Business Agent AI solution for Premium users, an all-in-one solution for small business leaders to grow their business through LinkedIn encompassing branding, marketing, and hiring.
You will have an opportunity to build customer facing AI-driven products with massive impact and scale, reaching millions of individuals and driving billions in annual revenue.
Location:
At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.
This role will be based in Sunnyvale, CA
Responsibilities:
You will be setting the technical direction and foundation to build and own algorithms, models, systems and product experiences that power LinkedIn’s Premium AI product; both improving product features as well as helping to drive product growth.
This role will be the Principal AI Engineer for a team of 50+.
Basic Qualifications:
You will Benefit from our Culture:
We strongly believe in the well-being of our employees and their families. That is why we offer generous health and wellness programs and time away for employees of all levels.
Compensation:
LinkedIn is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices.
The pay range for this role is $207,000 to $340,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor.
The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans. For additional information, visit: https://careers.linkedin.com/benefits.
Equal Opportunity Statement
We seek candidates with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. LinkedIn considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.
LinkedIn is committed to offering an inclusive and accessible experience for all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities. Our goal is to foster an inclusive and accessible workplace where everyone has the opportunity to be successful.
If you need a reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening, apply for a position, or participate in the interview process, connect with us at accommodations@linkedin.com and describe the specific accommodation requested for a disability-related limitation.
Reasonable accommodations are modifications or adjustments to the application or hiring process that would enable you to fully participate in that process. Examples of reasonable accommodations include but are not limited to:
LinkedIn will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by LinkedIn, or (c) consistent with LinkedIn's legal duty to furnish information.
San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, LinkedIn will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Pay Transparency Policy Statement
As a federal contractor, LinkedIn follows the Pay Transparency and non-discrimination provisions described at this link: https://lnkd.in/paytransparency.
Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates
Please follow this link to access the document that provides transparency around the way in which LinkedIn handles personal data of employees and job applicants: https://legal.linkedin.com/candidate-portal.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We’re also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that’s built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed.
Join us to transform the way the world works.
Job Description
Team Overview:
The Premium AI teams work on many highly visible products at LinkedIn, including solutions related to job search, profile customization, new user acquisition (product growth), and more.
Technologies span across Generative AI, LLMs, multi-task learning, deep learning, NLP, and more. Many of these solutions are enterprise level and this team partners closely with Notifications AI, Jobs, and other teams. We are also improving our Small Business Agent AI solution for Premium users, an all-in-one solution for small business leaders to grow their business through LinkedIn encompassing branding, marketing, and hiring.
You will have an opportunity to build customer facing AI-driven products with massive impact and scale, reaching millions of individuals and driving billions in annual revenue.
Location:
At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.
This role will be based in Sunnyvale, CA
Responsibilities:
You will be setting the technical direction and foundation to build and own algorithms, models, systems and product experiences that power LinkedIn’s Premium AI product; both improving product features as well as helping to drive product growth.
This role will be the Principal AI Engineer for a team of 50+.
- Define and execute technical vision for applying AI and Data Systems to accelerate the team’s roadmap which includes activity data mining using LLMs, identity resolution using heterogeneous data sources, ads retrieval at scale and advertiser workflows to build higher performing ads.
- Mentor and work with other Sr. Staff SWEs in the team to establish quality norms, to build a culture of operational excellence and speed.
- Partner with Product, Data Science, and AI Research orgs to translate business goals into scalable AI-and-Data powered capabilities to improve the advertiser experience & ROI.
- Establish best practices for experimentation, model evaluation, and responsible AI.
- Provide architectural guidance and mentorship to up-level the engineering organization
- Work closely with and influence product and/or technology partners regularly to help define roadmap
Basic Qualifications:
- 5+ years as a Technical Leader (L7, Senior Staff, Principal, etc.)
- 7+ years of industry experience with Machine Learning, AI, Data Engineering, or related solutions.
- Bachelor of Science (or higher, e.g., MS, or PhD) in Computer Science or related technical field involving coding, or equivalent technical experience.
- 10+ years of industry experience (AI, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related) including prior experience working in the Tech or Product domain.
- Master’s or PhD in Computer Science or a related discipline.
- Strong experience in designing and optimizing AI solutions for direct-to-consumer Tech.
- Experience in designing and optimizing recommender and/or search systems that create highly personalized experiences for LinkedIn’s members and scale to solve complex business problems
- Experience with deep learning, LLMs, graphs/graph mining, ranking, auction theory, optimization.
- Previous design and implementation of solutions in highly distributed environments.
- Technical & Thought Leadership
- AI Engineering
- Enterprise ML Solutions
You will Benefit from our Culture:
We strongly believe in the well-being of our employees and their families. That is why we offer generous health and wellness programs and time away for employees of all levels.
Compensation:
LinkedIn is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices.
The pay range for this role is $207,000 to $340,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor.
The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans. For additional information, visit: https://careers.linkedin.com/benefits.
Equal Opportunity Statement
We seek candidates with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. LinkedIn considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.
LinkedIn is committed to offering an inclusive and accessible experience for all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities. Our goal is to foster an inclusive and accessible workplace where everyone has the opportunity to be successful.
If you need a reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening, apply for a position, or participate in the interview process, connect with us at accommodations@linkedin.com and describe the specific accommodation requested for a disability-related limitation.
Reasonable accommodations are modifications or adjustments to the application or hiring process that would enable you to fully participate in that process. Examples of reasonable accommodations include but are not limited to:
- Documents in alternate formats or read aloud to you
- Having interviews in an accessible location
- Being accompanied by a service dog
- Having a sign language interpreter present for the interview
LinkedIn will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by LinkedIn, or (c) consistent with LinkedIn's legal duty to furnish information.
San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, LinkedIn will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Pay Transparency Policy Statement
As a federal contractor, LinkedIn follows the Pay Transparency and non-discrimination provisions described at this link: https://lnkd.in/paytransparency.
Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates
Please follow this link to access the document that provides transparency around the way in which LinkedIn handles personal data of employees and job applicants: https://legal.linkedin.com/candidate-portal.