Principal Software Engineer - Contract AI
 McKinsey & Company | |
parental leave, paid time off
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 United States, D.C., Washington | |
 Aug 04, 2026 | |
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Tech & AI
Principal Software Engineer - Contract AI
Job ID: 110887
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Apply Later Do you want to do work that matters, alongside supportive leaders who will help you grow faster than you ever thought possible? Are you a creative problem-solver who is energized by challenges?
You've come to the right place.
YOUR IMPACT
You will own extraction and evaluation architecture, design and evolve the multi-stage AI pipeline that converts unstructured contracts and invoices into structured compliance findings -covering document ingestion, vision LLM extraction, clause parsing, normalization, and deterministic evaluation logic.
You are the deepest individual technical contributor on the Contract AI platform. You own the hardest engineering problems - extraction model architecture, compliance evaluation logic, pipeline performance at scale, and the agentic reasoning layer. You are not primarily a manager, but you raise the ceiling of what the team can build: through architecture, code, code review, and mentoring.
You'll lead GenAI and agentic engineering, build, tune, and productionize agentic workflows for contract analysis using LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent frameworks. You will advance the platform's reasoning capabilities beyond single-shot prompting into multi-step, tool-using AI agents.
You will set the technical bar for the team: own code quality, architecture reviews, and technical standards. You will be the go-to resource for the hardest debugging, design, and performance challenges.
You'll also mentor Senior Software Engineers, drive accuracy at scale, own evaluation accuracy metrics across compliance case categories; design validation harnesses, prompt refinement workflows, and confidence scoring frameworks.
You will contribute across the stack, write Python and C# in production; contribute to the React/TypeScript analytics dashboard when needed; and own end-to-end delivery of major platform features from design through deployment.
You'll accelerate client deployments, build reusable extractor and evaluator templates that reduce Proof-of-Value configuration time; document architectural patterns for delivery engineers to apply consistently across client environments. You'll stay at the frontier: continuously evaluate emerging agentic frameworks, multi-modal models, and document-understanding approaches; propose and prototype high-value capabilities before they appear in competitors' roadmaps. Driving lasting impact and building long-term capabilities with our clients is not easy work. You are the kind of person who thrives in a high performance/high reward culture - doing hard things, picking yourself up when you stumble, and having the resilience to try another way forward.
In return for your drive, determination, and curiosity, we'll provide the resources, mentorship, and opportunities you need to become a stronger leader faster than you ever thought possible. Your colleagues-at all levels-will invest deeply in your development, just as much as they invest in delivering exceptional results for clients. Every day, you'll receive apprenticeship, coaching, and exposure that will accelerate your growth in ways you won't find anywhere else.
When you join us, you will have:
YOUR QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS
Please review the additional requirements regarding essential job functions of McKinsey colleagues.
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FOR U.S. APPLICANTS: McKinsey & Company is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Certain US jurisdictions require McKinsey & Company to include a reasonable estimate of the salary for this role. Additionally, we provide a comprehensive benefits package that reflects our commitment to the wellness of our colleagues and their families. FOR NON-U.S. APPLICANTS: McKinsey & Company is an Equal Opportunity employer. For additional details regarding our global EEO policy and diversity initiatives, please visit our McKinsey Careers and Diversity & Inclusion sites. Share This Job | |