QAD, Inc.—Principal Software Engineer

Job description

Description: Help us build the "System of Action" that supercharges global manufacturing teams. QAD is entering a high-velocity era to architect the world’s first AI-native, agentic ERP. We are moving beyond legacy "systems of record" to build an autonomous platform where humans and AI work as a tag team to redefine how factories operate. Join us at this pivotal moment to build our next generation platform, lead the next generation of the Adaptive Enterprise and turn global speed into strategy. Ignite Your Future: As an Engineering Manager at QAD, you will lead an agile engineering team responsible for designing, building, and delivering high‑quality software. You will combine hands‑on technical understanding with people leadership, helping engineers do their best work while delivering meaningful business outcomes. Active use of AI-native development workflows — Cursor, Claude Code, and CodeRabbit or equivalent — is a baseline requirement, not a nice-to-have. We treat AI augmentation as the standard engineering operating model. Leaders are expected to use these tools personally, set norms for their teams, and demonstrate that AI tooling raises the output of their entire squad. Candidates who view AI tools as optional or experimental are not the right fit for this organization. The Mission: What You'll Be Building You will guide a team building features and services across QAD’s adaptive, cloud‑native platform, contributing directly to customer‑facing capabilities and platform foundations. Lead for the engine room of ERA — the runtime infrastructure that autonomous agents execute on. Your Impact/ What you will be doing: - Deliver the Orchestrator, Reasoning Engine, Agent Runtime, and Session/Memory Management systems - Own the LLM Gateway: model routing, cost governance, latency SLOs, prompt versioning, and model fallback - Ensure production reliability: agent sandboxing, execution audit trails, timeout handling, and retry logic - Manage a squad of 5 engineers, including 1 Principal Engineer What we are looking for - 6+ years in backend or AI/ML engineering with at least 2 years managing a squad - Experience operating production LLM systems — real SLOs, real failure modes, real post-mortems - Deep understanding of agentic frameworks: orchestration patterns, tool use, and multi-step reasoning - MCP (Model Context Protocol) implementation experience - Prompt versioning, eval pipeline design, and agent behavior testing - Responsible AI guardrails and agent safety architecture The Mindset: - People-Centered Leader: Cares deeply about team health, growth, and inclusion. - Execution-Oriented: Focuses on delivering value consistently and reliably. - Technically Curious: Continuously builds technical depth to better support the team. - Accountable Owner: Takes responsibility for commitments and outcomes. - Collaborative: Works openly with Product, QA, and peer teams. Why QAD? You will directly lead, grow, and mentor a high-impact agile team, playing a key role in delivering features on our adaptive, cloud-native platform. This is an opportunity to combine hands-on technical guidance with people leadership, driving real-world product outcomes using modern cloud technologies and contributing to the future of intelligent manufacturing. Company Description: QAD is redefining manufacturing and supply chains through its intelligent, adaptive platform that connects people, processes, and data into a single System of Action. With three core pillars — Redzone (frontline empowerment), Adaptive Applications (the intelligent backbone), and Champion AI (Agentic AI for manufacturing) — QAD | Redzone helps manufacturers operate with Champion Pace, achieving measurable productivity, resilience, and growth in just 90 days. QAD is committed to ensuring that every employee feels they work in an environment that values their contributions, respects their unique perspectives and provides opportunities for growth regardless of background. QAD’s DEI program is driving higher levels of diversity, equity and inclusion so that employees can bring their whole self to work. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class. About QAD: QAD | Redzone is redefining manufacturing and supply chains through its intelligent, adaptive platform that connects people, processes, and data into a single System of Action. With three core pillars — Redzone (frontline empowerment), Adaptive Applications (the intelligent backbone), and Champion AI (Agentic AI for manufacturing) — QAD | Redzone helps manufacturers operate with Champion Pace, achieving measurable productivity, resilience, and growth in just 90 days. QAD is committed to ensuring that every employee feels they work in an environment that values their contributions, respects their unique perspectives and provides opportunities for growth regardless of background. QAD’s DEI program is driving higher levels of diversity, equity and inclusion so that employees can bring their whole self to work. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.