Principal Engineer

What Youll Be Doing (position summary):

The Principal Engineer is responsible for designing and delivering the RAG Services Layer at the core of our AI platform. This role integrates unstructured documents, tabular data (Risk, PnL, limits, RFQ, pricing), vector search, hybrid retrieval, and a scalable semantic layer to support agents and applications across the bank. The incumbent will develop ingestion pipelines, retrieval APIs, metadata models, ranking strategies, and semantic knowledge domains, ensuring robust, high-precision, and auditable retrieval services.

At CIBC India we enable the work environment most optimal for you to thrive in your role. Details on your work arrangement (including on-site and remote work) will be discussed at the time of your interview.

How Youll Succeed (responsibilities):

RAG Services Layer Development:

• Build and maintain the RAG Services Layer, including indexing, hybrid search, embedding pipelines, reranking, context assembly, and retrieval orchestration.
• Design and implement ingestion pipelines for both unstructured documents (CSAs, term sheets, policies, research) and tabular datasets.
• Integrate with vector databases such as Qdrant, Weaviate, Pinecone, Astra, and Elasticsearch/Semantic Search.

Semantic Layer Engineering:

• Develop a semantic layer for Risk, PnL, trades, RFQ, limits, clients, onboarding, and market data.
• Work with Databricks to consume silver and gold datasets and expose them through a semantic API.
• Design structured-output schemas for agents retrieving tabular/financial data.
• Collaborate with knowledge-graph engineers to integrate entities, relationships, and data lineage.

Retrieval Optimization:

• Implement hybrid retrieval (vector + keyword), metadata search, and entity-linked retrieval.
• Build retrieval components for LangGraph/ Pydantic agent workflows.
• Implement reranking using cross-encoders (ColBERT, Llama-based rankers, OpenAI Rerank).
• Ensure the RAG layer is domain-aware, contextual, high-precision, and auditable.

Evaluation & Data Flow:

• Develop evaluation pipelines to measure precision, recall, hallucination reduction, and retrieval quality (MQE).
• Build real-time or near-real-time data flows for risk and PnL use-cases.

Experience: 12+ years of experience

Who You Are (skills/qualifications):

Must Have Skills:

• Strong experience with RAG architectures, embedding pipelines, hybrid search, and retrieval optimization.
• Proficiency in Python engineering.
• Deep understanding of semantic modelling, metadata systems, and semantic layers (Cube.js, dbt semantic, AtScale, Fabric).
• Experience with vector databases and implementing metadata schemas.
• API service development experience (FastAPI, MLflow Models, serverless, microservices).
• Familiarity with capital-markets datasets: trades, curves, surfaces, risk measures, CSAs.
• Experience with Databricks, Delta Lake, and high-volume data ingestion.
• Expertise in designing schema, ontologies, or structured definitions for financial data.

Good to Have:

• Knowledge graph experience (Neo4j, TypeDB, Neptune, RDF/OWL)
• Experience with OpenAI ReRank, Cohere ReRank, ColBERT, LLM-based rankers
• Understanding of model fine-tuning/domain-adapted embeddings
• Experience with Azure AI Search or Elastic E5 vector search
• Experience working with agentic platform teams.

What CIBC India Offers:

At CIBC India, your goals are a priority. We start with your strengths and ambitions and strive to create opportunities to tap into your potential. We aspire to give you a career that goes well beyond your compensation.

• We work to recognize you in meaningful, personalized ways including competitive fixed pay, performance-based incentive programs, a family-first benefits program, employer contributions for your retirement, attractive time off and leave offerings, wellbeing support, and Moment Makers, our social, points-based recognition program
• Our spaces and technological toolkit will make it simple to bring together great minds to create innovative solutions that make a difference for our clients worldwide
• We cultivate a culture where you can express your ambition through initiatives like Purpose Day, a paid day off dedicated for you to use to invest in your growth and development

Privacy:

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