---
title: 'Principal AI Enablement Engineer at Verisign'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-ai-enablement-engineer-verisign-reston-3e1a7bbpkcs9'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-29'
---

# Principal AI Enablement Engineer at Verisign

- **Company:** Verisign
- **Location:** Reston, VA
- **Posted:** 2026-10-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-29
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/verisign/jobs/8042068003

## Job description

Verisign helps enable the security, stability, and resiliency of the internet. We are a trusted provider of internet infrastructure services for the networked world and deliver unmatched performance in domain name system (DNS) services.

We are a mission focused, values driven company where each individual can contribute to building a stronger, more secure internet.  We offer a dynamic and flexible work environment with competitive benefits and the ability to grow your career.

We are building a new engineering team responsible for establishing and operating the company's on-premises Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Model (LLM) platform. The Principal Engineer will serve as the senior technical authority for the platform and will help define how AI capabilities are safely, reliably, and effectively implemented throughout the company.

This is a hands-on technical leadership position. The successful candidate will combine strong systems and infrastructure engineering skills with practical knowledge of modern LLMs, inference platforms, developer tooling, and AI-assisted workflows in an enterprise environment.

The Principal Engineer will have substantial influence over architecture, technology selection, engineering standards, operational practices, and the long-term technical direction of the platform. This must be accomplished while continuing the Protect / Grow / Manage framework that guides the company.

Key Responsibilities:

- Serve as the principal technical authority for the company's on-premises AI and LLM architecture
- Design, implement, operate, and evolve production LLM inference platforms
- Evaluate and recommend models, inference engines, developer tools, agent frameworks and supporting technologies
- Develop repeatable evaluation methodologies for determining model quality, performance, reliability and suitability for company workloads
- Work with Information Security teams to design secure mechanisms for applying LLMs to proprietary source code, internal data, documentation, and analytical workloads
- Develop and work with engineering teams to create the most appropriate AI-assisted software engineering capabilities. This includes coding agents, tool use, repository integration, retrieval systems, and related developer workflows
- Enhance existing engineering practices and update them to perform, model deployment, upgrades, rollback, observability, capacity planning and incident response
- Work closely with security and infrastructure teams to establish appropriate controls for sensitive corporate information
- Evaluate emerging AI technologies and distinguish technologies suitable for production use from experimental or immature approaches
- Prototype new capabilities and convert successful experiments into reliable production services
- Mentor other engineers on the AI platform team and provide technical leadership across organizational boundaries
- Work directly with internal users to identify high-value applications for AI, including software development, data analysis, automation, and knowledge retrieval

Required Qualifications:

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Telecommunications, or related field or equivalent experience
- 15+ years computer engineering experience
- Extensive experience designing, operating or troubleshooting complex production systems
- Strong Linux systems engineering experience
- Strong understanding of distributed systems, networking, storage, containers, and modern infrastructure platforms
- Experience with modern software development practices, source control, CI/CD, automation, and infrastructure-as-code
- Strong programming or scripting ability in languages such as Python, Go, C/C++ or equivalent
- Practical experience deploying LLMs
- Understanding of LLM inference concepts including context windows, tokenization, quantization, batching, concurrency, memory requirements, and accelerator utilization
- Ability to lead major technical initiatives without requiring direct personnel management authority
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Preferred Qualifications:

- Experience in several of the following areas is desirable. Expertise in every area is not expected.
- GPU or accelerator-based computing
- LLM inference engines such as llama.cpp, vLLM, Ollama, TensorRT-LLM or similar technologies
- Kubernetes or other container orchestration platforms
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), embeddings, vector search, and enterprise knowledge retrieval
- Agentic AI systems, tool-calling models, coding agents, or Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- AI-assisted software development environments and workflows
- Model evaluation, benchmarking, and automated evaluation frameworks
- Open-weight LLM deployment and model lifecycle management
- Enterprise authentication, authorization, secrets management, and audit systems
- Working in environments with strict security, privacy, reliability or regulatory requirements

Security and Responsible AI Expectations

Security and governance are central to this role. The AI Enablement Engineer will be expected to help technical teams adopt AI capabilities in a manner that protects company data, aligns with approved use policies, and supports responsible AI practices.

This includes understanding how AI tools interact with sensitive information, how access to AI capabilities should be controlled, and how technical users can safely incorporate AI into engineering workflows. The role requires a strong security mindset and the ability to work closely with governance, security, and platform stakeholders.

This position is based in our Reston, VA office and offers a hybrid work schedule.

The pay range is $180,700 - $244,500.

The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is noted above, however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience. Verisign offers a discretionary bonus which is based on individual and company performance, and certain roles may be eligible for discretionary stock awards. Verisign is an equal opportunity employer. That means we recruit, hire, compensate, train, promote, transfer, and administer all terms and conditions of employment without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, protected veteran status, disability, or other protected categories under applicable law.

Additional Information: [Our Careers Page](https://www.verisign.com/en_US/company-information/verisign-careers/index.xhtml?dmn=verisign.careers) [Our Benefits Summary](https://www.verisign.com/careers/benefits/) [Verisign in the Community](https://www.verisign.com/about-us/verisign-cares/) [Our EEO Statement](https://www.verisign.com/assets/Equal-Employment-Opportunity.pdf) [Our Privacy Notice for Job Applicants/Candidates](https://www.verisign.com/legal-center/privacy/privacy-job-applicants/) [Reasonable Accommodations](https://www.verisign.com/en_US/company-information/verisign-careers/index.xhtml?loc=en_US#:~:text=Reasonable%20Accommodations%20for%20Those%20With%20Disabilities)

Staffing agency policy: No fees will be paid for unsolicited resumes submitted to Verisign or our employees by third parties.

## About Verisign

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Internet infrastructure, domain name registry services, DNS security and stability
- Target customers: ICANN-accredited registrars (B2B), the global internet community (indirectly B2C through domain registrations)
- Mission or purpose statement: "Verisign enables the world to connect online with reliability and confidence – anytime, anywhere."

## Products & Services
- **.com and .net Registry Services**: Authoritative resolution and registration for the two largest top-level domains, supporting the majority of global e-commerce.
- **Root Zone Maintainer**: Operates two of the 13 global internet root servers and provides root zone maintainer services for the DNS.
- **DNS Security & Stability**: Proprietary infrastructure and tools to protect the Domain Name System from cyber threats, with uninterrupted resolution since 1997.
- **Data & Insights**: Publishes data about .com and .net zone trends and contributes to internet standards development.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Public company (NYSE: VRSN) – current market cap not disclosed in provided sources.
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue – not publicly available in provided sources. (Public financials can be found in SEC filings.)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: U.S. Department of Commerce (Cooperative Agreement for .com), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), approximately 3,000 ICANN-accredited registrars worldwide.
- **Growth Signals**: Manages relationships with ~3,000 registrars who typically submit over 100 million domain name transactions daily; operates two of the 13 global root servers; continues to invest in DNS infrastructure to meet growing global internet engagement.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Uninterrupted service**: Provided resolution for .com and .net without interruption since 1997.
- **Proprietary infrastructure**: Custom-built DNS registration infrastructure and toolset designed for high dependability in an evolving cyber threat environment.
- **Content neutrality obligation**: Under the Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, .com registry must remain content neutral – a unique obligation that ensures equal access.
- **Root zone stewardship**: As root zone maintainer and operator of two root servers, Verisign holds a critical, irreplaceable role in the global DNS.
- **Scale and trust**: Billions of people and a significant portion of the world’s economy rely on the infrastructure Verisign helps manage.

## Strategic Focus
- **Infrastructure investment**: Committed to investing in DNS infrastructure to meet ever-growing demand as global internet engagement continues to rise.
- **Security leadership**: Working with government regulators, ICANN, industry groups, and law enforcement to combat DNS-related security threats and illegal activity.
- **Community collaboration**: Actively contributes to policy development and internet standards, sharing expertise through publicly available data on .com and .net zones.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven culture**: Employees help keep the internet secure, stable, and resilient – with impact felt globally.
- **Diversity and inclusion**: Equal opportunity employer with active employee communities (APIC, BELIEVE, BienVenidos, Women in Technology, Young Professionals Group).
- **Comprehensive benefits**: Medical, dental, vision, 401(k) with match, employee stock purchase plan, tuition reimbursement, parental bonding leave, volunteer hours, and more.
- **Work environment**: Emphasis on work-life balance; onsite fitness center in Reston; telemedicine and family building support.
- **Veteran-friendly**: Mission-focused and veteran-driven culture; many veterans thrive in the company’s purpose-oriented environment.
- **Remote/hybrid policy**: Not explicitly stated in provided sources; likely office-based with flexibility (Reston HQ and international locations).

## Sources
1. [verisign.com - About Us](https://www.verisign.com/about-us/)
2. [verisign.com - Careers Overview](https://www.verisign.com/careers/)
3. [verisign.com - Our Culture](https://www.verisign.com/careers/our-culture/)
4. [verisign.com - Jobs](https://www.verisign.com/careers/jobs/)
5. [verisign.com - Employee Benefits](https://www.verisign.com/careers/benefits/)
6. [job-boards.greenhouse.io - Verisign Careers](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/verisign)

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