Principal Engineer - RAG Database & Embeddings Architect

Bank of America Bank of America · Banking · Charlotte, NC

This Principal Engineer role focuses on designing, building, and governing the enterprise RAG database and embeddings architecture for Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems. Responsibilities include defining embedding strategies, selecting embedding models, designing vectorization workflows, implementing retrieval patterns, optimizing retrieval quality, and establishing standards for vector data stores. The role also involves partnering with data and context engineers, defining observability for retrieval quality, and leading technical evaluations of platforms.

What you'd actually do

  1. Design and own the architecture for enterprise RAG data stores, including vector databases, document stores, metadata stores, and hybrid search layers.
  2. Define embedding strategies across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured content.
  3. Evaluate and select embedding models based on accuracy, latency, cost, domain fit, multilingual needs, and operational constraints.
  4. Design vectorization workflows including chunking, embedding generation, indexing, versioning, and re-embedding lifecycle management.
  5. Implement semantic, keyword, metadata-filtered, and hybrid retrieval patterns.

Skills

Required

  • RAG architecture
  • Embeddings
  • Vector databases
  • Semantic search
  • Indexing
  • Metadata modeling
  • Hybrid retrieval
  • Relevance tuning
  • Performance optimization
  • LLM consumption
  • Retrieval quality observability
  • Vector database platforms
  • Retrieval frameworks

Nice to have

  • Data pipeline engineering
  • Context engineering

What the JD emphasized

  • enterprise RAG data stores
  • vector databases
  • embedding strategies
  • embedding models
  • vectorization workflows
  • retrieval patterns
  • retrieval quality
  • vector schema design
  • vector database platforms
  • retrieval frameworks

Other signals

  • RAG
  • embeddings
  • vector database
  • retrieval
  • LLM