Job Specifications
Bentley Systems
Lead/Principal Transformation Developer (AI Code Modernization Platform)
Location: Québec, Canada (Hybrid)
Position Summary
Bentley Systems is forming a new, dedicated AI Systems Modernization team to lead the company’s efforts in applying advanced AI techniques—such as multi‑stage, agentic workflows—to automatically modernize academic and legacy codebases into cloud‑native services and applications. This global team will work at the intersection of AI research and real‑world software engineering, collaborating closely with product teams to support, guide, and enable AI adoption across Bentley.
Because this team is launching this year, the Lead / Principal Engineer will have significant influence over its direction, technical standards, and operating model. As a new and strategically important domain for Bentley, the team will play a leadership role in defining best practices, evangelizing AI‑driven modernization approaches, and operationalizing them across the organization.
This role is well-suited for engineers who enjoy bleeding‑edge technology, deep technical discussions, and exposure to a wide variety of technology stacks. Bentley’s portfolio spans hundreds of products—including desktop, mobile, traditional server‑based systems, and cloud microservices—offering exceptional breadth and the opportunity to work with a diverse, global team of experts.
Why This Role Matters
Foundational impact – This team is starting this year. You will help define its mission, methods, and standards.
Real‑world AI – Apply AI to large, production systems with strict requirements—not experiments or demos.
Technical breadth – Work across legacy languages, modern stacks, and cloud architectures.
Leadership with depth – Influence strategy while remaining hands‑on with architecture and prototyping.
What You’ll Work On
AI Platform & Architecture
Define the technical vision and roadmap for Bentley’s AI code modernization platform
Design multi‑stage, agentic AI workflows for automated code analysis, transformation, and uplift
Build and evolve LLM pipelines, including orchestration, evaluation, monitoring, and iteration
Quality & Validation
Create rigorous testing and validation strategies to ensure correctness, performance, and numerical precision
Establish quality gates and acceptance criteria for production use
Evaluate behavior across languages and runtimes to ensure fidelity of converted systems
Technical Leadership & Enablement
Lead architectural decisions and help teams converge quickly on effective solutions
Balance tradeoffs between speed, cost, quality, and risk
Help hire, mentor, and guide a small team of technical experts
Enable adoption across Bentley through best practices, tooling, and education
What Success Looks Like
Within your first 6–12 months, you will:
Deliver a scalable, repeatable AI‑based modernization platform used by multiple teams
Successfully modernize representative legacy systems into cloud‑native architectures
Define company‑wide standards for AI‑assisted code conversion
Clearly establish where AI automation works—and where human expertise is essential
Required Experience
What We’re Looking For
Principal‑level experience leading complex technical initiatives
Strong problem‑solving skills and experience working with large or legacy codebases
Hands‑on experience with AI‑assisted development or LLM pipelines
Proficiency with cloud platforms and modern service architectures
Working knowledge of legacy languages (e.g., C, Fortran) and modern languages (e.g., Rust, .NET, C++)
Understanding of legacy and modern code patterns and how they translate across paradigms
Familiarity with numerical precision considerations across runtimes
Experience with code profiling, performance analysis, and optimization, particularly in performance‑sensitive or numerically intensive systems
Understanding of High‑Performance Computing (HPC) and parallel execution concepts relevant to modernizing scientific or engineering workloads
Familiarity with GPU or accelerator‑based computing and how execution and memory models impact modernization feasibility and validation
Working knowledge of CUDA or similar GPU programming models, sufficient to assess transformation impact on correctness, precision, and performance
Strong communication skills and ability to influence across teams
Nice to Have
Scientific or engineering software experience (e.g., Finite Element Analysis)
Compiler theory, AST‑level code analysis, or developer tooling
Experience with Azure and/or GCP
Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Istio)
Application and cloud security practices
Equivalence verification or validation techniques
Note: Please attach your most recent CV. Due to the nature of the role, the CV must be written in English.
What We Offer
A great Team and culture – please see our colleague video.
An exciting career as an integral part of a world-leading software company providing solutions for archit
About the Company
Bentley Systems (Nasdaq: BSY) is the infrastructure engineering software company. We provide innovative software to advance the world’s infrastructure – sustaining both the global economy and environment. Our industry-leading software solutions are used by professionals, and organizations of every size, for the design, construction, and operations of roads and bridges, rail and transit, water and wastewater, public works and utilities, buildings and campuses, mining, and industrial facilities. Our offerings, powered by the i...
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