Staff AI Engineer

American Express

. Define how agentic AI systems are designed, built, and operated across American Express .

Posted 9/15/2026full-timeNew York City • Arizona • United StatesLead💰 $144,250 - $256,250 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates extensive experience in designing and operating agentic AI systems, with a strong focus on large-scale distributed systems and advanced machine learning infrastructure. Proficient in leading technical design reviews and mentoring teams to enhance the development of complex AI initiatives.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Agentic AI System DesignLarge-Scale Distributed SystemsLLM Systems and WorkflowsPython, Go, and TypeScriptAWS and GCP Experience

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Large-Scale Distributed SystemsAgentic AI StackBackend SystemsAPIsData PipelinesCloud InfrastructureEvent-Driven ArchitecturesREST and gRPCPythonGo

Soft Skills

MentoringTechnical Leadership

Tools & Technologies

KubernetesKafkaLangGraphLangChainAirFlowLlamaIndexSemantic KernelCrewAIPyTorchHugging Face

Certifications & Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree

Industry Keywords

Agentic AIAI-Assisted DevelopmentWorkflow EnginesAsync ProcessingStreaming Systems

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AirflowAWSCloudDistributed SystemsGoogle Cloud PlatformGRPCKafkaKubernetesPythonPyTorchTensorflowTypeScriptGo

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Define how agentic AI systems are designed, built, and operated across American Express
Design core frameworks and write production code
Review critical designs and guide teams through complex technical decisions
Work with Product and UX partners to shape the vision for agentic AI experiences
Drive technical direction for agentic AI initiatives, including architecture patterns, autonomy boundaries, and system design
Design, build, and operate production-grade agentic AI systems used across multiple products
Own and evolve agent frameworks, orchestration layers, planning, tool use, memory strategies, RAG pipelines, LLM infrastructure, inference, model gateways, evaluation, observability, and safety tooling
Lead technical design reviews and navigate tradeoffs involving autonomy, safety, reliability, scalability, and cost
Deliver complex, cross-cutting agentic AI initiatives from concept to production
Evaluate emerging models, techniques, and agentic patterns and translate them into enterprise-ready improvements
Mentor senior engineers and raise the technical bar for agentic AI development

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems
Strong experience with LLM systems, agentic workflows, or advanced ML infrastructure
Proven ownership of complex, cross-cutting agentic systems spanning multiple teams or products
Strong engineering fundamentals across backend systems, APIs, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure
Deep experience across the agentic AI stack, including planning, tool use, memory, and evaluation
Fluency with AI-assisted and agentic development workflows
Experience in workflow engines, async processing, queues, and streaming systems
Experience with Python, Go, and TypeScript
Experience with REST, gRPC, and optionally tRPC
Experience with AWS and/or GCP and Kubernetes
Experience with event-driven architectures, including Kafka
Experience with LangGraph, LangChain, AirFlow, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel, or CrewAI
Experience with PyTorch and the Hugging Face ecosystem; some exposure to TensorFlow
Experience with Pydantic and Zod for schema, validation, and state management
Bachelor's Degree

Benefits

Comp & perks

Bonus
Equity (if applicable)
Benefits
Comprehensive support for holistic well-being
Opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career
Open-source engineering community opportunities