Lead Software Engineer- Gen AI, NLP, ML

Gartner; Chennai; On-site; INR 1,000,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Gartner is seeking a Lead Software Engineer – Generative and Agentic AI in Chennai to design and develop AI applications that support our Consulting & Insights Technology strategy. You will work with LLMs, NLP, deep learning, retrieval, and agentic AI to build practical, scalable AI solutions.

You will lead architectures for planning, tool use, memory, and execution control, while mentoring teammates and aligning AI research with business goals.

Qualifications

• 6–8 years of professional experience in applied AI/ML, data science, ML, or related field.
• Hands-on experience developing and evaluating AI solutions using NLP, deep learning, LLMs, retrieval, and agentic AI.
• Experience with transformer architectures, embeddings, information retrieval, and QA.
• Experience building generative AI and agentic AI solutions using LangChain/LangGraph/RAG and prompt engineering.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop AI algorithms and applications focusing on generative and agentic AI.
• Architect agent systems including planning, tool use, memory, and multi-step reasoning.
• Transform unstructured data into structured formats for modeling and analysis.
• Build evaluation frameworks to assess accuracy, relevance, groundedness, safety, latency and cost.
• Optimize model performance via prompt engineering, retrieval optimization, and embedding techniques.
• Design AI guardrails and responsible AI practices with cross-team collaboration.
• Translate business needs into AI experiments and measurable outcomes.
• Stay current with emerging AI architectures and frameworks.

Skills

LLMs

NLP

Deep Learning

Agentic AI

Retrieval

Evaluation

Prompt Engineering

Guardrails

Communication

Team Leadership

Education

Engineering/CS degree

Bachelor's or Master's

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

RAG

OpenAI

Job description

About this role

Lead Software Engineer – Generative and Agentic AI will design and develop algorithms and AI applications that support our Consulting & Insights Technology strategy, with a focus on generative AI and agentic AI.

What You’ll Do

• Design and develop algorithms and AI solutions using LLMs, NLP, deep learning, generative AI, information retrieval, and feedback-based techniques for agentic AI, knowledge retrieval, summarization, RAG, and related applications.
• Design agent architectures, including planning, tool use, memory, orchestration, multi-step reasoning, feedback loops, and execution control.
• Develop data-processing and representation techniques that transform unstructured text and other data into structured formats for modeling, retrieval, and analysis.
• Build evaluation frameworks and benchmarks to assess LLM and agent performance across accuracy, relevance, groundedness, helpfulness, safety, latency, and cost.
• Optimize model performance through prompt engineering, retrieval optimization, reranking, embedding techniques, model selection, and fine-tuning.
• Design AI-focused guardrails and mitigation approaches, including input and output validation, hallucination mitigation, policy adherence, responsible AI practices, and human-in-the-loop review, in collaboration with security and platform teams.
• Apply NLP, machine learning, statistical analysis, and information retrieval techniques to identify patterns, relationships, and insights in complex data.
• Translate business requirements into applied AI approaches, algorithm designs, experiments, and measurable outcomes.
• Stay current with emerging LLM architectures, foundation models, agent frameworks, retrieval techniques, and AI research.
• Lead technical discussions and mentor team members on algorithms, modeling approaches, experimentation, and AI best practices.

What You’ll Need

6–8 years of professional experience in applied AI/ML, data science, machine learning, algorithms, statistics, or a related technical field, including hands‑on experience developing and evaluating AI solutions using NLP, deep learning, LLMs, retrieval, and agentic AI.

Must Have

• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in Engineering, Data Science, Computer Science, or a related field is required.
• Hands‑on experience developing and evaluating machine learning and NLP solutions, including transformer architectures, deep learning, embeddings, information retrieval, classification, ranking, summarization, question answering, and agent decision‑making.
• Experience working with LLMs and foundation models, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Llama, or equivalent technologies.
• Experience building generative AI and agentic AI solutions using technologies such as LangChain, LangGraph, RAG, prompt engineering, MCP, or equivalent frameworks.
• Experience evaluating LLM and agent performance across accuracy, relevance, groundedness, helpfulness, safety, latency, and cost.
• Experience designing AI‑focused guardrails and applying responsible AI practices, including hallucination mitigation, output validation, policy adherence, and human oversight.
• Demonstrated ability to identify emerging AI technologies and apply them to meaningful business use cases.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

Who You Are

• You are passionate about applying AI and machine learning to solve complex business problems.
• You combine strong technical depth in algorithms, NLP, LLMs, retrieval, and agentic AI with practical business judgment.
• You can explain complex AI concepts clearly to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• You take ownership of your work and collaborate effectively with product, data science, engineering, cloud, security, and platform teams.
• You are comfortable working through ambiguity and delivering solutions through short, iterative Agile development cycles.
• You are curious about emerging AI technologies and motivated to evaluate their practical business applications.

Who are we?

At Gartner, Inc. (NYSE:IT), we guide the leaders who shape the world.

Our mission relies on expert analysis and bold ideas to deliver actionable, objective business and technology insights, helping enterprise leaders and their teams succeed with their mission‑critical priorities.

Since our founding in 1979, we’ve grown to 20,000 associates globally who support over 13,000 client enterprises in ~90 countries and territories. We do important, interesting and substantive work that matters. That’s why we hire associates with the intellectual curiosity, energy and drive to want to make a difference. The bar is unapologetically high. So is the impact you can have here.

What makes Gartner a great place to work?

Our vast, virtually untapped market potential offers limitless opportunities – opportunities that may not even exist right now – for you to grow professionally and flourish personally. How far you go is driven by your passion and performance.

We hire remarkable people who collaborate and win as a team. Together, our singular, unifying goal is to deliver results for our clients.

Our teams are inclusive and composed of individuals from different geographies, cultures, religions, ethnicities, races, genders, sexual orientations, abilities and generations.

We invest in great leaders who bring out the best in you and the company, enabling us to multiply our impact and results. This is why, year after year, we are recognized worldwide as a great place to work.

Gartner is the world authority on AI

At Gartner, you’ll join a company at the very center of the AI revolution. Gartner has proactive, objective guidance throughout clients’ AI journeys. We set the standard for how organizations leverage artificial intelligence to drive meaningful impact. You’ll have access to unmatched resources, expertise, and technology, and play a key role in helping Gartner and our clients innovate and grow as we leverage AI to transform business and technology landscapes.

It’s an exciting time to be at Gartner, with limitless opportunities to make a real impact, grow your skills, and build a lasting, meaningful career in a field that’s reshaping the way we operate. If you’re passionate about AI and want to be part of a team that’s guiding the leaders who shape the world, Gartner is the place for you.

What do we offer?

Gartner offers world‑class benefits, highly competitive compensation and disproportionate rewards for top performers.

In our hybrid work environment, we provide the flexibility and support for you to thrive — working virtually when it's productive to do so and getting together with colleagues in a vibrant community that is purposeful, engaging and inspiring.

The policy of Gartner

The policy of Gartner is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, citizenship status, age, national origin, ancestry, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status and to seek to advance the principles of equal employment opportunity.

Gartner is committed to being an Equal Opportunity Employer

Gartner is committed to being an Equal Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers, including job seekers with disabilities. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran, you may request a reasonable accommodation if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access the Company’s career webpage as a result of your disability. You may request reasonable accommodations by calling Human Resources at [phone] or by sending an email to [e-mail].