Principal Engineer - AI

BuddiesHR; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Circana in Bangalore is seeking an experienced Agentic Architect to design and deliver scalable AI systems for production. You will lead a pod of engineers, set patterns, and ensure reliable, measurable outcomes from discovery through deployment.

You will work with LangGraph, Google ADK, and Microsoft Agent Framework, shaping prompts, tool contracts, and evals while collaborating with product owners, security, and executives to drive value for clients.

Qualifications

• A proven track record designing and shipping agentic systems to production.
• Deep fluency with agent orchestration frameworks and practical know-how.
• Experience across multiple model families and at least one major cloud AI stack.
• Mastery of context management, prompt design, plan generation, and tool design.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of agentic systems for a solution family.
• Translate domain knowledge into intents, contracts, and evaluations.
• Own harness engineering and guardrails, tracing, and reliability.
• Establish evaluation infra with golden traces and regression suites.
• Set reusable patterns to accelerate future builds.
• Anchor a pod of engineers and guide technical direction.
• Communicate progress and risks to product owners and executives.

Skills

Agentic systems design

Production-grade coding

Prompt design

Tool design

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication with executives

Architectural leadership

Tools

LangGraph

Google ADK

Microsoft Agent Framework

Job description

Job Category: AI, Analytics & Data Science

Circana is a leading provider of technology, AI, and data solutions for consumer packaged goods companies, manufacturers, and retailers. Our predictive analytics and Liquid Data® platform help clients measure market share, uncover consumer behavior, and drive growth—powered by six decades of expertise and an expansive, high-quality data set.

At Circana, we are fueled by our passion for continuous learning and growth, we seek and share feedback freely, and we celebrate victories both big and small in an environment that is flexible and accommodating to our work and personal lives. We’re a global company dedicated to fostering inclusivity and belonging. We value and celebrate the unique experiences, cultures, and viewpoints that each individual brings. By embracing a wide range of backgrounds, skills, expertise, and beyond, we create a stronger, more innovative environment for our employees, clients, and communities. With us, you can always bring your full self to work. Join our inclusive, committed team to be a challenger, own outcomes, and stay curious together. Circana is proud to be Certified™ by Great Place To Work®. This prestigious award is based entirely on what current employees say about their experience working at Circana. Learn more at www.circana.com.

Role Overview

Circana is building an agentic ecosystem on the industry's richest view of consumer behavior: intelligent systems that reason, plan, and act across the data the world's largest brands and retailers run on. AI\Agentic Architects lead that work solution by solution. Embedded with the experts who hold the domain knowledge, they design the agents, set the patterns, and own the outcome from first conversation to production use. Each architect anchors a pod of engineers and carries the technical direction for a solution family for the length of a build.

Job Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of agentic systems for a solution family, from domain discovery through production use.
• Translate domain expertise into intent ontologies, tool contracts, and evaluation sets, working directly with subject matter experts.
• Own harness engineering: context management, tool contracts and MCP servers, guardrails, retries and graceful degradation, tracing and replay.
• Establish evaluation as infrastructure: golden traces, regression suites, routing tests, offline and online measurement.
• Set reusable patterns (shared services, tools, and conventions) that make every subsequent build faster than the last.
• Anchor a pod of engineers: set technical direction, review the work, and raise the bar.
• Represent the work credibly to product owners, architects, security, executives, and client stakeholders.

Requirements

• A strong track record of designing and shipping agentic systems into production for real users.
• Deep production fluency with agent orchestration frameworks: LangGraph, Google ADK, or Microsoft Agent Framework.
• Production experience across multiple model families, with clear judgment on when to reach for which.
• Production experience on at least one major cloud AI stack.
• Mastery of the practical craft: context management, prompt design, plan generation, structured outputs, and tool design.
• Daily fluency with agentic coding tools; Claude Code preferred.
• Command of the agentic development lifecycle: specs as source of truth, evals as continuous integration, prompt and tool versioning, and trace-driven debugging.
• Communication that lands at every altitude: engineers, domain experts, and senior executives alike.

Preferred

• Consumer goods, retail, or large-scale measurement data background.
• Prior forward deployed or field engineering experience at an AI or data company.
• Public artifacts: talks, open source, technical writing.
• Orchestration: LangGraph, Google ADK, Microsoft Agent Framework
• Protocols: MCP, A2A, AG-UI, A2UI
• Delivery: evaluation harnesses as CI, tracing and observability tooling

Beyond technical skills, experience, and role-specific attributes, these shared behaviors are fundamental to our culture and success. We seek individuals who consistently demonstrate and champion these behaviors in their daily work:

• Stay Curious: Being hungry to learn and grow, always asking the big questions.
• Seek Clarity: Embracing complexity to create clarity and inspire action.
• Own the Outcome: Being accountable for decisions and taking ownership of our choices.
• Center on the Client: Relentlessly adding value for our customers.
• Be a Challenger: Never complacent, always striving for continuous improvement.
• Champion Inclusivity: Fostering trust in relationships engaging with empathy, respect, and integrity.
• Commit to each other: Contributing to making Circana a great place to work for everyone.

Location

Bangalore

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