Senior AI/ML Engineer

Zoho; Chennai District; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 3,600,000; Full time

Job summary

Staples India Business Innovation Hub Private Limited seeks a Senior AI/ML Engineer to architect and scale autonomous agentic AI systems across enterprise contexts. You will lead design, tooling, and best practices while mentoring junior engineers and aligning with product and security teams.

You will own end-to-end pipelines for agent orchestration, tool management, RAG, and prompt engineering, delivering robust, scalable AI solutions with a focus on reliability and cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• 5-7 years of professional software or ML experience, with 2+ years in agentic AI
• Proven production agentic AI systems with measurable business impact
• Expert-level Python and software engineering practices
• Deep experience with multiple LLM providers and APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, OSS)
• Advanced prompt engineering, prompt chaining, chain-of-thought reasoning, and few-shot learning
• Hands-on with agentic frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI, Autogen, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent)
• Strong knowledge of tool use, function calling, and dynamic agent capability management
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) using vector databases
• Knowledge of model fine-tuning and domain adaptation
• Proficiency with asynchronous programming and high-concurrency systems
• Experience with API design for complex distributed systems
• Strong software testing and evaluation frameworks for AI systems

Responsibilities

• Architect end-to-end agentic AI systems including design, orchestration, and enterprise integration
• Design hierarchical agents, multi-agent collaboration, and dynamic tool management
• Lead development of reasoning architectures with planning, reflection, and self-correction
• Establish evaluation benchmarks and cost optimization for agentic systems
• Build scalable prompt pipelines and fine-tune LLMs for domains
• Design and implement RAG with advanced retrieval and semantic search
• Develop production-grade observability and error handling for AI systems
• Mentor junior engineers on agentic patterns and system design
• Lead technical reviews and architectural decisions for AI/ML initiatives
• Collaborate with product/infrastructure/security for responsible AI deployment
• Drive innovation in agentic AI and evaluate new frameworks/models
• Optimize performance, latency, and costs across workflows
• Establish CI/CD and testing practices for AI/ML systems

Skills

Python

LLM APIs

Prompt engineering

LangChain

Agent frameworks

RAG systems

Retrieval

MLOps

System design

Performance optimization

CI/CD for AI

Mentoring

Asynchronous programming

Tools

LangChain

CrewAI

Autogen

Semantic Kernel

Job description

Staples India Business Innovation Hub Private Limited | Permanent

We're seeking a Senior AI/ML Engineer with deep expertise in architecting and scaling agentic AI systems. You'll lead the design and implementation of sophisticated autonomous agents, establish best practices for AI system development, and mentor junior engineers. This role bridges advanced machine learning concepts with production engineering, creating robust, scalable agentic solutions for complex business problems.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect end-to-end agentic AI systems including agent design, orchestration, and integration with enterprise systems
  
• Design advanced agent patterns including hierarchical agents, multi-agent collaboration, and dynamic tool management
  
• Lead the development of sophisticated reasoning architectures with planning, reflection, and self-correction mechanisms
  
• Establish and implement evaluation frameworks, bench-marking methodologies, and cost optimization strategies for agentic systems
  
• Build scalable prompt engineering pipelines and fine-tune LLMs for specific use cases and domains
  
• Design and implement RAG systems with advanced retrieval strategies, knowledge management, and semantic search
  
• Develop production-grade monitoring, observability, and error handling for AI systems at scale
  
• Mentor junior engineers on agentic AI patterns, best practices, and system design principles
  
• Lead technical design reviews and architectural decisions for AI/ML initiatives
  
• Collaborate with product, infrastructure, and security teams to ensure responsible AI deployment
  
• Drive innovation in agentic AI approaches and evaluate emerging frameworks and models
  
• Optimize system performance, latency, and costs across production agentic workflows
  
• Establish CI/CD and testing practices specific to AI/ML systems
  

Requirements

Required Skills:

• 5-7 years of professional software development or machine learning experience, with 2+ years focused on agentic AI
  
• Proven track record building production agentic AI systems with measurable business impact
  
• Expert-level proficiency in Python and software engineering best practices (design patterns, testing, documentation)
  
• Deep experience with multiple LLM providers and APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Azure OpenAI, open-source models)
  
• Advanced knowledge of prompt engineering, prompt chaining, chain-of-thought reasoning, and few-shot learning
  
• Hands-on expertise with agentic frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI, Autogen, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent)
  
• Strong understanding of tool use, function calling, and dynamic agent capability management
  
• Experience architecting retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems with vector databases and semantic search
  
• Knowledge of model fine-tuning, domain adaptation, and custom model training
  
• Proficiency with asynchronous programming and handling high-concurrency systems
  
• Experience with API design and integration patterns for complex distributed systems
  
• Strong background in software testing, including evaluation frameworks for AI systems
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience deploying and managing agentic systems in production at scale
  
• Cloud platform expertise (Azure, AWS, GCP) for AI/ML services and infrastructure
  
• Background building observability, monitoring, and debugging tools for ML systems
  
• Experience with multi-agent systems, agent communication protocols, and collaborative agent patterns
  
• Knowledge of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) or similar alignment techniques
  
• Familiarity with knowledge graphs, semantic databases, and advanced retrieval strategies
  
• Experience optimizing token usage and managing costs for LLM-based applications
  
• Background in enterprise software or complex system integration
  
• Experience with MLOps, model versioning, and continuous integration for AI systems
  
• Leadership or mentoring experience with junior engineers
  

Nice to Have

• Published research, papers, or significant open-source contributions in AI/ML
  
• Experience with agent-as-a-service architectures or API platforms
  
• Background in building customer-facing AI products
  
• Knowledge of adversarial testing and robustness evaluation for AI systems
  
• Experience with specialized domains (financial services, healthcare, legal, etc.)
  
• Understanding of AI safety, alignment, and ethical considerations in agent design
  
• Experience building domain-specific large language models or specialized agent systems