AI Engineer III

American Express; Alaska; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

American Express is seeking an AI Engineer III – Agentic AI to build production agentic AI systems handling real financial data. You will collaborate with product managers and designers to craft AI-powered features, learning to operate within a regulated, customer-facing environment and contributing to scalable AI solutions.

This hands-on role emphasizes writing production code, system design discussions, and operating what you build post-launch under mentorship to grow technical depth in LLMs

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience building or contributing to AI-powered features, LLM-based applications, or applied ML systems.
• Solid fundamentals in at least one backend language (Python, Go, or TypeScript).
• Familiarity with APIs, cloud concepts, and modern development practices.
• Interest in agentic AI systems, autonomy, and AI-assisted development workflows.
• Willingness to learn, take feedback, and grow technical ownership over time.
• Comfort working in cross-functional teams.
• Strong customer mindset and curiosity about real-world problem solving.
• Bachelor’s degree is required.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the design and implementation of LLM-powered and agentic product features.
• Build and extend agentic AI workflows that reason over context, call tools, and perform actions under guidance from senior engineers.
• Help implement and maintain retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines over financial data, focusing on correctness and safety.
• Contribute to shared AI infrastructure such as LLM services, orchestration components, and evaluation or monitoring tooling.
• Participate in operating AI systems in production, including monitoring, debugging, and improving reliability and performance.
• Collaborate with product and design partners to translate customer needs into technical solutions.

Skills

Python

Go

TypeScript

APIs

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

REST & gRPC

Kafka

Job description

Joining Amex Tech means discovering and shaping your contribution to something big. Here, you can work alongside talented tech teams and build a unique career with the Powerful Backing of American Express. With a range of opportunities to work with the latest technologies, and a commitment to back the broader engineering community through open source, our mission is to power your success. Because Amex Tech is powered by our technology, our culture, and our colleagues.

The Technology organization enables and accelerates the company’s growth strategies, delivering global capabilities and services in support of Amex’s customers and colleagues, while maintaining 24/7 servicing and availability to ensure an uninterrupted, high-quality customer experience. Technology provides the foundation for everything we do in the company while driving differentiation through building and leveraging innovative technology and data insights.

At American Express, AI is reshaping the future of commerce and redefining the experiences our commercial customers and card members expect. Within Amex Technology, we are building platforms, products, and governance that enable agentic AI systems to operate responsibly and at scale across the enterprise.

Our focus is on agentic AI development: designing intelligent, adaptive systems that can plan, reason, and act across complex workflows with appropriate levels of autonomy. These systems power autonomous workflows, decision support, and customer-facing experiences-while meeting the high standards for security, explainability, reliability, and compliance required in financial services.

We partner closely with product, design, and business teams to deliver agentic capabilities that reduce operational friction, improve decision-making, and transform how customers interact, transact, and grow.

The Enterprise Data & AI Team

creates the platforms, products, and governance that power enterprise AI. Our team enables rapid experimentation, seamless deployment, and responsible operation of AI systems at scale — delivering trusted, compliant, and high-performance AI solutions that drive meaningful business outcomes, partnering with stakeholders to support use cases from inception to implementation.

At American Express, AI is reshaping the future of commerce and redefining the experiences our commercial customers and card members expect. Within Amex Technology, we are building platforms, products, and governance that enable agentic AI systems to operate responsibly and at scale across the enterprise.

Our focus is on agentic AI development: designing intelligent, adaptive systems that can plan, reason, and act across complex workflows with appropriate levels of autonomy. These systems power autonomous workflows, decision support, and customer-facing experiences-while meeting the high standards for security, explainability, reliability, and compliance required in financial services.

We partner closely with product, design, and business teams to deliver agentic capabilities that reduce operational friction, improve decision-making, and transform how customers interact, transact, and grow.

The Role

As an AI Engineer III – Agentic AI, you will be a hands-on builder contributing to the development of production agentic AI systems that operate on real financial data and serve real customers.
You will work alongside experienced engineers, product managers, and designers to design, build, and ship AI-powered features, while learning how to operate within a regulated, customer-facing environment. This role offers strong mentorship and opportunities to grow your technical depth in LLMs, agentic systems, and production AI engineering.

This is not a research-only role. You will write production code, contribute to system design discussions, and help operate what you build after launch, with support and guidance from more senior engineers.

What You’ll Do

• Contribute to the design and implementation of LLM-powered and agentic product features.
• Build and extend agentic AI workflows that reason over context, call tools, and perform actions under guidance from senior engineers.
• Help implement and maintain retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines over financial data, with an emphasis on correctness and safety.
• Contribute to shared AI infrastructure such as LLM services, orchestration components, and evaluation or monitoring tooling.
• Participate in operating AI systems in production, including monitoring, debugging, and improving reliability and performance.
• Collaborate closely with product and design partners, learning to translate customer needs into technical solutions.

Technical Environment

We don’t hire to a narrow checklist, but candidates should be excited to grow in a modern, enterprise-scale engineering environment with a focus on agentic AI.

Core engineering stack

• Languages: Python, Go, TypeScript
• Cloud and infrastructure: AWS and/or GCP, Kubernetes
• APIs and services: REST, gRPC
• Distributed systems: event-driven architectures, including Kafka

Agentic AI and ML

• Commercial and open-source LLMs integrated into agentic workflows
• Tooling for agent orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, vector storage, and evaluation
• Schema validation and structured data handling

AI-assisted development

• Use of AI-assisted and agentic development tools for design, implementation, testing, debugging, and refactoring
• Learning how to apply these tools responsibly while maintaining production-quality standards
• All systems are built to meet high standards for reliability, security, and auditability, reflecting the responsibility of deploying autonomous AI in a financial services environment.

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Some hands-on experience building or contributing to AI-powered features, LLM-based applications, or applied ML systems (professional or project-based).
• Solid engineering fundamentals in at least one backend language (Python, Go, or TypeScript).
• Familiarity with APIs, basic cloud concepts, and modern development practices.
• Interest in agentic AI systems, autonomy, and AI-assisted development workflows.
• Willingness to learn, take feedback, and grow technical ownership over time.
• Comfort working in collaborative, cross-functional teams.
• A strong customer mindset and curiosity about real-world problem solving.
• Candidates are required to have a bachelor’s degree

Preferred Qualifications

• Exposure to LLM tooling, prompt engineering, RAG, or agent frameworks through work, coursework, or personal projects.
• Internship or early-career experience in fintech or other regulated environments.
• Contributions to open-source projects, hackathons, or side projects related to AI or developer tooling.

Depending on factors such as business unit requirements, the nature of the position, cost and applicable laws, American Express may provide visa sponsorship for certain positions.