Chief AI Agent Architect

EY; McLean (VA); Hybrid; USD 126,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and dental coverage

401(k) plan

Paid time off

Flexible vacation policy

Job summary

EY is seeking a seasoned software/AI engineer to join Challenger, EY’s program for next-gen services. You will design and operate long-running AI agents across complex workflows, ensuring deterministic execution, safe autonomy, and robust production readiness. Travel up to 50% and hybrid office participation are expected.

Your work will span enterprise integrations, real-world failures, and scalable tools, combining product judgment with strong software engineering to deliver valuable outcomes.

Qualifications

• Production engineering: strong software engineering and distributed-systems judgment.
• Agent architecture: plan, tools, state, handoffs coordination.
• AI application depth: model APIs, structured outputs, context, memory, tool use.
• Evaluation discipline: measure trajectories and verified outcomes.
• Security and operability: least privilege, observability, resilience, recovery.
• Product judgment: balance quality, latency, cost, user control.

Responsibilities

• Choose the right execution model for deterministic vs autonomous workflows.
• Build dependable tools with clear contracts and safe failures.
• Engineer agent behavior: planning, routing, delegation, retries, handoffs.
• Create durable context combining instructions, state and memory.
• Bound agent authority with scoped identities and budgets.
• Evaluate complete trajectories with tests and verifiable outcomes.
• Operate long-running execution with durable state and safe retries.
• Make behavior observable via end-to-end traces and replay.
• Protect user control with clear intervention points.
• Build shared capability by collaborating across teams and publishing reusable patterns.

Skills

Production engineering

Agent architecture

AI application depth

Evaluation discipline

Security and operability

Product judgment

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Job description

EY is seeking a seasoned software/AI engineer to join Challenger, EY’s program for next-gen services. You will design and operate long-running AI agents across complex workflows, ensuring deterministic execution, safe autonomy, and robust production readiness. Travel up to 50% and hybrid office participation are expected.

Your work will span enterprise integrations, real-world failures, and scalable tools, combining product judgment with strong software engineering to deliver valuable outcomes.