Lead AI Agent Engineer & Architecture Leader

EY; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

EY is seeking a world‑class engineer for its Challenger program to build AI agents that operate across complex workflows. You will design deterministic execution models, durable tooling, and safe autonomy while ensuring user control and auditability in production systems.

The role sits within Challenger Core, a fast‑moving EY initiative that develops reusable agent patterns and handles enterprise integration, risk governance, and operational guardrails.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in a relevant field.
• 7–9 years of experience in software or applied machine‑learning engineering with ownership of production systems.
• Hands‑on evidence of shipping large‑language‑model applications, agents, or complex model‑driven workflows used for real work.
• Strong capability in Python, TypeScript, or production services languages.
• Applied AI patterns: model APIs, structured outputs, retrieval, tool use, and evaluation of variable behavior.
• Distributed execution: asynchronous work, state, concurrency, idempotency, retries, and failure recovery.
• Identity and controls: access boundaries and scoped authority for applications.
• Travel and on‑site requirements: up to 50% travel and hybrid office.

Responsibilities

• Choose the right execution model for deterministic steps.
• Build dependable tools with clear contracts, validated outcomes, narrow authorization, and recoverable errors.
• Engineer agent behavior across planning, routing, delegation, stopping, retry, and handoff.
• Create durable context with instructions, user state, retrieval, memory, and environment feedback.
• Bound agent authority with scoped identities, credentials, budgets, and emergency containment.
• Evaluate complete trajectories with tests measuring verified task success, tool use, recovery, human takeover, and prohibited actions.
• Operate long‑running execution with durable state, checkpointing, safe retries, versioned releases, rollback, and graceful degradation.
• Make behavior observable with end‑to‑end traces and replay for failure diagnosis and improvements.
• Protect user control with clear intervention points to inspect, interrupt, redirect, and resume work.
• Build shared capability by partnering across product, platform, knowledge, security, and evaluation teams.

Skills

Production engineering

Agent architecture

AI application depth

Evaluation discipline

Security and operability

Product judgment

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in a relevant field

Tools

Python

TypeScript

Model APIs

Job description

EY is seeking a world‑class engineer for its Challenger program to build AI agents that operate across complex workflows. You will design deterministic execution models, durable tooling, and safe autonomy while ensuring user control and auditability in production systems.

The role sits within Challenger Core, a fast‑moving EY initiative that develops reusable agent patterns and handles enterprise integration, risk governance, and operational guardrails.