Principal Engineer - Agentic AI Applications

Serko; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 168,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base pay

Medical benefits

Discretionary incentive plan

Focus on development

Flexible work policy

Job summary

Serko is seeking a Principal Engineer to define the autonomous backbone of its agentic AI applications. You will lead architecture, multi-agent orchestration, and reliable systems design, partnering with Product, Research, and Platform teams to deliver scalable AI-powered solutions.

You will mentor senior engineers, drive architectural reviews, and set engineering standards for agentic development while ensuring observability and cost-aware runtimes.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience.
• 4+ years in technical leadership or principal-level roles.
• Proven track record shipping LLM-powered or agentic systems.

Responsibilities

• Architect the Agentic Runtime: end-to-end architecture for agentic systems, multi-agent orchestration, memory management, reasoning pipelines.
• Engineer for Reliability: build robust infra for non-deterministic loops, latency-aware orchestration, target P99 SLAs, observability.
• Set the Standard: define engineering patterns, standards, and best practices across the organization.
• Scale the Team: mentor senior engineers, conduct architecture reviews, guide hiring decisions.
• Bridge the Gap: work with AI Ops to ensure workloads are built, served, and monitored with observability.

Skills

Python

Back-end development

Distributed systems

Leadership

System architecture

Tools

LangGraph

AutoGen

CrewAI

Job description

Serko is a cutting-edge tech platform in global business travel & expense technology. When you join Serko, you become part of a team of passionate travellers and technologists bringing people together, using the world's leading business travel marketplace. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and we embrace the richness of diversity, showing up authentically to create a positive impact. There's an exciting road ahead of us, where travel needs real, impactful change.

With offices in New Zealand, Australia, North America, and China, we are thrilled to be expanding our global footprint, landing our new hub in Bengaluru, India. With a rapid growth plan in place, we're hiring people from different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives to help us build a world-class team and product.

You will define how autonomous AI agents are designed, orchestrated, and deployed at scale, moving beyond simple wrappers to create robust, deterministic systems out of non-deterministic models. You will partner closely with Product, Research, and Platform teams to turn cutting‑edge LLM capabilities into reliable, high-availability products.

This role can be based in either Washington or California State.

Requirements

We aren't just building prototypes; we are building the autonomous backbone of the modern enterprise. As a Principal Engineer, you will lead the technical vision and architecture for our next-generation agentic AI applications.

What You’ll Do

• Architect the Agentic Runtime: Own the end-to-end technical architecture for agentic systems, including multi-agent orchestration, memory management, and reasoning pipelines
• Engineering for Reliability: Implement robust infrastructure to handle non-deterministic loops, including automated circuit-breakers, latency‑aware orchestration (targeting P99 SLAs), and granular token/cost‑observability
• Set the Standard: Define engineering patterns, design standards, and best practices for agentic application development across the entire organization
• Scale the Team: Mentor and grow Senior engineers; conduct deep‑dive architecture reviews and drive high‑stakes technical decision‑making and be instrumental in the hiring process
• Bridge the Gap: Partner with AI Ops to ensure agentic workloads are efficiently built, served, and monitored with state‑of‑the‑art observability

What You Bring

• The Experience: 12+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4+ years in technical leadership or principal-level roles
• The Expertise: Deep hands‑on experience shipping LLM-powered or agentic systems to production (utilizing frameworks like LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, or custom‑built runtimes)
• The Systems Mindset: A proven track record of architecting distributed, high‑availability systems. You understand that “it worked on my machine” is not the same as “it works at scale.”
• The Toolkit: Mastery of Python and modern backend frameworks. Deep familiarity with RAG pipelines, vector databases, tool‑calling APIs, and multi‑step reasoning. (TypeScript/Node.js is a plus)
• The Communicator: Ability to distill complex “black box” AI concepts into clear technical roadmaps for executive stakeholders and cross‑functional partners
• The Culture: A desire to influence org‑wide engineering culture, prioritizing code quality, observability, and rigorous testing in an AI‑first world

Benefits

At Serko, we aim to create a place where people can come and do their best work. This means you'll be operating in an environment with great tools and support to enable you to perform at the highest level of your abilities, producing high‑quality and delivering innovative and efficient results. Our people are fully engaged, continuously improving, and encouraged to make an impact.

Some of the benefits of working at Serko are:

• A competitive base pay
• Medical Benefits
• Discretionary incentive plan based on individual and company performance
• Focus on development: Access to a learning & development platform and opportunity for you to own your career pathways
• Flexible work policy
• The pay range is between $168,000 - $240,000 USD as a base salary offering annually