Principal Software Engineer, Agentic Engineering

Fifth Third Bank; Cincinnati (OH); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the Agentic Engineering team and build a platform where AI agents compose across domains. You will drive architecture, standards, and hands-on implementation of scalable systems.

This role requires deep Python and TypeScript expertise, a history of leading engineers, and a focus on safe, cost‑efficient agent behavior within a hybrid work environment.

Qualifications

• 8–12+ years of software engineering experience.
• Proven track record leading engineers and shipping complex systems.
• Experience building agentic or multi-step automated systems is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of software engineers building production agents.
• Define engineering standards, testing, observability, and code quality.
• Architect the shared agent platform with reliable inter-agent communication.
• Stay hands-on with coding and prototyping tough problems.
• Ensure agent behavior stays accurate, cost-efficient, and governed over time.
• Translate vision into a shippable roadmap.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

Team leadership

Architectural direction

Agentic systems

Tools

Terraform

Job description

Make banking a Fifth Third better® We connect great people to great opportunities. Are you ready to take the next step? Discover a career in banking at Fifth Third Bank.

Make banking a Fifth Third better® We connect great people to great opportunities. Are you ready to take the next step? Discover a career in banking at Fifth Third Bank.

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join our Agentic Engineering team. You will build a platform where specialized AI agents compose across technical domains - knowledge and policy, change/ITSM, network security, cloud, and source code. Instead of an engineer manually stitching together answers from a half-dozen tools, agents coordinate with each other to do the work.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role that requires deep proficiency in Python and TypeScript, a track record of designing systems that operate reliably at organizational scale, and the ability to set standards that shape how enforcement is practiced across teams.

What You'll Do

• Lead and grow a team of software engineers building production agents - setting direction, reviewing designs, mentoring, and unblocking.
• Define the team's engineering standards - agent patterns, tool integration, testing, code quality, observability, and review practices that hold the bar high.
• Architect the agent platform - the shared services and protocols (e.g., agent-to-agent messaging, tool servers) that let agents discover and compose with one another reliably.
• Stay hands-on - write code, prototype hard problems, and pair with engineers on the toughest parts of the system.
• Own the quality and safety of agent behavior - design how the team verifies that agents stay accurate, cost-efficient, and within guardrails over time.
• Translate vision into a roadmap - break an ambitious platform vision into shippable increments the team can execute and be proud of.
• Represent the team to leadership - communicate architecture, trade-offs, and progress clearly to engineering and product leadership.

What Differentiates This Role

• You're defining how agents are built across the team - the shared patterns, base abstractions, and “paved road” that make new agents fast to build and safe to run.
• You're responsible for how we know agents are behaving - observability, evaluation, and continuous governance, not a one-time check.
• You're growing a team that can reason about non-deterministic systems - where correctness, cost, and safety all have to be designed in, not bolted on.

What You Will Bring

• 8-12+ years of software engineering experience with deep proficiency in Python and TypeScript.
• A track record of technically driving teams of engineers - mentoring, setting standards, and shipping complex systems together.
• Experience building agentic or multi-step automated systems - tool orchestration, LLM reasoning loops, or agent frameworks.
• The ability to set architectural direction and reusable patterns that other engineers adopt.
• Experience designing for non-deterministic behavior, edge cases, and failure - and building the testing and observability to catch them.

Nice to Have

• Experience building LLM safety, evaluation, or governance systems end-to-end.
• Retrieval / hybrid search over enterprise knowledge.
• Background in platform engineering or developer tooling at enterprise scale.
• Terraform and infrastructure-as-code experience.
• Open-source contributions on public GitHub.

Work Environment

This role is hybrid. Candidates must be located in one of the following locations: Farmington Hills / Metro Detroit, Michigan; Frisco, Texas; or Cincinnati, Ohio.

Position not available for immigration sponsorship.

Principal Software Engineer, Agentic Engineering

At Fifth Third, we understand the importance of recognizing our employees for the role they play in improving the lives of our customers, communities and each other. Our Total Rewards include comprehensive benefits and differentiated compensation offerings to give each employee the opportunity to be their best every day.

The base salary for this position is reflective of the range of salary levels for all roles within this pay grade across the U.S. Individual salaries within this range will vary based on factors such as role, relevant skillset, relevant experience, education and geographic location. In addition to the base salary, this role is eligible to participate in an incentive compensation plan, with any such payment based upon company, line of business and/or individual performance.

Our extensive benefits programs are designed to support the individual needs of our employees and their families, encompassing physical, financial, emotional and social well-being. You can learn more about those programs on our 53.com Careers page at: https://www.53.com/content/fifth-third/en/careers/benefits.html or by consulting with your talent acquisition partner.

LOCATION -- Farmington Hills, Michigan 48331-3552

Fifth Third Bank, National Association is proud to have an engaged and inclusive culture and to promote and ensure equal employment opportunity in all employment decisions regardless of race, color, gender, national origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, veteran status or any other legally protected status.