Senior Software Engineer, Agentic Platform, AI Labs

Epiq; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 195,000 - 255,000; Full time

Job summary

Epiq AI Labs is building the next‑generation AI platform for corporate legal departments and global law firms. You will own the orchestration runtime, retrieval layer agents, and evaluation infrastructure, delivering scalable systems from design to production.

Legal workflows demand correctness, confidentiality, and tenant isolation. The role emphasizes grounded retrieval, model‑ops, and multi‑tenant architecture while collaborating with security, product, and legal teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software‑engineering experience with depth in backend, distributed, or AI systems.
• Demonstrated experience delivering and operating LLM‑based applications in production at scale.
• Experience with agentic architectures and orchestration frameworks.
• Experience with retrieval‑augmented generation systems at scale.
• Strong production‑level proficiency in Python.
• Experience evaluating agentic‑system accuracy and performance.
• Experience designing services and APIs used by other teams.
• Experience with observability tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry.
• Experience operating in containerized cloud environments.
• Strong system‑design and architecture experience with production docs.

Responsibilities

• Design the agentic platform used by other teams, including orchestration, tool registration and permissioning, durable state and memory, sandboxing, and trace‑level observability.
• Build agent workflows with multi‑step reasoning, tool use, human‑in‑the‑loop checkpoints, and recovery from partial failure during long‑running execution.
• Evaluate developments in model capabilities, agent‑design patterns, and evaluation practices, and translate them into platform architecture.
• Design retrieval‑augmented generation systems with hybrid search over legal corpora and citation grounding to specific sources.
• Build evaluation infrastructure, including golden datasets, regression harnesses, and offline and online evaluation loops.
• Establish model‑operations practices for routing, latency and cost budgets, prompt and context versioning, caching, and production reliability.
• Build scalable backend services and APIs; produce technical design documentation; partner with product, research, security, and legal domain experts.

Skills

Backend systems

Distributed systems

AI systems

LLM-based apps

Python

Observability

Containerized cloud

System design

Technical documentation

AI tooling

Tools

Python

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Kubernetes

Docker

Azure

PostgreSQL

RabbitMQ

Qdrant

Solr

Job description

At Epiq, your work contributes to complex, global legal outcomes. You’ll join a values‑driven community where integrity guides decisions, relentless service sets the bar, and we thrive on big challenges together. We invest in your growth with enterprise‑wide learning and mobility. We celebrate who you are, and we respect life beyond work with flexibility that’s recognized externally. Enabled by modern platforms and AI, you’ll do the most meaningful work of your career and see your impact at scale.

Job Description

Epiq AI Labs is the innovation and engineering hub behind Epiq’s next‑generation AI platform for corporate legal departments and global law firms. Operating with the speed and autonomy of a startup and the resources of a global alternative legal services provider, the team builds intelligent agents, reasoning engines, knowledge systems, and structured workflows for litigation, investigations, compliance, and corporate knowledge work.

The Opportunity

You will build the agentic systems at the center of Epiq AI Labs’ legal AI platform, including the orchestration runtime used by other teams, the retrieval layer agents reason over, and the evaluation infrastructure used to measure quality. You will own systems from initial design through production operation.

Legal workflows require a high standard of correctness, traceability, confidentiality, and tenant isolation. You will establish the primitives for orchestration, grounded retrieval, and measurable quality that other engineering teams will build on.

This role will be in the office 3~4 days a week.

Essential Job Responsibilities

• Design the agentic platform used by other teams, including orchestration, tool registration and permissioning, durable state and memory, sandboxing, and trace‑level observability.
• Build agent workflows with multi‑step reasoning, tool use, human‑in‑the‑loop checkpoints, and recovery from partial failure during long‑running execution.
• Evaluate developments in model capabilities, agent‑design patterns, and evaluation practices, and translate them into platform architecture.
• Design retrieval‑augmented generation systems with hybrid search over legal corpora and citation grounding to specific sources.
• Build evaluation infrastructure, including golden datasets, regression harnesses, and offline and online evaluation loops.
• Establish model‑operations practices for routing, latency and cost budgets, prompt and context versioning, caching, and production reliability.
• Build scalable backend services and APIs; produce technical design documentation; partner with product, research, security, and legal domain experts; and strengthen engineering standards.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of software‑engineering experience with demonstrated depth in backend, distributed, or AI systems.
• Demonstrated experience delivering and operating LLM‑based applications in production at scale, beyond prototypes or proofs of concept.
• Demonstrated experience with agentic architectures and orchestration frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience with retrieval‑augmented generation systems at scale.
• Strong production‑level proficiency in Python.
• Demonstrated experience evaluating agentic‑system accuracy and performance.
• Experience designing services and APIs consumed by other engineering teams.
• Experience with observability tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry.
• Experience operating in containerized cloud environments.
• Strong system‑design and architecture experience, including production of technical design documents.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to work effectively with non‑technical domain experts and stakeholders.
• Demonstrated proficiency using AI tools in software development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with fine‑tuning, model adaptation, or systematic evaluation across model families.
• Experience with large‑scale data pipelines or document‑processing systems.
• Experience with multi‑tenant SaaS architectures and data‑isolation requirements.
• Experience in a startup or scale‑up engineering environment.
• Experience in legal technology, enterprise workflow, or knowledge‑management systems.

Technology Stack

• Python
• LLM APIs and agent frameworks
• Qdrant
• Solr
• PostgreSQL
• RabbitMQ
• Azure
• Kubernetes
• Docker
• Prometheus
• Grafana
• OpenTelemetry.

The Compensation range for this role is $195,000 -$255,000 USD annually and may be eligible for an annual bonus.

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.

Must be authorized to work in the United States for any employer.

Your specific salary will be determined based on several factors:

• Location-based market rate for the role
• Your abilities in relation to the job specification
• Performance during screening and interview
• Pay parity with the wider team in the considered location

Further details about the package will be provided during the initial screening call with the Talent Acquisition Team.

Epiq Leadership Compass

Fosters Relationships & Collaboration

Builds trust and alignment through open communication, shared goals, and strong partnerships to drive collective success.

• Build trust‑based partnerships
• Nurture long‑term relationships
• Remove collaboration barriers
• Celebrate cross‑team success

Engages & Influences

Inspires action and alignment through clear communication, purposeful influence, and a compelling vision.

• Use storytelling to build buy‑in
• Align communication with organizational goals
• Guild alignment through strong engagement

Maximizes Performance

Sets and reinforces performance standards that drive results, ensure accountability, and align with Epiq’s goals.

• Use data to identify improvement opportunities
• Make informed decisions
• Align team goals with boarder strategy
• Empower teams to manage their own goals
• Translate vision into clear prioritiesPrepare for disruptions with strong change management

Achieves Operational Success

Drives continuous improvement and operational excellence through smart processes, data insights, and quality execution.

• Improve workflows for team efficiency
• Use clear documentation and expectations
• Resolve issues quickly using data and feedback

It is Epiq’s policy to comply with all applicable equal employment opportunity laws by making all employment decisions without unlawful regard or consideration of any individual’s race, religion, ethnicity, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expressions, transgender status, sexual and other reproductive health decisions, marital status, age, national origin, genetic information, ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, veteran or family status or any other basis protected by applicable national, federal, state, provincial or local law. Epiq’s policy prohibits unlawful discrimination based on any of these impermissible bases, as well as any bases or grounds protected by applicable law in each jurisdiction. In addition Epiq will take affirmative action for minorities, women, covered veterans and individuals with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the application process because of a disability, it is available upon request. Epiq is pleased to provide such assistance and no applicant will be penalized as a result of such a request. Pursuant to relevant law, where applicable, Epiq will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.