Staff AI/Agentic Engineer

Abbott Laboratories, Limited. Saint Laurent, Québec, Canada; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 113,000 - 227,000; Full time

Job summary

Abbott is seeking a senior individual-contributor engineer to set technical direction for production agentic systems. You will design complex multi-agent solutions, establish durable workflow standards, and work with AI Platform Engineering to build reusable patterns and tooling.

You will mentor mid-level engineers and engage with product managers and data science teams to align feasibility and delivery. This onsite role in IL focuses on delivering scalable, secure AI-enabled workflows, with

Qualifications

• 7–10 years of software engineering experience with distributed, API-driven production systems.
• Hands-on experience designing, coding, testing, deploying, and operating agentic or LLM-based applications in production at scale.
• Deep understanding of agent architecture, tool calling, durable state, multi-agent coordination, and retrieval.
• Strong software engineering ability in Python and TS/Go/Java, including API design and secure SDLC.
• Experience defining quality, safety, reliability, latency, and cost indicators and using results for improvement.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.
• Ability to drive technical decisions with autonomy and communicate with senior leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of complex multi-agent systems with supervisor, planner/executor, and coordination patterns.
• Set durable workflow design standards across the team.
• Drive context-engineering and retrieval strategies for multiple workflows.
• Lead evaluation strategy: create datasets, define success and safety metrics, and CI/regression gates.
• Own production reliability: latency/cost optimization and incident response leadership.
• Set engineering standards via architecture reviews and code reviews.
• Create reusable agent patterns, SDKs, and tooling feeding the platform roadmap.
• Lead technical discovery with product managers, data science, and stakeholders.

Skills

Distributed systems

Agentic architecture

Python

TypeScript/Go/Java

Context engineering

Evaluation & safety metrics

CI/CD & observability

Technical leadership (non-management)

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience

Tools

LangGraph

Temporal

Model-provider APIs

Job description

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 122,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Working at Abbott

At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and your family, be your true self, and live a full life. You’ll also have access to:

• Career development with an international company where you can grow the career you dream of.
• Employees can qualify forfree medical coverage in ourHealth Investment Plan (HIP) PPOmedical plan in the next calendar year.
• An excellent retirement savings plan with a high employer contribution
• Tuition reimbursement, the Freedom 2 Save (https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/strategy-and-strength/tackling-student-debt-for-our-employees.html) student debt program, and FreeU (https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/strategy-and-strength/college-degree-for-free-its-possible-with-freeu.html) education benefit - an affordable and convenient path to getting a bachelor’s degree.
• A company recognized as a great place to work in dozens of countries worldwide and named one of the most admired companies in the world by Fortune.
• A company that is recognized as one of the best big companies to work for as well as the best place to work for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists.

The Opportunity

A senior individual-contributor engineering role that sets technical direction for production agentic systems at Abbott. This role leads the design of complex multi-agent solutions and reusable engineering patterns, partners closely with the Tech Lead/Architect on architecture decisions and is a primary technical escalation point across the AI/Agentic Engineering team . Expected to operate with substantial autonomy and to raise the technical bar for the team.

What You'll Do

• Lead design and implementation of complex multi-agent systems, including supervisor, planner/executor, and multi-agent coordination patterns with well-defined boundaries and failure handling.
• Set standards for durable workflow design (state, checkpoints, replay, idempotency, compensation, human-in-the-loop) used across the AI/Agentic Engineering team.
• Drive context-engineering and retrieval strategy across multiple workflows: chunking/indexing, memory hierarchies, grounding, and context-window budgeting.
• Lead evaluation strategy: design evaluation systems, curate datasets, define task-success and safety metrics, and establish regression gates in CI and online/shadow evaluation.
• Own production reliability for high-complexity or high-risk agentic systems: latency/cost optimization at scale, rate-limit strategy, graceful degradation, and incident response leadership.
• Set engineering standards through architecture reviews, design docs, and code reviews; identify and resolve systemic technical risk in agent delivery.
• Create reusable agent patterns, SDKs, and evaluation tooling that feed back into the platform paved road, in partnership with AI Platform Engineering.
• Lead technical discovery with AI Product Managers, Platform Engineering, Applied Data Science, and business stakeholders; communicate feasibility, risk, and delivery commitments directly to senior stakeholders.
• Mentor and technically develop mid-level and junior engineers; act as technical lead on cross-team initiatives without formal people-management responsibility.

Education and Experience You'll Bring

Required Qualifications

• 7–10 years of software engineering experience, with substantial delivery of distributed, API-driven, or workflow-intensive production systems.
• Hands‑on experience designing, coding, testing, deploying, and operating agentic or LLM‑based applications in production at scale; expected to remain an active technical contributor.
• Deep understanding of agent architecture, tool calling, durable state, multi‑agent coordination, context engineering, retrieval, evaluation, observability, and safety controls.
• Strong software engineering ability in Python and at least one of TypeScript, Go, or Java, including distributed systems, API design, testing, and secure SDLC.
• Experience defining measurable quality, safety, reliability, latency, and cost indicators and using evaluation results to drive systemic improvement across multiple workflows.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent professional experience.
• Demonstrated ability to drive technical decisions with significant autonomy, influence engineers outside a direct reporting line, and communicate effectively with technical leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with agent frameworks or durable workflow systems (e.g., LangGraph, Temporal, or comparable technologies) and model-provider APIs at scale.
• Experience in a highly regulated environment such as health tech, med‑tech, or life sciences, including GxP, HIPAA, validation, and change‑control constraints.
• Experience building secure tool‑use systems, prompt‑injection defenses, human‑approval workflows, and responsible‑AI controls for production agentic systems.
• Track record of shipping reusable agent patterns, evaluation tooling, or paved‑road capabilities adopted by multiple teams; prior informal technical leadership or mentoring track record.

Misc: This is an onsite role at Abbott location in IL. This is not a remote role/opportunity.

Abbott is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to employee diversity.

The base pay for this position is
$113,300.00 – $226,700.00
In specific locations, the pay range may vary from the range posted.

JOB FAMILY

IT Services & Solutions Delivery

DIVISION

BTS Business Technology Services

LOCATION

United States > Abbott Park : AP06C

ADDITIONAL LOCATIONS

United States > Chicago : Willis Tower Building 233 S Wacker Dr.

WORK SHIFT

Standard

TRAVEL

Yes, 10 % of the Time

MEDICAL SURVEILLANCE

Not Applicable

SIGNIFICANT WORK ACTIVITIES

• Continuous sitting for prolonged periods (more than 2 consecutive hours in an 8 hour day), Keyboard use (greater or equal to 50% of the workday)
• Abbott is an Equal Opportunity Employer of Minorities/Women/Individuals with Disabilities/Protected Veterans.
• EEO is the Law link - English: http://webstorage.abbott.com/common/External/EEO_English.pdf
• EEO is the Law link - Espanol: http://webstorage.abbott.com/common/External/EEO_Spanish.pdf