Senior Principal AI Agent Engineer

About the Company
Cogent Infotech is a technology and talent solutions company headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA. We support clients across commercial, federal, state, and local markets with services in digital transformation, application development, cloud, cybersecurity, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and workforce solutions.
Our software engineering teams deliver next-generation application enhancements and new products for a rapidly changing world. Working at the cutting edge, we design and develop software using advanced technologies, modern engineering practices, and close collaboration across internal and external teams.

Job Title: Senior Principal AI Agent Engineer
Experience: 10+ Years
Employment Type: Full-time
Work Location: Austin, TX | Onsite

Job Summary
This opportunity is with one of Cogent Infotech's clients in the enterprise technology domain.
We are seeking a Senior Principal AI Agent Engineer to help shape the future of intelligent systems and build AI-native engineering platforms and autonomous development workflows. This role focuses on designing scalable, production-ready AI solutions in which large language models can reason, use tools, and automate software engineering tasks.
The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering fundamentals with hands-on experience building agentic AI systems, orchestration workflows, and AI-assisted developer tooling.

Responsibilities

• Design and build AI-driven engineering workflows using large language models and autonomous agents.
• Guide, monitor, and validate AI coding agents to improve engineering throughput and code quality.
• Develop testing, evaluation, and guardrail frameworks for AI-generated output.
• Optimize context management using embeddings, retrieval, and memory strategies.
• Build and maintain scalable orchestration workflows, tool-calling integrations, and retrieval-augmented generation solutions.
• Partner with engineering and product teams to deliver secure, reliable, and cloud-native AI solutions.
• Define engineering standards and best practices for production AI agents and autonomous workflows.

Essential Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
• Hands-on experience building LLM-powered systems, production AI agents, or autonomous workflows is required.
• Strong programming skills in Python, automation tooling, and Kubernetes.
• Experience with agent orchestration frameworks, tool calling, RAG, embeddings, memory strategies, or AI evaluation frameworks.
• Strong understanding of scalable software architecture, cloud-native development, testing, security, and production reliability.
• Exceptional problem-solving skills and the ability to adapt in fast-moving technical environments.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills across technical and cross-functional teams.

Compensation
USD 195k to USD 265k per year. Actual compensation may vary based on experience, skills, location, and other relevant factors.

Equal Opportunity Employer
Cogent Infotech is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels welcome and valued. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, genetic information, sexual orientation, ******* identity, military status, citizenship, disability, or any other class protected by applicable law.

Join Us
Join our Agentic AI Software Engineering Team and help build intelligent, secure, and production-ready systems that transform how software is designed, developed, tested, and delivered.