Senior AI Engineer – Agentic AI

American Express
London, United Kingdom

Who this role is best for

Candidates with agentic AI experience and financial services background will find this role with American Express in London offers a chance to build production-grade systems in a regulated environment.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with experience shipping agentic systems in regulated environments
    — “Experience building agentic systems in fintech or other regulated industries”
  • Engineers who can bridge technical execution with customer outcomes and product thinking
    — “Work closely with product and design partners; engineers in this role are expected to think in terms of customer outcomes, not just technical execution”
  • Individuals with strong production-grade system design and cloud infrastructure experience
    — “Architect and implement production-grade RAG pipelines over sensitive financial data”

Things to consider

  • No visa sponsorship is available for this role in the UK
    — “Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the UK is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions”
  • This role demands ownership of systems post-launch, including reliability and cost management
    — “Own the systems you build in production, including reliability, latency, cost, and failure modes”

How to stand out

  • Highlight end-to-end ownership of AI systems in your resume and interviews
    — “You will work end to end: shaping solutions with product and design, building and shipping production code”
  • Emphasize your experience with agentic workflows and LLM integration
    — “Commercial and open-source LLMs integrated into agentic workflows”
  • Showcase your ability to design systems with strict compliance and auditability standards
    — “All systems are built to meet high standards for reliability, security, and auditability”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Developed and shipped production-grade agentic AI systems
  • Contributed to shared AI infrastructure
Typical background
PhD in Computer Science or related fieldExperience in AI and machine learning

Skills & requirements

Required

Llm-powered SystemsAgentic AI SystemsProduction-grade RAG PipelinesAI Infrastructure

Preferred

Financial Services ComplianceTechnical Leadership

Stack & domain

LLMAgentic SystemsRAG PipelinesAI InfrastructureLLM ServicesAgent Orchestration FrameworksEvaluation And Monitoring ToolingAutonomySound JudgmentTechnical ExecutionFinance

About the role

Original posting from American Express

The Enterprise Technology Services organization partners with every part of the American Express business to power the company’s growth and innovation with trust and efficiency, and drive competitive differentiation with speed. We support the delivery and operations of technology, digital, and data capabilities, platforms, and services globally. Specifically, our team is responsible for the company’s technology engineering, architecture, and infrastructure, providing 24x7 support to ensure an uninterrupted, high-quality experience for customers and colleagues. We also provide product management for core enterprise platforms, and lead technology risk and information security, enterprise data governance and platforms, digital product and design, and enterprise AI platforms on behalf of the company.

At American Express, AI is reshaping the future of commerce and redefining the experiences our commercial customers and card members expect. Within Amex Technology, we are building platforms, products, and governance that enable agentic AI systems to operate responsibly and at scale across the enterprise.

Our focus is on agentic AI development: designing intelligent, adaptive systems that can plan, reason, and act across complex workflows with appropriate levels of autonomy. These systems power autonomous workflows, decision support, and customer-facing experiences—while meeting the high standards for security, explainability, reliability, and compliance required in financial services.

We partner closely with product, design, and business teams to deliver agentic capabilities that reduce operational friction, improve decision-making, and transform how customers interact, transact, and grow.

As a Senior AI Engineer – Agentic AI, you will be a core builder responsible for turning complex, ambiguous problems into production-grade agentic systems that operate on real financial data, serve real customers, and meet real regulatory requirements.

You will work end to end: shaping solutions with product and design, building and shipping production code, and owning what you deliver after launch. The scope of this role spans customer-facing LLM-powered features, agentic systems that automate financial workflows, and internal AI capabilities that enable other engineers to build with AI safely and efficiently.

This is not a research-only role. We are looking for engineers who are comfortable operating with autonomy, exercising sound judgment, and pushing the technical envelope within the realities of a regulated financial environment.

Design, build, and ship LLM-powered and agentic product features that change how customers manage their finances.Build agentic AI systems that reason over context, invoke tools, take real actions, and recover gracefully from failure.Architect and implement production-grade RAG pipelines over sensitive financial data, with strict requirements for correctness, auditability, and safety.Contribute to shared AI infrastructure, including LLM services, agent orchestration frameworks, and evaluation and monitoring tooling, that scales agentic development across Amex Technology.Own the systems you build in production, including reliability, latency, cost, and failure modes.Work closely with product and design partners; engineers in this role are expected to think in terms of customer outcomes, not just technical execution.

Technical Environment

We don’t hire to a narrow checklist, but candidates should be comfortable operating in a modern, enterprise-scale environment with a strong emphasis on agentic AI.

Core engineering stack

Languages: Python, Go, TypeScriptCloud and infrastructure: AWS and/or GCP, KubernetesAPIs and services: REST, gRPCDistributed systems: event-driven architectures, including Kafka

Agentic AI and ML

Commercial and open-source LLMs integrated into agentic workflowsTooling for agent orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, vector storage, and evaluationStrong schema, validation, and state management practices

AI-assisted development

Fluency with AI-assisted and agentic development workflows for design, implementation, testing, debugging, and refactoringThoughtful use of these tools while maintaining production-quality engineering standardsAll systems are built to meet high standards for reliability, security, and auditability, reflecting the responsibility of deploying autonomous AI in a financial services environment.

Minimum Qualifications:

5+ years of software engineering experience, including meaningful production experience with LLMs or applied ML systems.A track record of shipping AI-powered or agentic systems that real users depend on.Strong engineering fundamentals across backend systems, APIs, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure.Hands-on experience with modern LLM tooling and agentic patterns and architectures.Fluency with AI-assisted and agentic development workflows.Strong sense of ownership and sound technical judgment.Comfort operating with ambiguity and turning it into shipped reliable product.A strong product mindset and customer orientation. 

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience building agentic systems in fintech or other regulated industries.Experience as a founding engineer or early technical contributor in high-growth environments.Demonstrated ability to ship technically complex systems in regulated contexts that customers actively rely on.Meaningful open-source contributions, particularly in AI or developer tooling. 

Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the UK is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. From delivering differentiated products to providing world-class customer service, we operate with a strong risk mindset, ensuring we continue to uphold our brand promise of trust, security, and service.

As part of Team Amex, you’ll experience our powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career. Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express.

Source: American Express careers

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