Software Engineer II – Agentic AI Engineer

4 Days in the office from any of our locations in Johnston RI, Iselin NJ, Westwood MA, or Phoenix AZ

Role is not relocation eligible. 

Role Summary

The Software Engineer II – Agentic AI Engineer is a mid‑level engineer responsible for building, integrating, and operating agent‑based AI capabilities within production software systems. The role focuses on implementing autonomous or semi‑autonomous AI agents that interact with tools, services, and workflows while adhering to established architectural patterns, security controls, and software engineering best practices.

This role operates with moderate autonomy, delivers independently on scoped components, and collaborates closely with senior engineers, product managers, and platform teams.

Core Responsibilities

1. Agentic AI Development

• Design and implement AI agents that can reason, plan, and act across defined tasks and workflows

• Develop prompt structures, memory handling, tool invocation logic, and agent orchestration patterns

• Implement agent guardrails including input validation, response constraints, and fail‑safe behaviors

• Apply responsible AI practices (traceability, explainability, and bias awareness) in agent design

2. Software Engineering 

• Build production‑ready services that embed AI agents into applications and workflows

• Write clean, modular, testable code following team and enterprise coding standards

• Implement APIs, background jobs, or event‑driven components that leverage AI agents

• Participate actively in code reviews and design discussions

3. Integration with Enterprise Systems

• Integrate agentic AI with internal systems such as APIs, data services, workflow engines, and UI layers

• Implement secure access patterns for agent tool usage (authentication, authorization, secrets handling)

• Ensure agents operate within defined system boundaries and business rules

4. AI Runtime & Operational Readiness

• Support deployment of agentic AI components in cloud or containerized environments

• Implement logging, monitoring, and basic telemetry for agent behavior and outcomes

• Assist in identifying agent failure modes, hallucination risks, and recovery strategies

• Contribute to runbooks and operational documentation

5. Testing & Quality Assurance

• Develop unit and integration tests for agent logic, prompts, and decision paths

• Validate agent behavior across normal, edge, and failure scenarios

• Participate in performance tuning to reduce latency and cost of agent execution

6. Collaboration & Delivery

• Work closely with product and business partners to translate requirements into agent behaviors

• Collaborate with data, platform, and security teams to align on standards and constraints

• Provide technical input into sprint planning and estimation

• Share learnings and patterns with peers through documentation and demos

Required Skills & Competencies

Technical Skills

• Strong software engineering fundamentals (data structures, APIs, distributed systems basics)

• Proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Python, Java)

• Hands‑on experience with LLMs, prompt engineering, or agent frameworks

• Familiarity with REST APIs, message queues, and cloud‑native patterns

Professional Skills

• Ability to independently deliver well‑defined features and components

• Strong debugging and problem‑solving skills

• Clear communication of technical concepts to cross‑functional partners

• Willingness to learn rapidly evolving AI and agentic patterns

Experience Level

• Typically 3–6 years of professional software engineering experience

• Prior exposure to AI/ML systems, LLMs, or workflow automation is expected

• Experience operating production systems (on‑call, incident support) is a plus

Pay Transparency 

The salary range for this position is $ 96,000 - $ 135,000 per year plus an opportunity to earn an annual discretionary bonus. Actual pay is based on various factors including but not limited to the work location, and relevant skills and experience.   

We offer competitive pay, comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, maternity/paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, education reimbursement, wellness programs and more. Note, Citizens’ paid time off policy exceeds the mandatory, paid sick or paid time-away policy of very local and state jurisdiction in the United States. For an overview of our benefits, visit https://jobs.citizensbank.com/benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Citizens, its parent, subsidiaries, and related companies (Citizens) provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all colleagues and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, citizenship, physical or mental disability, perceived disability or history or record of a disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, genetic characteristic, marital or domestic partner status, victim of domestic violence, family status/parenthood, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, pregnancy/childbirth/lactation, colleague’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state and/or local laws. At Citizens, we are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that enables all colleagues to bring their best selves to work every day and everyone is expected to be treated with respect and professionalism. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, performance and capability.

Equal Employment and Opportunity Employer

Job Applicant Data Privacy Policy

Background Check

Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the candidate successfully passing a background check, which may include initial credit, motor vehicle record, public record, prior employment verification, and criminal background checks. Results of the background check are individually reviewed based upon legal requirements imposed by our regulators and with consideration of the nature and gravity of the background history and the job offered. Any offer of employment will include further information.