Senior AI engineer

Senior AI Engineers - Agentic Development & AI-Augmented Engineering- Hoboken, NJ

About the Role

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer who can define and scale how our engineering organization builds software with AI agents. This role requires deep fluency in "loop engineering" with tools like Claude Code: designing the feedback loops, guardrails, and workflows that let AI agents safely and effectively contribute to production codebases. You'll need to understand the full agentic software development lifecycle, from context design through evaluation, deployment, and observability, while also being a hands-on expert across our core stack.

This is a staff-level role: you'll set technical direction, define best practices for agentic development across teams, and remain deeply hands-on in architecture and code.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement "loop engineering" workflows using Claude Code and similar tools, defining how agents plan, execute, test, and iterate on code changes
• Architect Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and tool schemas that are legible and safe for LLM agents to use
• Define human-in-the-loop checkpoints, autonomy boundaries, and rollback strategies for agent-driven changes
• Build evaluation harnesses and observability practices to measure agent output quality and catch regressions
• Design and review microservice and microfrontend architecture using C4 diagrams and Domain-Driven Design principles
• Drive test-driven development practices across teams, including contract testing between services
• Own technical decisions across our Java microservices, Node.js services, React/microfrontend UI, and Python tooling
• Design REST APIs and headless component architectures that support both human developers and AI agents
• Establish CI/CD practices that safely incorporate agent-authored pull requests
• Set and enforce security practices for agentic workflows, including prompt injection risk and tool-permission boundaries
• Mentor senior and staff engineers on effective agent-assisted development
• Write RFCs and design docs that translate ambiguous problems into actionable technical plans, documents that both humans and agents can act on

Required Skills & Experience

Agentic Development

• Hands-on experience with Claude Code or comparable agentic coding tools in production settings
• Strong understanding of MCP (Model Context Protocol) building and consuming MCP servers
• Context engineering: managing context windows, prompt caching, and information architecture for long-running agent sessions
• Awareness of prompt injection and agent-specific security risks

Architecture & Backend

• Deep experience with Java microservices
• Strong REST API design skills
• C4 model architecture documentation and system design
• Domain-Driven Design principles
• Node.js and Python for tooling, services, and automation
• MongoDB schema design, performance, and scaling.

Frontend

• ReactJS, headless component architecture, and microfrontend design patterns

Testing & Quality

• Test-driven development (TDD) as a core practice, not an afterthought
• Playwright for end-to-end testing
• Contract testing (e.g., Pact) across microservice boundaries

Pay and Benefits

Pay Range Minimum: $50/hour

Pay Range Maximum: $ 70/hour

HCLTech is an equal opportunity employer, committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees regardless of race, religion, sex, color, age, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, physical disability or genetic information, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with federal, state, and/or local law. Should any applicant have concerns about discrimination in the hiring process, they should provide a detailed report of those concerns to for investigation.

A candidate's pay within the range will depend on their skills, experience, education, and other factors permitted by law. This role may also be eligible for performance-based bonuses subject to company policies. In addition, this role is eligible for the following benefits subject to company policies: medical, dental, vision, pharmacy, life, accidental death & dismemberment, and disability insurance; employee assistance program; 401(k) retirement plan; 10 days of paid time off per year (some positions are eligible for need-based leave with no designated number of leave days per year); and 10 paid holidays per year

How You'll Grow

At HCLTech, we offer continuous opportunities for you to find your spark and grow with us. We want you to be happy and satisfied with your role and to really learn what type of work sparks your brilliance the best. Throughout your time with us, we offer transparent communication with senior-level employees, learning and career development programs at every level, and opportunities to experiment in different roles or even pivot industries. We believe that you should be in control of your career with unlimited opportunities to find the role that fits you best.