Senior Lead AI Engineer

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute as a senior backend engineer within an Agile squad to design, build, and enhance core components of McCormick’s Agentic AI platform, participating fully in sprint ceremonies and shared delivery commitments. (35%)
• Collaborate with architects and engineers to design and implement scalable multi-agent orchestration patterns using LangChain, LangGraph, MCP, and A2A within Azure cloud-native architectures (AKS, Functions, Event Grid, Web Apps). (25%)
• Develop and maintain high-performance backend services and APIs (Python, FastAPI) supporting conversational AI, vector search, tool execution, and distributed workflows. (20%)
• Partner with DevOps and platform teams to implement CI/CD pipelines, observability, monitoring, and production readiness practices ensuring reliability and scalability of AI systems. (15%)
• Participate in code reviews, technical design discussions, and continuous improvement initiatives to elevate engineering standards within the Agile team. (5%)

Secondary Responsibilities

• Support Responsible AI, security, and governance standards in partnership with enterprise teams.
• Participate in an on-call support rotation for the AI platform, as operational needs evolve.
• Perform other responsibilities as assigned by the Supervisor.

Required Qualifications

Level of Education and Discipline

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or related technical discipline.

Certification and/or Licenses

Experience - functional/industry/commercial knowledge, business acumen

• Total years of experience required 8-10 (min)
• 7+ years of experience in backend or platform engineering within Agile software delivery environments.
• 3+ years of experience deploying AI/ML or LLM-powered systems into production environments.
• Strong experience designing distributed, cloud-native systems in Azure.

Interpersonal Skills - leadership, interactions, communication, influence

• Excellent communication skills and a desire to collaborate openly within a fast-moving team

Other Skills and HPO Competencies

• Strong Python engineering experience with FastAPI or similar backend frameworks.
• Experience with LangChain and LangGraph for agent orchestration.
• Practical understanding of MCP and A2A communication concepts within distributed AI systems.
• Experience with Azure services including AKS, Azure Functions, Event Grid, Web Apps, and Azure OpenAI.
• Experience integrating vector databases and semantic retrieval mechanisms.
• CI/CD implementation experience using GitHub Actions or similar tooling.
• Experience implementing observability and monitoring (Azure Application Insights or similar).
• Experience building RESTful APIs and event-driven architectures.
• Familiarity with conversational AI system design patterns and production reliability concerns.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience - functional/industry/commercial knowledge, business acumen

• Experience working on multi-agent or autonomous AI systems within product teams.
• Exposure to enterprise AI governance and Responsible AI frameworks.
• Experience integrating AI services with enterprise platforms (e.g., SAP or other ERP systems).

Dimension

1. This role contributes to McCormick’s enterprise AI platform as part of a cross-functional product team delivering incremental value through Agile methodologies.
2. The position:

• Influences backend architectural patterns within the AI platform.
• Shares accountability for sprint commitments and platform reliability.
• Contributes to enterprise AI engineering standards in collaboration with architecture and cloud teams.
  • Impacts scalability, security, and operational resilience of AI capabilities used across functions.