Manager, IT AI Engineering - Agent Engineering

Intro

Are you ready to explore a world of possibilities, both at work and during your time off? Join our American Airlines family, and you’ll travel the world, grow your expertise and become the best version of you.  As you embark on a new journey, you’ll tackle challenges with flexibility and grace, learning new skills and advancing your career while having the time of your life.  Feel free to enrich both your personal and work life and hop on board!

Why you'll love this job

• As one diverse, high-performing team dedicated to technical excellence, you will focus relentlessly on delivering unrivaled digital products that drive a more reliable and profitable airline. 

What you'll do

As noted above, this list is intended to reflect the current job but there may be additional essential functions (and certainly non-essential job functions) that are not referenced.  Management will modify the job or require other tasks be performed whenever it is deemed appropriate to do so, observing, of course, any legal obligations including any collective bargaining obligations.

• The Manager, AI Engineering – Agent Engineering manages a team of AI engineers responsible for designing, building, and operating AI agents that work directly with business partners
• You will partner closely with business and technology stakeholders to identify high-value opportunities, translate workflows into agent capabilities, and deliver production-grade systems with strong governance, observability, and responsible AI practices.
• Lead the end-to-end development of agentic systems: intent detection, planning, tool use, memory patterns, retrieval augmentation (RAG), and multi-step workflow orchestration.
• Define and enforce reference architectures and standards for agent frameworks, tool APIs, prompt/version management, and deployment patterns.
• Ensure agent designs meet requirements for reliability, latency, cost efficiency, and maintainability in production environments.
• Work directly with business partners to understand workflows, constraints, and success metrics; translate needs into agent roadmaps and well-defined requirements.
• Manage stakeholder expectations with clear communication, trade-offs, and transparent progress reporting
• Implement safeguards for privacy, security, and responsible AI: data handling, access controls, content filtering, audit logging, and human-in-the-loop controls where appropriate
• Continuously optimize performance across accuracy, safety, latency, and cost.
• Exhibits strong business and leadership skills, deep technology perspective to guide solutions, and strong communication skills to coordinate with Engineers to ensure they understand business needs and objectives, as well as technical requirements of products
• Collaborates with Business and IT leadership to execute and communicate organization’s technical vision, mission, and work priorities, and drives progress towards roadmaps and ensures efficient technical product management and effective communication with stakeholders
• Creates environment for delivery teams to be self-governing organizations who are accountable for their own performance and delivery commitments and measured accordingly
• Provide input on technology decisions, people management, and product features across all stages of product lifecycle
• Establish open lines of communication between engineering squads and IT leadership, and support clear adherence to business requirements  Facilitate and monitor clear Engineer check-ins, sprint deliverables, and open communication toward squads and stakeholders  
• Drives forward increased technical upskilling across organization with education, programs, and metrics
• Manage Engineer staffing strategy to ensure alignment to Scrum and Agile principles and work closely with Scrum Lead  
• Promote use of industry leading technology trends and continuously assess AA IT needs and areas for improvement
• Manages and leads adoption and migration of new and emerging technologies
• Leads, develops, and mentors a high performing engineering team of individuals with a diverse range of technical skills and experiences
• Responsible for budget management and forecasting
• Manages production issues and off-hours support, communication, and coordination, as needed

All you'll need for success

Minimum Qualifications- Education & Prior Job Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, ?or related technical discipline, or equivalent experience/training
• 5 years of experience participating in delivery of solutions using ITIL / Agile / XP, or similar methodologies
• 5+ years in software engineering, AI engineering, or applied ML roles, with 3+ years leading engineering teams
• Strong understanding of LLM-based systems, including agent patterns, RAG, tool/function calling, prompt engineering, and evaluation method
• Experience building systems with enterprise-grade security, reliability, and observability

Preferred Qualifications- Education & Prior Job Experience

• Proven experience delivering production AI solutions with measurable business outcomes
• Strong understanding of LLM-based systems, including agent patterns, RAG, tool/function calling, prompt engineering, and evaluation methods
• Strong technical leadership, and extensive experience in Agile methodology-style leadership environment  
• Hands-on expertise in backend engineering (e.g., Python, Java, C#, or Node.js) and API/service design
• Experience building agentic orchestration using frameworks such as Semantic Kernel, LangChain/LangGraph, Microsoft Copilot Studio, OpenAI/Anthropic tool calling patterns, or equivalent internal frameworks
• Familiarity with enterprise governance practices: model/prompt approvals, audit logs, data classification, and risk controls.
• Knowledge of experimentation and measurement: A/B testing, KPI instrumentation, and operational analytics
• Airline industry experience, including engineering / business processes and supporting technology 

Skills, Licenses & Certifications

• Excellent communication skills to present to executive management often and emphasize the important intersection of business and technology
• Proven ability to handle multiple products/work streams and demands efficiently
• Experience in leading a team of individuals with various levels of skills and experience in potentially high stress and challenging situations
• Demonstrated initiative, flexibility, and ability to adapt to changing priorities and work environment
• Leads, influences, and upholds technology standards to ensure resiliency goals are met and continuously improved upon
• Basic financial skills 

What you'll get

Feel free to take advantage of all that American Airlines has to offer: 

• Travel Perks: Ready to explore the world? You, your family and your friends can reach 365 destinations on more than 6,800 daily flights across our global network.
• Health Benefits: On day one, you’ll have access to your health, dental, prescription and vision benefits to help you stay well. And that’s just the start, we also offer virtual doctor visits, flexible spending accounts and more. 
• Wellness Programs: We want you to be the best version of yourself – that’s why our wellness programs provide you with all the right tools, resources and support you need.
• 401(k) Program: Available upon hire and, depending on the workgroup, employer contributions to your 401(k) program are available after one year.
• Additional Benefits: Other great benefits include our Employee Assistance Program, pet insurance and discounts on hotels, cars, cruises and more

Feel free to be yourself at American

From the team members we hire to the customers we serve, inclusion and diversity are the foundation of the dynamic workforce at American Airlines. Our 20+ Employee Business Resource Groups are focused on connecting our team members to our customers, suppliers, communities and shareholders, helping team members reach their full potential and creating an inclusive work environment to meet and exceed the needs of our diverse world. 

Are you ready to feel a tremendous sense of pride and satisfaction as you do your part to keep the largest airline in the world running smoothly as we care for people on life’s journey? Feel free to be yourself at American.