Engineering Lead - AI SDK

Job description

Company Description At Syngenta Group, we're a global community of 56,000 innovators across 90 countries, united by a 250-year legacy of agricultural excellence. As the world's most local agricultural technology partner, we create tailor-made solutions that transform farming while protecting our planet, driven by our commitment to innovation, ethics, and integrity. Through our inclusive environment and diverse perspectives, we pioneer breakthrough solutions for farmers, society, and future generations. Join our worldwide teams of agricultural pioneers in creating a more resilient and equitable food system for all. Job Description The Mission Here you won't just ship code - you will shape how developers build with AI in one of the largest companies in agriculture across the world. Syngenta is moving beyond isolated AI experiments. We are building a centralized, high-performance AI SDK that will serve as the backbone for our whole company. We are talking abou high scale impact, to more than 50.000 employees spread in more than 90 countries. As the AI SDK Engineering Leader , you will not just manage; you will define and build the core primitives of our AI infrastructure. You will hire and lead an elite squad of specialists who design, build, and maintain the developer-facing toolkits that bring AI capabilities to life across our products and platforms. You'll own the technical vision of how teams integrate large language models, agent frameworks, and intelligent pipelines. Here you won't just build one product; you will build the tools that enable every internal squad will use to build, deploy, and scale Agentic AI. The Challenge This is a "Builder-First" role. You will be responsible for: Architect the core primitives: The Intent Router: Build a high-accuracy routing engine that classifies user intent and dispatches tasks to the correct domain-specific agents. Session Context Store: Building a robust, federated memory layer that maintains state across complex, multi-turn interactions while ensuring data isolation between business units. System Prompt Injection & Governance: Implementing a secure layer for dynamic prompt management and guardrails. Engineering Excellence & Developer Experience: Enterprise Connectors: Build robust, reusable abstractions for our data ecosystem (Databricks, Snowflake, ServiceNow, and internal SAP instances). SDK Ergonomics: Ensuring the SDK is highly performant in both Python and TypeScript , with a focus on developer experience (DX) for our internal squads. Lead a highly specialized squad: Build and lead a squad of specialized engineers, guiding by example and setting the bar for code quality, documentation, and CI/CD patterns for AI-native applications. Mentor engineers, influence and raise the bar for tech colleagues across the organization, promoting a culture where engineers are empowered and have high standards to do their best work. Your Impact: The "Multiplier" Effect You aren't just building one product; you are building the tools that enable dozens of products. Scale: Your SDK will power agents used by thousands of employees across 6+ global business functions. Speed: You will reduce the "time-to-market" for internal AI squads from months to weeks by providing pre-built primitives for memory, routing, and governance. Authority: As the Engineering Leader, you define the "Syngenta Way" of building AI. Your architectural decisions will become the standard for the entire organization. Your Profile 8+ years of Software Engineering experience, , with a proven track record of building infrastructure, libraries, or large-scale platforms. 2+ years leading squads or small teams with outstanding performance. You still write critical code, perform deep design reviews, and set the technical bar for the squad. Hands-on experience building or maintaining SDKs, APIs, or developer toolkits. Strong understanding of AI/ML concepts - LLMs, embeddings, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or agent frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI SDK). Proficiency in at least one of: Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Java, or Go. Experience with API design principles, versioning strategies, and backward compatibility. It will be even better if you have: Experience with multi-modal AI (vision, speech, documents) Familiarity with cloud-native platforms: Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI Background in open-source developer tools or public SDK maintenance Knowledge of authentication, rate limiting, and enterprise SDK security patterns How you build & lead You believe great engineering management is: Clear over clever - you simplify, prioritise, and communicate objectively. Empowering over directing - you set context and raise the bar, then trust your team. Curious over certain - you ask good questions and learn from your team and stakeholders. Outcome-focused - you care about impact, not just activity or the size of the effort. Why This Role High Leverage: Your code will be the foundation for every AI product built within the company. A-player colleagues: High autonomy, high impact, and a team that values craft. Work at the intersection of AI capability and developer experience - one of the most exciting spaces in tech right now. What's it like to be part of Syngenta? Syngenta is a global leader in agricultural innovation, with operations in more than 90 countries. Our mission is to empower farmers with advanced technologies and practices that enable them to feed a growing world population while preserving the planet for future generations. Our pioneering scientific discoveries deliver superior benefits to farmers and society at an unprecedented scale. Guided by our Sustainability Priorities, we continuously develop technologies and solutions that help producers grow healthier plants in revitalized soils, maximizing productivity. Syngenta is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, and has teams spread across the globe. As you can imagine, within that mission, our technology teams play a central role — building digital, IT, data and AI solutions and products that bring this vision to life at scale. If you want to be at the forefront of ag-tech innovation, be part of an amazing global team, have real autonomy, and thrive in a fast-paced environment where new ideas are genuinely welcome — you're in the right place. Fasten your seatbelt, your biggest contribution to the world starts here! Qualifications Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science, or related fields Demonstrated experience in SDK design, API architecture, and library development Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with meticulous attention to detail Excellent understanding of software design principles, system architecture, and scalability patterns Additional Information Syngenta is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or any other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.