Senior AI Engineer II - Forward Deployed Engineer - Enterprise AI Platforms

American Express is seeking a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to partner directly with business units, product teams, and engineering organizations. In this role, you help surface and reframe high-value opportunities and deliver trusted, secure, and responsible AI solutions that move from discovery to proof of value, then into production scaling and long-term ownership.

Working in New York, NY in an onsite capacity, you will collaborate across seniority levels, influence without direct authority, and build reliable software that supports generative AI, agentic systems, and intelligent automation across the enterprise AI platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with business units, product teams, and engineering organizations to identify and reframe high-value opportunities, translating business challenges into clear value propositions and working solutions using generative AI, agentic systems, and intelligent automation.
• Guide opportunities through the lifecycle from discovery and demonstration to proof of value, production scaling, adoption, and transition to long-term ownership.
• Move credible opportunities into adoption by linking each stage to measurable outcomes while balancing enterprise needs for security, reliability, and responsible AI.
• Influence stakeholders across technical and non-technical levels, communicate clearly, and work alongside engineers to build and deploy reliable software.
• Challenge assumptions about how work gets done by analyzing processes as systems and identifying technical, operational, and organizational levers for improvement.
• Set longer-term technical direction and sequence practical near-term solutions that build toward that direction.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience delivering software, technical solutions, or digital products in an engineering, architecture, or technical consulting capacity.
• Demonstrated ability to take an ambiguous business or user problem through discovery, implementation, and measurable validation.
• Experience using coding agents in a structured engineering workflow, including specification-driven development, context management, iterative implementation, and reusable knowledge repositories.
• Software engineering fluency with hands-on ability to contribute to applications, integrations, services, or technical prototypes.
• Experience in at least one relevant domain such as mobile, web, backend services, APIs, distributed systems, platform engineering, workflow orchestration, or cloud-native development.
• Strong systems thinking to reason end to end, identify constraints and leverage points, and connect technical decisions to business outcomes.
• Strong communication and stakeholder partnership skills, including constructive challenge and influence without direct authority.
• Ability to define longer-term direction and sequence incremental solutions that build toward it.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States is required; the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.

Technologies

• Generative AI, agentic systems, intelligent automation
• Retrieval-augmented generation, vector databases
• Tool calling, model context protocols
• Knowledge retrieval
• Temporal, LangGraph, LangChain, LlamaIndex

Benefits

• Competitive base salary (USD 123,000 - 215,250 per year)
• Bonus incentives
• 6% Company Match on retirement savings plan
• Free financial coaching and financial well-being support
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability benefits
• Flexible working model with hybrid, onsite, or virtual arrangements depending on role and business need
• 20+ weeks paid parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender, offered for pregnancy, adoption, or surrogacy
• Free access to global on-site wellness centers staffed with nurses and doctors (depending on location)
• Free and confidential counseling support through the Healthy Minds program
• Career development and training opportunities

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or deploying solutions powered by language models, agentic systems, or AI-enabled process flows.
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, vector databases, tool calling, model context protocols, knowledge retrieval, or workflow technologies such as Temporal, LangGraph, LangChain, or LlamaIndex.
• Experience designing human-in-the-loop controls and operational safeguards, including knowledge of AI evaluation, observability, and responsible AI.
• Experience supporting technology adoption or operating-model transformation, particularly in financial services or another regulated industry.

Success Measures

• AI opportunities progress from discovery to proof of value and, when appropriate, production adoption.
• Measurable business outcomes tied to clearly defined KPIs.
• Ability to reframe valuable opportunities while linking near-term delivery to longer-term transformation.
• Solutions improve broader workflows and become part of sustainable operating models.
• Strong stakeholder relationships, technical quality, and effective management of security, risk, and reliability.
• Reusable capabilities and implementation patterns incorporated into the enterprise AI platform.

Working Model and Travel

• Occasional travel may be required for workshops or key delivery milestones, but frequent travel is not expected.
• Some roles may be based near selected American Express offices to support close partnerships with regional business and product teams.