Principal AI Engineer - Hybrid in Bangalore

The role

You will own the target-state architecture for the Smartsheet AI platform. This involves defining standards for Data, Agents, Knowledge Graph, and Context Graph, and building a reference agent framework for other teams.

What you will do

• Own the target-state architecture for Smartsheet's AI platform
• Set the architecture for the agent harness and sub-agent framework
• Design and own schema/ontology, ingestion and freshness pipelines, and retrieval and grounding patterns
• Build and maintain a reference agent framework
• Author and publish a shared skills and tools library
• Stand up fast, slim prototypes to de-risk architecture decisions
• Define deployment, security, and governance patterns
• Serve as the primary technical lead for strategic technology partners
• Partner with Principal Engineers and team leads to align to platform milestones
• Engage with Forward Deployed Engineering and MCP/external parity

Required qualifications

• Deep, hands-on experience architecting production agentic systems on Databricks Platform, AWS Bedrock/AgentCore and MCPs
• Experience in Agent harness/orchestration design, sub-agent boundaries, tracing and observability (e.g., MLflow), Evals, Governance, Responsible AI and cost/latency instrumentation at platform scale
• Strong background in Knowledge and Context graph based systems, including ontology design, ingestion pipelines, and retrieval/grounding evaluation
• A builder's track record of prototyping rapidly and shipping working software
• Experience designing reusable, versioned software interfaces that multiple teams adopt directly
• Familiarity with modern LLM/agent tooling and standards, including Databricks, Bedrock, Strands SDK, and MCP (Model Context Protocol)
• Comfort operating as a technical DRI in strategic partner relationships
• Proven ability to set cross-team technical standards and drive alignment without formal management authority
• Strong judgment on architectural tradeoffs spanning model selection, inference patterns, deployment, and governance
• Excellent cross-functional communication skills
• Legally eligible to work in India on an ongoing basis

About the company

Smartsheet is an Intelligent Work Management Platform that unites people, data, and AI. Its India Global Capability Center delivers product innovation and enterprise capabilities to accelerate global growth.