Director, Engineering - Agentic Systems (AI Concierge)

Visa•Foster City, CA

1h•Hybrid

About The Position

Visa’s Technology Organization is a community of problem solvers and innovators reshaping the future of commerce. We operate the world’s most sophisticated processing networks capable of handling more than 65k secure transactions a second across 80M merchants, 15k Financial Institutions, and billions of everyday people. While working with us you’ll get to work on complex distributed systems and solve massive scale problems centered on new payment flows, business and data solutions, cyber security, and B2C platforms. The Opportunity: The Director of Engineering will lead and scale the engineering organization responsible for Affluent Charter’s benefit discovery and redemption platforms, with a key focus on the development of AI‑powered and agentic systems that enhance how customers discover, understand, and redeem benefits. This is a senior leadership role combining people management, technical strategy, and AI‑driven innovation. The Director will guide teams building intelligent, autonomous, and semi‑autonomous systems that improve personalization, automation, and operational efficiency, while maintaining high standards for security, reliability, and regulatory compliance. The Work itself: Design code and systems that touch 40% of the world population while influencing Visa’s internal standards for scalability, security, and reusability Collaborate multi-functionally to create design artifacts and develop best-in-class software solutions for multiple Visa technical offerings Actively contribute to product quality improvements, valuable service technology, and new business flows in diverse agile squads Develop robust and scalable products intended for a myriad of customers including end-user merchants, b2b, and business to government solutions. Leverage innovative technologies to build the next generation of Payment Services, Transaction Platforms, Real-Time Payments, and Buy Now Pay Later Technology Opportunities to make a difference on a global or local scale through mentorship and continued learning opportunities

Requirements

10+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 7 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 4 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 13+ years of relevant work experience.
12+ years of professional software engineering experience.
5+ years in engineering management or director‑level leadership roles.
Demonstrated experience leading teams building AI‑powered platforms or agentic systems.
Strong background in distributed systems, APIs, and platform engineering.
Experience designing or overseeing AI/ML systems, including LLM‑based or agentic architectures.
Familiarity with concepts such as autonomous agents, orchestration, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), and human‑in‑the‑loop workflows.
Understanding of model deployment, evaluation, monitoring, and lifecycle management.
People‑first leader with a passion for developing engineers, managers, and AI practitioners.
Clear, credible communicator with executive presence.
Strong judgment navigating ambiguity, risk, and rapid technological change.
Customer‑centric mindset focused on building trustworthy, high‑impact AI experiences.
Comfortable owning outcomes and driving organizational transformation.

Nice To Haves

12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or equivalent experience.
Experience in fintech, benefits, loyalty, or regulated consumer platforms is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

Aligns enhancements and modifications to existing software coding standard processes and design specifications, across regions, and ensures they are aligned with current security standards.
Guides the implementation of automation to improve effectiveness and efficiencies of systems and tools across regions and supports development and implementation of new automation, identifying where investment will yield the greatest efficiencies.
Maintains communication with regional leadership across functions to monitor and direct the cadence of code reviews, on-call rotations, and incident responses throughout product development and operations cycles.
Leverages back-end technical expertise on underlying systems/platforms across the organization to lead the development systematic improvements in processes to ensure the fulfillment of customer/business objectives.
Build, lead, and develop high‑performing engineering and AI platform teams, including managers and senior engineers.
Coach and mentor engineering managers and technical leaders, supporting career growth and succession planning.
Establish clear goals, performance expectations, and feedback mechanisms.
Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, experimentation, and responsible AI development.
Partner with recruiting to attract and retain top engineering and AI talent.
Own the engineering and AI strategy for benefit discovery and redemption experiences.
Define and execute a roadmap for agentic systems that support intelligent benefit discovery, eligibility evaluation, redemption orchestration, and customer support automation.
Translate business and product strategy into scalable technical plans that incorporate AI safely and effectively.
Balance rapid innovation in AI with long‑term platform stability and maintainability.
Provide architectural guidance for distributed systems, APIs, data platforms, and AI services.
Ensure agentic systems are designed with human‑in‑the‑loop controls, observability, and auditability.
Champion best practices in model lifecycle management, evaluation, and monitoring.
Ensure platforms meet standards for performance, security, privacy, and compliance, especially in regulated fintech environments.
Partner closely with Product, Design, Data, Compliance, Legal, and Operations leaders.
Communicate AI capabilities, limitations, risks, and progress clearly to executive and non‑technical stakeholders.
Align engineering and AI initiatives with customer experience goals and business outcomes.
Support executive decision‑making with clear technical trade‑offs and delivery plans.
Oversee engineering efforts enabling AI‑driven partner integrations and benefit provider onboarding.
Ensure APIs, tooling, and documentation support intelligent workflows and automation.
Advocate for customer and partner needs, ensuring AI systems enhance clarity, trust, and usability.
Incorporate customer and partner feedback into continuous improvement of AI‑powered experiences.
Establish and evolve engineering and AI development processes that scale responsibly.
Define and track KPIs across delivery, reliability, model performance, and customer experience.
Ensure incident response, post‑mortems, and continuous improvement practices include AI systems.
Implement governance for ethical, explainable, and compliant AI usage, including data handling and bias considerations.