Agentic AI Principal (m/f/d)
ThoughtWorks13 hours ago
Cologne, GermanyStaff+
Responsibilities
- Shape and solution complex agentic AI pursuits across Germany, the Netherlands, and the DACH region.
- Advise C-suite stakeholders and lead AI maturity assessments, process agentisation, business-case development, and ROI discussions.
- Define architectures for production-grade multi-agent systems covering orchestration, tool use, memory, retrieval, evaluation, observability, and enterprise integration.
- Integrate agentic systems with SAP, healthcare, life sciences, industrial, and legacy enterprise platforms using protocols such as MCP and A2A.
- Design sovereign, compliant, secure, and reliable AI solutions for regulated European environments.
- Establish reusable patterns for governance, auditability, traceability, safeguards, human oversight, and technical evidence.
- Provide technical and delivery leadership across complex programmes while remaining hands-on enough to validate architecture and unblock teams.
- Set engineering standards and reusable patterns across multiple engagements and mentor senior engineers and technical leads.
- Evaluate emerging agentic AI technologies, grow the German and Dutch market presence, and develop partnerships and thought leadership.
Requirements
- Deep expertise in modern software engineering and Python, with a strong track record in testing, observability, maintainability, and production reliability.
- Recognized experience architecting and delivering complex GenAI and agentic AI systems at enterprise scale from discovery through production deployment.
- Deep knowledge of agentic frameworks such as LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, and LlamaIndex, including multi-agent coordination, tool use, orchestration, memory, MCP, and A2A.
- Strong expertise in retrieval-augmented generation, advanced information retrieval, vector databases, and enterprise knowledge integration.
- Experience designing evaluation strategies for quality, safety, reliability, latency, and cost in GenAI and agentic systems.
- Strong understanding of AI governance, guardrails, red-teaming, observability, responsible AI, secure deployment, prompt injection, data leakage, and tool misuse.
- Significant experience deploying AI systems on major cloud platforms with containers, orchestration, production infrastructure, sovereign cloud, hybrid, on-premises, or self-hosted open-weight models.
- Experience with prompt and context engineering, model fine-tuning where appropriate, and application-level performance optimization.
- Working knowledge of the EU AI Act, GDPR, GxP, GAMP 5, EU MDR/IVDR, EHDS, DORA, NIS2, and BaFin requirements as applicable.
- Strongly preferred experience delivering AI in healthcare or life sciences; SAP and industrial or manufacturing integration experience is a plus.
- Proven ability to lead C-suite engagements and shape, sell, and deliver complex Data and AI deals, including engagements of €5M+ and annual solutioning, selling, and delivery of €10M+ TCV.
- Recent consultancy or professional-services experience, ideally with German, Dutch, or DACH enterprise clients, and experience growing a practice, capability, or reusable go-to-market asset.
- Proven leadership across multidisciplinary teams, stakeholder influence without formal authority, mentoring capability, and executive communication skills.
- Experience navigating German works councils, data protection officers, procurement, and related stakeholder structures.
- German at B2 minimum, C1 strongly preferred, and fluent English.
Benefits
- Thoughtworks supports individualized career development through interactive tools, development programs, and a cultivation culture.
- The role is hybrid, as indicated by the posting's #LI-Hybrid designation.
- The position covers Germany, the Netherlands, and the wider DACH region.
Tech Stack
Categories
About ThoughtWorks
Thoughtworks is a global technology consultancy that designs and builds custom software, data platforms, and cloud-native systems for enterprises across industries. Its services-based model spans product discovery, agile delivery, platform modernization, and advisory on digital transformation and AI. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Chicago, it listed on Nasdaq in 2021 (TWKS) and remains backed by private-equity firm Apax Partners.