Application Engineer - IV

About Vanguard Founded in 1975, Vanguard is one of the world's leading investment management companies. The firm offers investments, advice, and retirement services to tens of millions of individual investors around the globe—directly, through workplace plans, and through financial intermediaries. Vanguard’s India Office Vanguard’s office in India is a significant milestone in our global expansion. We are committed to establishing an enduring technology center in Hyderabad, Telangana and are excited to be adding talent who will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), mobile, and cloud-based technologies that drive our business outcomes and deliver a world-class experience for our clients.

Role Summary This role provides expert-level system analysis, design, development, and implementation of applications and databases, and directs business assessment and requirements analysis for hardware and operating systems, while architecting complex data integration and driving system performance and scalability improvements.

Responsibilities

• Provides expert level system analysis, design, development, and implementation of applications and databases. Integrates third party products. Ensures that expected application performance levels are achieved.
• Ensures the viability of IT deliverables. Recommends development options, including design, build/buy, and vendor purchase. Conducts testing, including functionality, technical limitations, and security.
• Elevates code into the development, test, and production environments on schedule. Provides follow up production support. Submits change control requests and documents.
• Provides subject matter expertise in software development methodology and development architecture standards. Mentors and trains staff with less experience. Resolves elevated issues and recommends enterprise-wide improvements.
• Participates in design, code, and test inspections throughout the life cycle to identify issues. Explains technical considerations at related meetings, including those with internal clients. Performs systems analysis activities.
• Thoroughly understands client business functions and technology needs. Has a broad and deep understanding of Vanguard's technologies, tools, and applications, including those that interface with business area and systems. Is well versed on the latest technologies and tools supporting software development in the industry.
• Interfaces with cross functional team members and communicates systems issues at the appropriate technical level for each audience.
• Thoroughly understands and complies with Information Technology and Information Security policies and procedures and verifies that deliverables meet requirements.
• Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.
• Architect and guide integration of complex data flows across distributed services, APIs, and platforms to enable reliable, secure, and seamless enterprise-level interoperability.
• Drive performance and scalability enhancements by proactively analyzing system behavior, optimizing database architecture, and implementing high-efficiency design patterns.

Qualifications And Skills

• Minimum 8 years of experience in application development, system architecture and database management.
• Bachelor’s degree (B.E./B.Tech) or Master’s degree (M.E./M.Tech) in relevant fields such as Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
• Familiarity with industry leader AI platforms such as MS Copilot, AWS Quick, Claude Suite, UIPath
• Ability to craft structured prompts, apply reasoning patterns, manage memory, and control agent behavior for accurate, reliable outputs.
• Hands-on experience building autonomous workflows using tools to orchestrate agents.
• Designing agents that can invoke APIs, query databases, and interact with enterprise tools to perform real-world actions beyond text generation.
• Strong coding skills to implement orchestration logic, handle async workflows, error handling, and integrate AI capabilities into applications.
• Understanding embeddings, vector search, RAG pipelines, model limitations, and how to ground LLM responses in enterprise data.
• Building multi-step, multi-agent systems with task decomposition, state tracking, and event-driven execution.
• Deploying scalable agent systems on AWS/Azure, using containers, managing CI/CD pipelines, and ensuring performance and reliability.
• Handling sensitive data, preventing prompt injection, enforcing guardrails, and ensuring compliance with enterprise policies.
• Monitoring agent performance, logging decisions, testing outputs, and iterating using feedback loops and metrics.
• Designing agents with clear business outcomes, usability, and ROI in mind—not just technical feasibility. Location This role is based in Hyderabad, Telangana at Vanguard’s India office. Only qualified external applicants will be considered. Our mission Vanguard adheres to a simple purpose: To take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success. Our commitment to you

Benefits Vanguard takes the same long-term view of your success—at work and in life—with Benefits and Rewards packages that reflect what you care about, throughout all the phases and stages of your life. Our Total Rewards programs provide you and your loved ones with wellness support for key areas in your life: Financial wellness We're committed to enabling your financial success and provide competitive offers and programs. Physical wellness We're committed to providing benefits that support your physical health and wellness. Personal wellness We're committed to providing resources that help support the full scope of your life. How we work Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for most of our employees (crew members), designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.