Staff Engineer GenAI Developer

About Us Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

Overview We are seeking an experienced Staff GenAI Developer to join our Corporate Generative AI CGAI Technologies team which serves as the CIT GenAI Center of Excellence. In this senior role you will drive the development of generative AI solutions covering use cases like intent processing retrieval augmented generation agentic actions and document summarization that empower our employees. You will provide technical leadership across teams define and enforce best practices bring a product driven mindset and ensure our GenAI platforms and applications are robust scalable and aligned with business needs. This role requires a hands on leader with a passion for innovation in AI strong mentorship skills and deep expertise in Python LangChain Azure cloud services and vector databases for AI. Key Responsibilities Technical Vision and Architecture Define and drive the technical vision architecture and roadmap for GenAI initiatives ensuring solutions are scalable secure and high performance to meet enterprise needs. This includes architecting core GenAI capabilities such as LLM agent orchestration retrieval augmented generation RAG pipelines prompt engineering tools and model fine tuning workflows that support advanced use cases intent understanding document summarization autonomous agents and more. You will make high level design decisions and determine the priority of which AI problems to tackle for maximum business impact. Hands on Solution Development Lead the end to end development and implementation of GenAI solutions. You will not only oversee architecture but also dive into coding and prototyping critical components especially in Python or Java to integrate large language models LLMs and frameworks such as LangChain with our platforms. You will ensure that AI models including embeddings and knowledge bases for RAG are effectively used to solve real world problems for employees. Cross Functional Collaboration Work closely with product managers data scientists and platform engineers to integrate GenAI features into existing products and workflows. As the GenAI subject matter expert you will collaborate with multiple teams across departments or regions to drive adoption of AI capabilities in high impact use cases and ensure solutions fit within the broader technology ecosystem. This includes coordinating with other engineering leaders to align GenAI efforts with the companys technology vision and product roadmap. Leadership and Mentorship Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the engineering team. You will guide junior and senior developers alike sharing deep expertise in AI ML and helping elevate the overall skill level of the team. This involves code reviews pair programming and advising on solution design. As a Staff Engineer you will foster an inclusive learning oriented environment and may lead micro teams or pods focused on specific product features ensuring they deliver quality results. Best Practices and Standards Establish and enforce software development best practices across the GenAI team and related teams. You will create technical guidelines set coding standards and ensure robust testing code quality and documentation for all AI projects. A key part of the role is to champion engineering excellence driving the adoption of continuous integration CI code review rigor high test coverage and secure coding practices for any AI driven software. You will also ensure that all development conforms to the companys standards for security performance resiliency and compliance as expected in a mission critical enterprise environment. Agile Project Leadership . Take a leading role in our Agile Scrum process to ensure consistent and timely delivery of features. This includes participating in and often leading sprint planning backlog grooming and retrospectives. You will use Scrum and Jira to track progress and remove impediments and leverage CI CD pipelines such as Jenkins to streamline deployments. By coordinating across teams you help maintain alignment on priorities and ensure that shifting project needs are addressed swiftly. Product Mindset and Innovation Bring a strong product development mindset continuously aligning technical solutions with end user needs and business objectives. You will identify opportunities where GenAI can add value for users and propose innovative solutions for example new AI driven features or improvements to existing workflows. Part of your role is to look ahead and suggest strategic improvements for instance recognizing unmet needs in the company that generative AI could solve and developing proof of concepts to address them. You will balance rapid experimentation with thoughtful design to ensure prototypes can evolve into scalable products. Responsible AI and Governance Ensure that all GenAI solutions adhere to responsible AI principles and company policies. You will integrate ethical considerations such as data privacy model fairness and AI safety into the development lifecycle. By working with the AI governance or security teams you will implement guardrails for AI usage and help define standards for safe deployment of LLMs within the organization. Continuous Learning Stay abreast of the latest developments in AI ML such as emerging LLM models tools and best practices and evaluate how to leverage them for our platform. As part of the GenAI COE you will be expected to continuously research new techniques such as improvements in vector databases new open source frameworks or Azure AI services and drive the adoption of those that can enhance our product. You will also represent the team in knowledge sharing forums and may present our GenAI innovations to broader engineering groups or leadership. This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager. Qualifications

Experience: 6 plus years of software development experience including substantial hands on work in AI ML or GenAI projects preferably at least 2 to 3 years focused on building applications with LLMs or related AI technologies. Prior experience as a tech lead or in a senior engineer role is expected demonstrating ability to guide teams through complex projects.

Technical Expertise: In depth understanding of large language models and generative AI techniques including how to implement and optimize LLM based solutions such as prompt engineering fine tuning models working with embeddings and retrieval augmented generation for knowledge bases. Proven ability to design and build systems that incorporate LLMs such as AI chatbots agent workflows or NLP services. Experience with building AI agents capable of multistep reasoning or tool use is a strong plus.

Programming Skills: Advanced proficiency in Python for AI ML development and familiarity with Java or other object oriented languages. Experience using frameworks and libraries for GenAI for example LangChain Hugging Face Transformers or OpenAI APIs to develop and integrate AI functionalities. Solid understanding of data structures and algorithms able to write efficient code for both prototyping and production.

Cloud and Infrastructure: Hands on experience with cloud platforms Azure preferred or AWS or GCP and deploying AI solutions at scale. Knowledge of containerization and microservices architecture is beneficial. Ability to work with vector databases or similar technologies for storing embeddings and enabling semantic search is required as our GenAI applications rely on these for RAG and context.

Agile and DevOps: Strong understanding of Agile methodologies and experience working in Scrum teams. Proficiency with tools like Jira for project tracking and CI CD pipelines such as Jenkins and Git workflows for automated build and deployment. You should be comfortable with test driven development and continuous integration practices that ensure rapid yet stable iteration.

Leadership and Communication: Excellent leadership skills with a track record of mentoring engineers and influencing teams beyond your own. Capable of setting technical direction and getting buy in from stakeholders through clear communication and demonstrated expertise. Strong collaboration skills to work cross functionally able to translate complex technical concepts into proposals or explanations for product managers and executives.

Problem Solving and Strategic Vision: Demonstrated ability to tackle ambiguous problems and break them down into actionable plans. You anticipate future challenges and opportunities in the GenAI space and craft solutions that not only solve immediate issues but also fit the long term strategy of the product and team. A knack for balancing quick wins with strategic investments will be important.

Education: Bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering or related field. A Masters or PhD in AI ML or a related specialization is a plus or equivalent hands on experience at scale. Visa is an EEO Employer Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.