Engineering Manager - Agentic AI

Engineering Manager - Agentic AI 

Location: Flexible - remote, hybrid, or based at an Esko location.  
Worldwide locations considered.  
Function: Software Engineering 
Reports to: Director, Packaging Intelligence 

 
About the role 

Esko is building Agentic AI as a shared platform capability that enables product teams to create reliable AI-powered workflows without independently rebuilding common foundations. The platform team provides reusable capabilities, engineering patterns, and production foundations; product teams retain ownership of their domain applications and customer experiences. 

This is a hands-on engineering leadership role combining line management with substantial direct technical contribution. You will lead and develop the Agentic AI team, help shape the platform's technical direction, and take end-to-end ownership of substantial technical areas. Success will be measured not only by what the team ships, but by the quality, adoption, and leverage the platform creates across Esko. 

You will work closely with product engineering, architecture, cloud platform, security, compliance, product management, and design to translate shared needs and legitimate domain differences into coherent platform capabilities. You will also contribute to Esko's broader AI direction and participate in customer or industry discussions where your technical perspective is valuable. 

What you will do 

• Lead and develop the Agentic AI engineering team through clear goals, regular feedback, coaching, performance management, career development, and thoughtful allocation of ownership. 

• Contribute directly to the design, implementation, and operation of substantial areas of Esko's shared Agentic AI platform. 

• Help shape the platform's technical direction, architecture, interfaces, and engineering quality bar in collaboration with the wider platform and architecture community. 

• Translate recurring product and engineering needs into reusable platform capabilities, while accommodating legitimate domain differences without creating product-specific forks. 

• Establish strong engineering practices for reliability, security, observability, evaluation, performance, and compatibility for consuming teams. 

• Work directly with product engineering teams to support adoption of the shared platform and help them take domain-specific agentic capabilities from exploration into production. 

• Create an environment in which engineers can experiment, learn, challenge assumptions, and make evidence-based technical decisions while remaining accountable for production outcomes. 

• Define and use meaningful measures of platform adoption, quality, operational performance, delivery effectiveness, and team development to guide priorities and improvement. 

What we are looking for 

• Strong production software engineering experience in Python, TypeScript, Java, or a similar language, including designing, building, and operating reliable systems. 

• Demonstrated experience leading and developing engineers, including line management, coaching, performance feedback, and creating meaningful technical ownership. 

• Experience building a platform, API, or shared service used by multiple teams, with sound judgement about abstractions, interfaces, compatibility, and operational responsibilities. 

• Experience designing or building production AI systems using large language models, tool use, or agentic workflows, together with a practical understanding of their limitations and risks. 

• A track record of taking uncertain or early-stage technical ideas through evaluation, implementation, and adoption as dependable production capabilities. 

• Ability to balance platform coherence with legitimate product and domain differences, and to make clear technical trade-offs when needs conflict. 

• Experience collaborating across product engineering, architecture, infrastructure, security, and business functions in a global organization. 

• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to explain technical decisions clearly to engineering, product, and leadership audiences. 

• Undergraduate, Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science / Machine Learning / Data Science / Artificial Intelligence, or related disciplines. 

Preferred experience 

• Experience in packaging graphics, prepress, CAD, or the wider graphic arts industry. 

• Experience building or operating multi-tenant SaaS or cloud platform capabilities. 

• Experience with AI evaluation, observability, security controls, governance, or other production foundations for agentic systems. 

What success looks like 

• Delivery of solutions conforming to agreed specifications and architecture that leverage agentic AI to solve valuable customer problems in a way that is explainable and repeatable – resulting in measurable productivity improvements.  

• Teams across the business ship AI-powered capabilities that solve valuable customer problems by leveraging a shared foundation, rather than “re-inventing the wheel”. 

• Providing adequate space for ideation - and inspiration for team members to try new approaches, technologies and techniques. 

• Team members are set meaningful, measurable goals - with training and development plans created to facilitate their ongoing personal and career development. 

• Delivery of initiatives occurs in line with Esko’s Software Development Lifecycle and in accordance with company policy and security best practices.  

• The Agentic AI platform grows as a coherent whole rather than fragmenting into one-off, team-specific solutions. 

• A class-leading set of capabilities provide a powerful base for Esko cross-functional teams to transform the value of our software using cutting-edge AI technologies.