Principal Engineer – Agentic AI

Location: TORONTO, Ontario, Canada

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

What's the opportunity?

We're looking for an experienced Principal Engineer with deep expertise in agentic AI systems who will bring technical leadership, hands-on building capabilities, and strategic advisory guidance to accelerate agentic AI adoption across RBC. This is a unique opportunity to shape enterprise AI strategy, deliver production-grade solutions, and build organizational capability in emerging agentic technologies.

At RBC Borealis, you'll be joining a team that bridges Lines of Business with our cutting-edge Borealis agentic AI platform. You'll work directly with business stakeholders, platform engineers, and technical teams to deliver high-impact solutions while influencing platform evolution based on real-world deployment insights.

Your responsibilities include:

• Conducting discovery with LoB stakeholders to translate business challenges into agentic AI use case specifications and solution architectures

• Developing end-to-end agentic AI solutions including architecting system components, writing production code, designing RAG pipelines, implementing agent orchestration, and ensuring security/compliance

• Serving as a bidirectional advocate between Lines of Business and Borealis platform engineering to identify capability gaps and prioritize platform roadmap enhancements

• Designing and delivering technical enablement programs to build LoB team independence and organizational agentic AI capability

• Providing architectural guidance, code reviews, and mentoring to LoB engineering teams during collaborative solution development

• Leading production deployments, post-deployment optimization, and contributing reusable components back to shared platforms

• Participating in EA governance and community of practice to identify synergies and shape reference architectures

You're our ideal candidate if you have:

• 12+ years of combined experience in software architecture, enterprise AI/ML systems, cloud platforms, and consulting roles; including 3-5 years hands-on with agentic AI systems, LLMs, and modern AI/ML frameworks

• Advanced expertise in agentic AI architecture, design patterns, and implementation (React, ReAct, Tool Use, multi-agent orchestration)

• Proficiency in Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and advanced prompting techniques

• Advanced expertise in Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, vector databases, embeddings, and knowledge architectures

• Advanced Python programming skills with ability to write production-grade, maintainable code

• Hands-on experience designing and implementing Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and enterprise system integrations

• Knowledge of cloud platform architecture, deployment, and DevOps practices (AWS, Azure, GCP)

• Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code

• Knowledge of enterprise security, compliance, data governance, and secure coding practices

• Proven ability to drive technical strategy, influence stakeholders with competing interests, and facilitate cross-functional alignment

• Strong consulting and stakeholder management skills with ability to understand business problems, communicate trade-offs, and adapt technical approaches

• Demonstrated mentoring and enablement capability with strong communication, presentation, and facilitation skills

• Comfort with ambiguity in the rapidly evolving AI/ML landscape and ability to work in Agile environments

What's in it for you?

• Become part of a strategic team driving RBC's enterprise AI transformation and competitive positioning

• Work on cutting-edge agentic AI technology with access to leading researchers, rich datasets, and significant computational resources

• Immediate impact on high-visibility, high-value business initiatives across the enterprise

• Leaders who support your development through mentoring and strategic career opportunities

• Ability to shape platform strategy and influence enterprise-wide AI adoption

• Comprehensive Total Rewards Program including competitive compensation, bonuses, flexible benefits, and stock options where applicable

About RBC Borealis

RBC Borealis is the driving force behind Royal Bank of Canada’s AI and data innovation. As part of Canada’s largest financial institution, we bring together a team of architects, engineers, scientists, and product experts on a mission to revolutionize finance through world-class research, solutions, and a resilient data platform. With locations across Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver, we’re at the forefront of AI research and platform development. With a focus on cutting-edge research in areas like time series forecasting, causal machine learning, and responsible AI, we are seamlessly integrating AI research and data engineering, to solve critical challenges in the financial industry. We are building intelligent, and scalable, data-driven solutions that will help communities thrive and drive innovation for our customers across the bank.

Inclusion and Equal Opportunity Employment

RBC is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We are pleased to consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veterans status, Aboriginal/Native American status or any other legally-protected factors. Disability-related accommodations during the application process are available upon request.

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Job Skills

Big Data Management, Cloud Computing, Database Development, Data Mining, Data Warehousing (DW), ETL Processing, Quality Management, Requirements Analysis, Software Product Management, Waterfall Model

Additional Job Details

RBC WATERPARK PLACE, 88 QUEENS QUAY W:TORONTOTorontoCanada37.5Full timeTECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONSRegularSalaried2026-02-232026-03-31

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the application deadline date above

Inclusion and Equal Opportunity Employment

At RBC, we believe an inclusive workplace that has diverse perspectives is core to our continued growth as one of the largest and most successful banks in the world. Maintaining a workplace where our employees feel supported to perform at their best, effectively collaborate, drive innovation, and grow professionally helps to bring our Purpose to life and create value for our clients and communities. RBC strives to deliver this through policies and programs intended to foster a workplace based on respect, belonging and opportunity for all.

RBC is presently inviting candidates to apply for this existing vacancy. Applying to this posting allows you to express your interest in this current career opportunity at RBC. Qualified applicants may be contacted to review their resume in more detail.