Senior Staff Software Engineer - Digital Research & Development

Digital R&D Staff Software Engineer

Job Title: Digital R&D Staff Software Engineer

Location: Hyderabad (Hybrid)

At Sanofi HYD Hub Digital R&D, we work at the intersection of science and software, partnering closely with product teams and scientists to revolutionize how we approach drug development. Our mission is to leverage cutting-edge technology to innovate across the entire R&D pipeline, from initial research through clinical trials. 

We are an innovative global healthcare company with one purpose: to chase the miracles of science to improve people’s lives. Digital & Data are at the heart of Sanofi: our ambition is to be the leading digital healthcare platform to develop & deliver medicine faster, enable healthcare professionals to improve treatments and help patients improve their health. Ready to get started?

Your Impact  
As a Staff Software Engineer you will: 
You will work at the forefront of applied AI — building multi-agent architectures, LLM-powered workflows, and intelligent automation pipelines that directly support Sanofi's mission to bring life-saving therapies to patients faster. This includes hands-on experience with platforms such as AWS Bedrock and AWS AgentCore for scalable agent deployment, and MCP (Model Context Protocol) for standardized tool and data source integration. This is a high-impact role for an engineer who is passionate about autonomous AI systems and wants to apply them in a meaningful, regulated, and scientifically rigorous environment.

Key Responsibilities

Agentic AI Design & Development

• Design, build, and deploy autonomous AI agent systems capable of multi-step reasoning, planning, and task execution across R&D workflows

• Develop multi-agent architectures where specialized agents collaborate, delegate, and coordinate to solve complex pharmaceutical problems

• Implement tool-using agents that interact with APIs, databases, internal systems, and external data sources

• Build feedback loops and self-correction mechanisms to improve agent reliability and accuracy over time

• Leverage AWS AgentCore for agent lifecycle management, memory persistence, and tool integration — deploying and managing agents at scale in a governed, enterprise environment

• Design and implement MCP (Model Context Protocol)-based agent architectures, building MCP servers and clients to standardize how agents interact with external tools, data sources, and Sanofi's internal services

LLM-Based Solution Engineering

• Develop and fine-tune LLM-based applications using frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, CrewAI, or similar

• Design and implement Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines to ground agents in Sanofi's proprietary scientific and operational knowledge

• Engineer prompt engineering strategies, chain-of-thought reasoning, and structured output parsing for production-grade reliability

• Evaluate and benchmark LLM performance across models (GPT-4, Claude, Mistral, Llama, etc.) for specific pharmaceutical use cases

• Build and deploy agentic solutions using AWS Bedrock Agents and Bedrock Knowledge Bases, leveraging foundation models available on Bedrock (e.g., Claude, Titan, Llama) for scalable, managed generative AI workloads

Software Engineering & Architecture

• Write clean, maintainable, production-ready Python code following software engineering best practices (SOLID principles, design patterns, code reviews)

• Build RESTful and event-driven APIs to expose agent capabilities to downstream applications and users

• Implement CI/CD pipelines, automated testing (unit, integration, regression), and monitoring for AI systems

• Ensure observability of agent behavior through logging, tracing, and evaluation frameworks (e.g., LangSmith, Arize, Weights & Biases)

Systems Integration

• Integrate agentic solutions with Sanofi's existing digital ecosystem including data platforms, clinical systems, ERP, and knowledge management tools

• Connect agents to vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, Chroma) for semantic search and memory management

• Work with cloud-native services ( AWS) to deploy scalable, secure, and compliant AI workloads — including AWS Bedrock managed AI services for foundation model access and agent orchestration

• Integrate MCP-compatible tools into agent workflows, enabling standardized, interoperable connections between AI models and external data sources, APIs, and enterprise systems

• Collaborate with data engineers to ensure agents have access to high-quality, governed data pipelines

Collaboration & Delivery

• Partner with product managers, data scientists, and domain experts (biologists, clinicians, regulatory specialists) to translate scientific needs into agentic AI solutions

• Participate in Agile ceremonies (sprint planning, retrospectives, demos) and contribute to team velocity

• Contribute to technical documentation, architecture decision records (ADRs), and internal knowledge sharing

• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to the team's AI engineering standards and best practices

About You

• Experience: 12+ years of experience (or equivalent knowledge). If you feel qualified, apply regardless of years of experience!

• Education: Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or equivalent experience is a plus.

• Soft Skills: Experience in an innovative, fast-paced environment.

• At Sanofi, we empower engineers to take responsibility and accountability for what they build. You have the freedom of technical choice to drive innovation: 

• Assumes responsibility for the success of projects, including meeting deadlines and quality standards. 

• Takes ownership of technical decisions and leads efforts to overcome obstacles. Accountable for the overall performance and efficiency of engineering solutions. 

• Actively participates in the design, development, and testing of critical components.

• Experience working with multiple teams to drive alignment and results. Service-oriented, flexible, and a team player who takes initiative

• Strong problem-solving & critical thinking skills. 

• Growth mindset with enthusiasm for learning new technologies and approaches

• Innovation-focused with a willingness to experiment and introduce improved ways of working

• Collaborative leadership that encourages open dialogue where team members feel safe to share ideas and learn from mistakes

• You have a proven ability to spot organizational leverage points that unlock exponential productivity gains

• Technical Skills : Programming: Strong proficiency in Python (3.9+); familiarity with async programming, type hints, and packaging

• AI/ML Frameworks: Hands-on experience with LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, CrewAI, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent agentic frameworks

• LLMs & Generative AI: Practical experience building applications on top of OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, or open-source LLMs

• AWS Bedrock: Hands-on experience with AWS Bedrock as a managed generative AI platform — including working with Bedrock Agents for orchestrating multi-step agentic workflows, Bedrock Knowledge Bases for RAG-based retrieval, and selecting and evaluating foundation models available on Bedrock (e.g., Anthropic Claude, Amazon Titan, Meta Llama)

• AWS AgentCore: Experience using AWS AgentCore for building, deploying, and managing AI agents at scale — including agent lifecycle management, memory configuration, and tool/API integration within the AgentCore framework

• wMCP (Model Context Protocol): Practical experience with Anthropic's Model Context Protocol — including building MCP servers and clients, integrating MCP-compatible tools into agent workflows, and designing MCP-based architectures that standardize how AI models interact with external data sources and services

• RAG Systems: Experience designing and implementing end-to-end RAG pipelines including chunking strategies, embedding models, and retrieval optimization

• Vector Databases: Working knowledge of at least one vector store (Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma, pgvector, Qdrant)

• APIs & Integration: Experience building and consuming REST APIs; familiarity with OAuth2, API gateways, and webhook patterns

• Cloud Platforms: Hands-on experience with, AWS — including managed AI services (Azure OpenAI Service, AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI)

• DevOps & MLOps: Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and model deployment pipelines

• Data Handling: Proficiency with SQL, JSON, and working with structured/unstructured data sources

• Domain & Engineering Practices : Demonstrated experience building agentic or autonomous AI systems in a professional setting

• Understanding of agent memory models (short-term, long-term, episodic), tool use, and planning strategies (ReAct, Plan-and-Execute, etc.)

• Solid grasp of software engineering fundamentals: version control (Git), testing, code review, and documentation

• Awareness of AI safety, responsible AI principles, and the importance of human-in-the-loop design in regulated environments

• Infrastructure as Code – Terraform, AWS CDK, or similar 

• Proficiency in JavaScript / Node.js 

• Proficiency of microservices, APIs, and cloud security 

• Language : Excellent written and verbal communication in English

 
Growing Our Team and Culture

At Sanofi, beyond technical expertise, we value leadership that builds strong teams. You'll have opportunities to: 
Lead technical initiatives while fostering collaboration across teams 
Shape our engineering culture through mentoring and knowledge sharing 
Help grow our team by participating in hiring and talent development 
Drive positive team culture that encourages innovation and inclusivity 

Why choose us?

• We provide a highly collaborative environment, with an opportunity to work with a world class team

• Contribute to a company that is not only a leader in healthcare but also a pioneer in digital transformation, shaping the future of global health

• Bring the miracles of science to life alongside a supportive, future-focused team

• Discover endless opportunities to grow your talent and drive your career, whether it’s through a promotion or lateral move, at home or internationally

• Enjoy a thoughtful, well-crafted rewards package that recognizes your contribution and amplifies your impact

• Take good care of yourself and your family, with a wide range of health and wellbeing benefits including high-quality healthcare, prevention and wellness programs and at least 14 weeks’ gender-neutral parental leave

• Play an instrumental part in creating best practice within our manufacturing facility

Pursue progress, discover extraordinary

Better is out there. Better medications, better outcomes, better science. But progress doesn’t happen without people – people from different backgrounds, in different locations, doing different roles, all united by one thing: a desire to make miracles happen. So, let’s be those people.

At Sanofi, we provide equal opportunities to all regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, ability or gender identity.

Watch our ALL IN video and check out our Diversity Equity and Inclusion actions at sanofi.com!

Experience Level

Senior Level