Lead Engineer, AI Agent Systems

Patsnap is transforming professional knowledge work with AI. Built on our deep expertise in global patent, R&D, and innovation data, we are developing AI Agent products for complex workflows such as patent search, analysis, drafting, and prosecution.

We are looking for a Lead Engineer, AI Agent Systems, who will provide hands-on technical leadership in architecting and building next-generation agent infrastructure for complex, knowledge-intensive work. This role will lead the evolution of core agent systems spanning execution and orchestration, context and reasoning, and foundational capabilities such as memory, retrieval, secure sandboxing, skills, and observability. Working closely with the engineering team, this leader will set key architectural direction, contribute directly to critical platform modules, and turn real-world business requirements into reliable, scalable, and reusable agent capabilities.

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This is a in office position in our Shanghai, China office.

Who are we?

Patsnap is a global, pre-IPO company that transforms the way organizations harness their Intellectual Property and Research & Development productivity. Our platform revolutionizes how IP and R&D teams collaborate across the entire innovation lifecycle, using domain-specific AI to accelerate the creation of market-ready products. With over 12,000 customers worldwide, including some of the biggest names in innovation, Patsnap is at the forefront of technological advancement. Our $300M Series E funding round brings our valuation to a $1 billion unicorn status, and we still have a remarkable amount of growth ahead.

We have a vibrant and diverse team with offices in Singapore, Toronto, London, Shanghai and remote teams based in US. Our hyper-growth trajectory is powered by our people, and we are extremely proud of our company-wide vision, work ethic, and entrepreneurial spirit. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where talent thrives and ideas bloom.

What You'll Be Doing

Architecture Leadership and Evolution

Lead the architecture and evolution of next-generation agent infrastructure designed for complex, knowledge-intensive work.

Define clear boundaries and collaboration mechanisms across three core layers: the execution engine, context and reasoning orchestration, and the agent capability foundation. Ensure high availability, reliability, and long-term extensibility in environments with a low tolerance for hallucinations and incorrect outputs.

Agent Execution Engine

Design and implement the Agent Loop runtime and its middleware pipelines.

Lead the execution and orchestration of planning and sub-agent workflows, including task decomposition, dependency management, concurrency control, and execution scheduling.

Build mechanisms for checkpointing, interruption and resumption, failure recovery, self-healing, authorization, and cost control to ensure the reliable execution of long-running and complex multi-step tasks.

Context and Reasoning Orchestration

Own the design and implementation of core context orchestration capabilities.

Develop strategies for input standardization, dynamic capability representation, and hierarchical context-budget management, including structured degradation when resource or context limits are reached.

Build structured task workspaces that support efficient organization of dynamic context. Address challenges including long-history compression, tool-output normalization, evidence traceability, and the management of information across different stages of a task.

Agent Capability Foundation

Lead the development of foundational agent capabilities, including:

Secure sandboxed environments using technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, and AST-based controls

Multi-layer memory stores

Retrieval and knowledge-access capabilities

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) Hub

Skill execution and management engines

File-processing and transfer pipelines

Multi-tenant isolation and security controls

End-to-end observability and diagnostics

Technical Leadership and Team Enablement

Remain hands-on and personally contribute code to critical platform modules.

Lead technical decomposition, architecture decisions, code reviews, and the development of automated evaluation systems and feedback loops.

Guide the engineering team in translating specific business use cases into reusable platform and infrastructure capabilities.

Requirements

What We'd Love From You

Engineering and Leadership Experience

At least five years of professional software engineering experience.

Proven experience leading the design and delivery of complex software systems beyond standard CRUD applications or basic integrations with AI APIs.

Demonstrated experience operating as a Tech Lead, Staff Engineer, or equivalent technical leader.

Experience leading an engineering team of at least three people.

Core Engineering Capabilities

Strong Python software-engineering skills and the ability to independently own critical platform modules.

Deep experience with common engineering challenges such as streaming responses, asynchronous and concurrent execution, and multi-model routing and provider integration.

Strong judgement in balancing system reliability, security, cost, latency, and delivery speed.

Solid understanding of distributed systems, production architecture, debugging, and operational reliability.

Depth in AI and Agent Systems

Candidates must have substantial hands-on engineering experience with Agent and LLM systems, with deep expertise in at least two of the following three areas:

Execution Engine

Multi-step reasoning loops

Tool lifecycle management

Planning and sub-agent orchestration

Interruption and resumption

Failure recovery and self-healing

Context and Reasoning Orchestration

Input standardization

Context assembly

Context and token-budget governance

Provider-specific request shaping

Task-stage modelling

Long-context compression and evidence traceability

Agent Capability Foundation

Sandbox isolation

Memory and retrieval systems

MCP infrastructure

File-system and file-processing capabilities

Multi-tenant isolation

Security, monitoring, and observability