Your Team Responsibilities

MSCI's HR Technology team builds and operates the platforms and applications that support approximately 6,300 employees across global offices. The team runs a modern HR data platform on Azure Databricks and is actively building an agentic application layer on top of it — intelligent tools for recruiting, compensation, position management, HR operations, and more.

The team's philosophy is practitioner-grounded: build things that work, ship them to real users, learn from how they are used, and improve. We use Anthropic Claude as our primary AI model, Databricks as our application and intelligence platform, and Workday and iCIMS as our core HR systems of record. We are early in an ambitious build cycle. The right engineer will find this genuinely exciting.

This is an application and AI engineering role, not a data engineering role. The Lead Software Engineer, HR Technology builds intelligent solutions — conversational agents, workflow automation, and HR applications — that change how MSCI's 6,300 employees experience HR. The platform those solutions run on is Azure Databricks. But the job is building things people use, not building pipelines.

You are a senior engineer who has shipped production software and is comfortable taking ownership of complex, ambiguous problems. You know how to work with AI models — prompt them, integrate them, build reliable agent workflows around them — and you know how to deliver applications that non-technical users can actually navigate. You bring engineering rigor to a space that is moving fast and has real business stakes.

This role sits at the center of MSCI HR Technology's AI agenda. The HR Data Platform is live. The intelligence layer is being built now. You will be a primary builder of it.

Your Key Responsibilities

AI agents and intelligent applications

Design and ship conversational agents that help HR teams and employees get answers, take actions, and move work forward — without touching a system directly
Build multi-step agentic workflows with tool use, structured outputs, and human-in-the-loop controls that are reliable enough to run in production
Integrate LLM APIs — primarily Anthropic Claude — into applications through patterns that are robust, testable, and maintainable
Develop MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers that give AI agents structured, secure access to enterprise systems including Workday and iCIMS
Evaluate and adopt emerging AI capabilities as they become available — you are expected to know what is coming before it arrives

HR applications that solve real problems

Build and deploy web applications that HR practitioners and employees interact with directly — approvals, intake forms, dashboards, status tools
Translate complex HR requirements from Talent Acquisition, Compensation, HR Operations, and other functions into working software
Own end-to-end delivery: from requirements through development, testing, deployment, and iteration based on real usage
Build applications that integrate with enterprise systems — Workday, iCIMS, ServiceNow — and make those systems more accessible through intelligent interfaces

Integrations and platform connectivity

Design and implement integrations between HR systems using REST APIs and MCP server patterns
Ensure the applications you build have clean, reliable connections to the data and systems they depend on
Work with data engineers on the team to make sure application data needs are properly served by the platform layer
Contribute to the engineering standards and reusable patterns that make future integrations faster and more consistent

Technical standards and collaboration

Define the engineering patterns the team builds from — code quality, application architecture, integration design
Raise the technical bar through code review, pairing, and the quality of what you ship
Participate in architecture reviews and sprint planning as the senior engineering voice
Communicate clearly with non-technical stakeholders about what is being built, why, and when
Participate in the HR AI Lab demo series — show the work, explain the thinking, represent engineering

Required

Your skills and experience that will help you excel

10+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production applications
Strong Python development skills — application development, API integration, agent framework usage
Proven experience designing and implementing AI agent workflows — LLM API integration, tool use, prompt engineering — in production
Experience building web applications or tools that real users interact with, not just backend pipelines
Comfort integrating enterprise SaaS platforms via REST APIs
Experience working with cloud platforms — Azure preferred — deploying and operating applications in production
The ability to communicate clearly about technical decisions with stakeholders who did not build the system

Preferred

Experience with Databricks as an application and deployment platform — Databricks Apps, Streamlit on Databricks, notebook-based development
Familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) server development and agentic integration patterns
Experience with Anthropic Claude or other LLM APIs in a production setting
Background in HR technology or enterprise workflow applications
Exposure to Workday, iCIMS, or similar HCM and ATS platforms
Experience in a regulated or financial services environment

What Good Looks Like

Within three months, you have shipped meaningful improvements to at least one production application, established a clear point of view on how the team should approach agent development, and demonstrated the kind of engineering judgment that makes others want to work alongside you.

Within twelve months, you have delivered multiple AI-powered solutions that HR teams are using in their daily work, established the application engineering patterns the team will build from for years, and materially advanced what MSCI HR Technology can deliver to the business.

The measure of success is not lines of code or tickets closed. It is whether the things you build actually change how work gets done.

About MSCI

What we offer you

Transparent compensation schemes and comprehensive employee benefits, tailored to your location, ensuring your financial security, health, and overall wellbeing.
Flexible working arrangements, advanced technology, and collaborative workspaces.
A culture of high performance and innovation where we experiment with new ideas and take responsibility for achieving results.
A global network of talented colleagues, who inspire, support, and share their expertise to innovate and deliver for our clients.
Global Orientation program to kickstart your journey, followed by access to our Learning@MSCI platform, AI Learning Center , LinkedIn Learning Pro and tailored learning opportunities for ongoing skills development.
Multi-directional career paths that offer professional growth and development through new challenges, internal mobility and expanded roles.
We actively nurture an environment that builds a sense of inclusion belonging and connection, including eight Employee Resource Groups. All Abilities, Asian Support Network, Black Leadership Network, Climate Action Network, Hola! MSCI, Pride & Allies, Women in Tech, and Women's Leadership Forum.

At MSCI we are passionate about what we do, and we are inspired by our vision – to power better decisions. You'll be part of an industry-leading network of creative, curious, and entrepreneurial pioneers. This is a space where you can challenge yourself, set new standards and perform beyond expectations for yourself, our clients, and our industry.

MSCI strengthens global markets by connecting participants across the financial ecosystem with a common language. Our research-based data, analytics and indexes, supported by advanced technology, set standards for global investors and help our clients understand risks and opportunities so they can make better decisions and unlock innovation. We serve asset managers and owners, private-market sponsors and investors, hedge funds, wealth managers, banks, insurers and corporates.

MSCI Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. It is the policy of the firm to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, age, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, disability, marital and civil partnership/union status, pregnancy (including unlawful discrimination on the basis of a legally protected parental leave), veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. MSCI is also committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, please email [HIDDEN TEXT] and indicate the specifics of the assistance needed. Please note, this e-mail is intended only for individuals who are requesting a reasonable workplace accommodation; it is not intended for other inquiries.

To all recruitment agencies

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Vice President of Software Engineering - HR Technology