Lead Backend Engineer – Agentic AI
Quick facts
- Type
- Full-time
- Location
- Hartford, CT
- Skills
- Python, SQL, AWS
- Industry
- Information Technology — 671 open jobs
- Visa in listing
- H-1B
- Apply
- Free to apply — never pay anyone for a job offer or visa sponsorship
Job description
Lead Backend Engineer – Agentic AI
Location: Hartford, CT – 3 Days Onsite
Employment Type: Contract
Experience: 5–7+ Years
Visa: H1B Only
Job Overview
Virtusa is looking for a Lead Backend Engineer – Agentic AI with strong backend software engineering experience and hands-on exposure to modern Agentic AI workflows and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. The ideal candidate will have production-grade Python development, strong relational database/SQL expertise, and solid experience designing scalable backend systems. Candidates do not need to come from a pure AI/ML research background; strong software engineering fundamentals, architecture skills, and practical AI-agent integration experience are the primary focus. The selected candidate will also provide technical leadership by driving architecture and design decisions, conducting design reviews, establishing engineering standards, and mentoring other engineers.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain scalable, production-grade backend services using Python.
- Own technical direction for a workstream or service area.
- Design modular, maintainable, loosely coupled services with clear domain boundaries.
- Build horizontally scalable systems using stateless architecture, partitioning/sharding, load distribution, and resilient service patterns.
- Design and integrate Agentic AI workflows and MCP-based solutions into production systems.
- Lead technical design reviews and establish software engineering standards.
- Evaluate architecture tradeoffs involving consistency, availability, latency, throughput, scalability, and maintainability.
- Implement event-driven and asynchronous processing patterns where appropriate.
- Apply strong practices around idempotency, caching, API versioning, and fault tolerance.
- Work closely with product, architecture, and engineering stakeholders on technical decisions.
- Mentor engineers on software architecture, coding practices, and system design.
- Drive adoption of Agentic AI/MCP patterns across engineering teams.
Must-Have Skills
- 5–7+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- Strong Python development experience as the primary programming language.
- Strong SQL and relational database fundamentals.
- Experience with:
- Database schema design
- Data modeling
- Query optimization
- Relational databases
- Hands-on experience with Agentic AI workflows and/or MCP servers.
- Strong understanding of backend architecture and distributed systems.
- Experience designing scalable and resilient production systems.
- Strong knowledge of SOLID principles, modular design, and separation of concerns.
- Strong understanding of domain-driven boundaries and service-oriented architecture.
- Experience with event-driven and asynchronous architectures.
- Strong technical communication and leadership skills.
Cloud Experience
Preferred: Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Acceptable: AWS
Candidates should have practical cloud experience deploying or supporting production backend applications.
Architecture & System Design Requirements
Candidates should demonstrate experience with:
- Modular architecture
- High cohesion / low coupling
- Bounded components and services
- Stateless application design
- Horizontal scalability
- Partitioning and sharding
- Load distribution
- Avoiding single points of failure/contention
- Event-driven architecture
- Asynchronous processing
- Idempotency
- Caching strategies
- API design and versioning
- Distributed-system reliability
- Performance and scalability optimization
- Technical tradeoff analysis
Agentic AI / MCP Requirements
Hands-on exposure to Agentic AI is highly important.
Relevant experience may include:
- AI agent workflows
- Multi-step agent orchestration
- Tool-using AI agents
- LLM-integrated backend services
- Agent-to-tool integrations
- MCP servers / Model Context Protocol
- AI-driven automation workflows
- Production integration of AI agents with enterprise systems
Strong backend engineers with practical Agentic AI/MCP experience are preferred over candidates whose experience is primarily AI/ML research.
Leadership Expectations
The candidate should be capable of:
- Owning technical direction for a service or workstream.
- Making architecture and design decisions.
- Leading design/code reviews.
- Establishing technical standards and best practices.
- Mentoring engineers.
- Communicating architecture decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Partnering with product and architecture teams.
- Driving adoption of Agentic AI and MCP patterns.
Candidate Requirements
Requirement Details
Experience 5–7+ Years
Primary Language Python
AI Agentic AI / MCP
Database Relational DB / SQL
Cloud GCP preferred; AWS acceptable
Location Hartford, CT
Onsite 3 Days/Week
Employment Contract
Visa H1B Only
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Visa sponsorship record: Inabia Software and Consulting Inc
Sponsors actively| Fiscal year | H-1B LCAs | USCIS approvals | USCIS denials | PERM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | 9 | 13 | 0 | — |
| FY2025 | 12 | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| FY2024 | 4 | 4 | 1 | — |
✔ Inabia Software and Consulting Inc filed 4 H-1B applications for this kind of role (Software Developers) in the period above.
Roles they sponsor most
- network engineer4 LCAs · median $97k
- business software development analyst2 LCAs · median $100k
- computer systems analyst2 LCAs · median $133k
- data scientist2 LCAs · median $92k
- network security engineer2 LCAs · median $103k
Full sponsorship history of Inabia Software and Consulting Inc →
Which visas can work for this job
Occupation: Software Developers (SOC 15-1252).
- Mentioned in the listing
H-1B
- H-1B cap-exempt employer
Regular cap-subject employer — a new H-1B needs to win the lottery in March (unless you already hold cap-counted H-1B status).
- TN (citizens of Canada and Mexico)
This kind of role may fit the USMCA profession “Computer Systems Analyst (or Engineer, for engineering-degree holders)” — it depends on the actual duties. No lottery, no cap; you need the matching degree or license.
- E-3 (Australia) and H-1B1 (Chile, Singapore)
Same degree requirement as H-1B, but no lottery and a separate quota that is rarely filled.
- O-1 (extraordinary ability)
For candidates with awards, publications, press, a high salary or critical roles at distinguished organizations. No cap, no lottery; the employer files a petition.
- STEM OPT extension (F-1 students)
Requires an E-Verify employer. We didn't find this company in the E-Verify list — ask HR.
- Green card (EB-2 / EB-3 via PERM)
Filed 2 PERM labor certifications: they have a track record of sponsoring permanent residence.
Salary vs prevailing wage
Software Developers · Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT. Annual prevailing wages set by the Department of Labor (OFLC).
| Level | Prevailing wage | H-1B lottery odds* |
|---|---|---|
| Level I | $95,077 | ~15% |
| Level II | $114,733 | ~31% |
| Level III | $134,368 | ~46% |
| Level IV | $154,024 | ~61% |
The listing has no salary, so we can't place it on a wage level. Ask the employer which wage level they'd file at: Level III–IV registrations get 3–4 entries in the H-1B lottery.
* Odds are DHS projections for the FY2027 wage-weighted lottery (actual results vary by year and employer). Since the FY2027 cap season the H-1B lottery is weighted by wage level: Level I = 1 entry, II = 2, III = 3, IV = 4. The level is set by the offered wage against the prevailing wage for the occupation and worksite. Separately, a $100,000 fee for new H-1B petitions for workers outside the US was announced in 2025; as of September 2026 a federal court ruling keeps it unenforceable while appeals continue — check the current status.
Sources: U.S. Department of Labor OFLC disclosure data (H-1B/H-1B1/E-3 LCA, PERM), OFLC prevailing wage data, USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub, E-Verify participating employers. Data loaded: LCA FY2024–FY2026, PERM, USCIS Data Hub, OFLC wages; updated 2026-10-03. Employers are matched by name, so records of companies with similar names can occasionally be mixed up. This is general information, not legal advice — talk to an immigration attorney about your case.