84.51° is Kroger’s data science, insights and AI company. Kroger is a roughly $150B Fortune 20 retailer, and the software and AI products our teams build shape how that business serves its customers every day. This role is an enterprise-level opportunity to reinvent how software and AI products are built across 84.51°, KTD and Kroger, and to set the standard for how engineering at this scale works alongside AI agents.
The foundation is already in motion. Claude Code is generally available to technologists under an enterprise-managed configuration, GitHub Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot are in the hands of thousands of associates, Claude Cowork and Claude Design have waitlists of eager users, AI Hub is becoming the front door for “how to AI at Kroger”, and a managed agent platform and the first lighthouse projects are live. The next step is to turn strong tools and early wins into a measurable, repeatable, enterprise-wide way of building software.
Role Summary
The Director, Agentic engineering will move our organization from AI-assisted coding to a genuinely agentic engineering organization. You will redesign the end-to-end software development lifecycle (plan, design, build, test, deploy and operate) around AI agents, with people owning judgment at the critical gates: product intent, architecture, design and risk approval.
You will own the developer-facing AI ecosystem end to end: the AI SDLC operating model, the rollout and adoption of coding agents such as Claude Code, new autonomous agentic systems such as Devin, the AI Developer Portal that gives every builder a governed, self-service path to models, agents and tools, and the engineering experience surfaced through AI Hub. You will partner directly with the C-suite to shape the strategy and investment case and keep them informed of progress with clarity and candor. The goal is materially faster delivery, with quality, security, reliability and cost held at or better than today’s bar.