About this role
Humana seeks a Principal AI Engineer to set the technical direction for enterprise AI-enabled products while remaining hands-on with architecture, prototypes and software development. The organization’s platform uses large language models to turn millions of clinical documents into structured, actionable data, answer questions with source citations and route difficult cases to human experts. This is the highest-level individual contributor role in AI Applied Engineering.
Responsibilities
- Define the long-term AI strategy, reference architecture, engineering standards and technology roadmap. Establish patterns for retrieval, LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, human-in-the-loop processes, evaluation and governance.
- Guide enterprise decisions on models, vendors, platforms, shared infrastructure and build-versus-buy options. Design scalable systems that balance performance, reliability, security, compliance, maintainability and cost.
- Build proofs of concept and reference implementations; lead architecture reviews; establish standards for observability, model lifecycle management and responsible AI. Mentor engineers, advise executives and align engineering, product, clinical, business and compliance stakeholders.
Required qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience; 12+ years of software engineering experience, including designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
- Experience delivering and operating enterprise-scale production AI products or platforms; deep expertise in LLMs, AI platforms, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems, orchestration, evaluation and AI operations.
- Experience with cloud-native, resilient architectures and standards adopted across teams; understanding of model reliability, latency, cost, governance, observability and risk. Demonstrated organizational and executive influence, plus expert proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript/JavaScript and the ability to contribute code across the stack.
Preferred qualifications include multi-business-unit AI platform strategy; shared AI infrastructure; AI evaluation, testing and governance standards; vendor assessment; Model Context Protocol and autonomous workflows; experience in regulated industries; AI-assisted development adoption; and executive advising. The listed stack includes React, Next.js, PostgreSQL, Gemini on Vertex AI, OCR, Document AI, Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD tooling.
The full-time role is 40 hours weekly and hybrid, with three office days per week. Candidates must live within, or be willing to relocate within, commuting distance of a listed talent market. Starting base pay is $206,600–$284,300 annually; a performance-based bonus opportunity and medical, dental, vision, retirement, leave, disability and life insurance benefits are listed.