Senior AI Engineer

Senior AI Engineer

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee is seeking a Senior AI Engineer to lead the design, development, deployment, and support of advanced AI solutions across the healthcare payer ecosystem. As part of the MLOps team, this position operates at the intersection of AI engineering, MLOps, and applied business problem solving.

• End‑to‑End Impact – work across the full lifecycle, from use case discovery and prototyping to delivering enterprise‑scale AI solutions.
• Hybrid AI Role – engage across AI engineering, Generative AI, and MLOps in a single, high‑impact position.
• Modern Technology Exposure – work hands‑on with large language models, evaluation frameworks, observability tools, and cloud‑native platforms.
• Cross‑Functional Collaboration – partner with business and technical stakeholders to solve real‑world challenges.
• Influence & Ownership – help define standards, delivery models, and enterprise AI architecture.
• Culture of Innovation – thrive in an environment that encourages continuous learning, experimentation, and collaborative ideation.

• Lead the ideation, development, and productionalization of sophisticated AI solutions tailored for healthcare payer use cases.
• Architect, design, and implement complex, state‑of‑the‑art AI models and algorithms, leveraging Python and cloud platforms such as GCP Vertex AI.
• Partner strategically with product teams and business stakeholders to define and prioritize opportunities for applying advanced AI techniques to solve critical business challenges and drive process automation.
• Conduct in‑depth research and maintain expertise in the latest advancements in AI, championing the adoption of cutting‑edge techniques and methodologies within the team.
• Architect and develop robust, scalable, and efficient systems and code bases for deploying AI models into production environments, ensuring high availability and performance.
• Serve as a key technical advisor to internal lines‑of‑business, understanding complex needs, gathering requirements, and translating them into impactful, actionable AI solutions.
• Define and oversee the evaluation and validation frameworks for AI models, ensuring their accuracy, reliability, fairness, and performance exceed business requirements.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers on best practices in AI development, model implementation, and system design.

• Education:
  
  Bachelor’s degree in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering or Math) or related field or equivalent work experience required. Master’s or PhD in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning) strongly preferred.
• Experience:
  
  5+ years of relevant work experience in analytics, technology, software engineering, or healthcare (academic experience included), or related equivalent experience. 3+ years of hands‑on experience specifically with machine learning, deep learning, and preferably AI models (e.g., LLMs, diffusion models) is required. Proven experience handling large, complex datasets to build and optimize sophisticated data science pipelines.
• Skills/
  
  Certifications:
  
  Expert proficiency in Python and relevant data science/ML libraries. Proficient in Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). Deep experience with Machine Learning and Deep Learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, Tensor Flow), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and associated libraries (e.g., Hugging Face Transformers). Experience deploying and managing ML models in cloud environments (GCP Vertex AI preferred, AWS Sage Maker or Azure ML acceptable).
• Additional
  
  Competencies:
  
  Proven ability to architect, design, and implement complex systems. Demonstrated success leading technically challenging projects from conception through to deployment. Exceptional ability to interpret and translate complex technical concepts into information meaningful to project team members, business personnel, and leadership. Strong technical leadership and mentorship capabilities. Ability to communicate effectively and influence both technical and non‑technical co‑workers and stakeholders. Highly organized, reliable, capable of managing multiple complex tasks.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee will recruit, hire, train and promote individuals in all job classifications without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, citizenship, pregnancy, veteran status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Further information regarding BCBST's EEO Policies / Notices may be found by reviewing the following page: BCBST's EEO Policies / Notices.