Lead AI Engineer

Overview

St. Jude is where those with a passion for making a difference come to break new ground. Located in Memphis, Tennessee, the mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. We are leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life‑threatening diseases.

We are looking for a Lead AI Engineer to join our Analytics Services team in supporting this incredible work. The Lead AI Engineer will play a pivotal role in advancing healthcare artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives by developing and training AI tools aimed at automating and optimizing clinical workflows, operational efficiencies, and administrative tasks. Your expertise in AI and other cognitive computing methodologies – including machine learning (ML), large language models (LLMs), small language models (SLMs), natural language processing (NLP), Generative AI, and Agentic AI – will help revolutionize pediatric healthcare.

You will design, build, deploy, and operate production‑grade AI systems that automate and optimize clinical, operational, and administrative workflows across the institution. A day in the life includes working with institutional stakeholders to deploy and integrate sophisticated AI systems, rigorously testing, validating, and tracking learning models, and troubleshooting issues to ensure system accuracy and reliability. The core objective is to implement reliable, explainable, auditable, and safe AI solutions in real‑world clinical and operational environments, with clear performance metrics, monitoring, and human‑in‑the‑loop controls.

As a leader you will collaborate with analytics, data scientists, IT, informatics, and business stakeholders to ensure AI systems are scalable, secure, and seamlessly integrated into existing workflows. This position may be eligible for remote work; however, St. Jude requires all remote employees to travel to our Memphis campus for the interview process and orientation, and to be on‑site once per quarter, and additionally as needed.

• Production AI Engineering & Architecture – Lead the design and engineering of production‑grade AI systems, including LLM‑based and agentic solutions, that integrate with clinical, operational, and administrative platforms. Translate institutional goals and use cases into deployable AI architectures, defining system boundaries, APIs, infrastructure components, and operational dependencies. Ensure AI systems are designed for reliability, security, scalability, and maintainability within St. Jude’s enterprise architecture.

• Deployment, Operations, and Lifecycle Ownership – Own the end‑to‑end lifecycle of AI systems from initial deployment through ongoing operation, optimization, and retirement. Lead production deployments and ensure AI solutions are safely integrated into existing workflows without disrupting clinical or operational processes. Establish and maintain monitoring, logging, and alerting to track system performance, usage, data drift, and failure modes. Diagnose and resolve production issues, working closely with IT, informatics, and platform teams to maintain uptime and trust.

• Responsible AI, Governance, and Reliability – Implement technical controls that support responsible AI practices, including auditability, access controls, versioning, and human‑in‑the‑loop safeguards. Partner with analytics, information security, and governance teams to ensure AI systems align with institutional AI governance standards and regulatory expectations. Document system behavior, deployment patterns, and operational procedures to support transparency, audit readiness, and long‑term sustainability.

• Collaboration, Enablement, and Technical Leadership – Collaborate closely with data scientists, clinicians, informaticists, and business stakeholders to translate needs into robust, operational AI solutions. Serve as a technical mentor within Analytics Services, helping establish engineering standards, patterns, and best practices for enterprise AI. Stay current on emerging AI technologies, platforms,…