Principal Applied AI Engineer

Become a part of our caring community and help us put health first

Become a key driver in shaping the future of AI-powered healthcare.

We are looking for a Principal Applied AI Engineer, a technical leader who thrives in ambiguous, high‑impact environments and is motivated by solving real problems with pragmatic, elegant, and scalable solutions. This position reports into the AI platform team, ensuring close alignment with platform strategy and delivery. It is for someone who wants autonomy, influence, and the responsibility of setting a high bar for engineering excellence.

• Lead the design and build of advanced generative AI systems, spanning LLM‑powered applications, multi‑agent workflows, RAG, and domain‑specific reasoning engines.

• Architect and own robust APIs and platform capabilities that bring AI to real business workflows at enterprise scale.

• Drive the engineering of high‑quality data, feature, and evaluation pipelines that support reliable and continuously improving AI behaviour.

• Partner with data scientists, platform engineers, and product leaders to transform conceptual ideas into resilient, testable, observable production systems.

• Set engineering standards and elevate team culture, emphasizing clarity, craftsmanship, iteration, and objective measures of excellence.

• Mentor other engineers and guide teams through complex technical decision‑making.

• Serve as a thought leader on the practical application of generative AI technologies, emerging patterns, and their fit within our ecosystem.

• Champion observability, measurement, and operational excellence, ensuring deployed systems are trustworthy, maintainable, and high‑performing.

• Stay at the forefront of AI/ML advancements and help the organization understand the right time, and the right way, to adopt new technologies.

• The successful candidate will help drive key business outcomes, including measurable improvements in healthcare delivery and member satisfaction.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field.

• 10+ years of professional software or platform engineering experience.

• Deep expertise in Python, including building production services and shared libraries used by others.

• Hands‑on experience with modern AI systems, including LLM integration, RAG, embeddings, and applied generative AI patterns.

• Strong background in machine learning engineering, including model deployment, monitoring, evaluation, and lifecycle management.

• Expert‑level understanding of FastAPI, Flask, or similar frameworks, and REST/gRPC service design.

• Strong proficiency with cloud‑native development on AWS, GCP, or Azure.

• Minimum 5 years of containerization and orchestration experience (Docker, Kubernetes).

• Production experience with CI/CD pipelines, version control, and modern Dev Ops practices.

• Demonstrated ability to own large, ambiguous problems and deliver high‑value, high‑quality solutions.

• Experience shaping engineering culture or influencing architectural direction across teams.

• Experience with generative AI tooling (e.g., Lang Chain, Llama Index, Pydantic
  
  AI, or similar).

• Strong understanding of deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, Tensor Flow).

• Experience with distributed systems (Akka, Flink, or similar).

• Prior work building platforms rather than one‑off applications.

• A track record of pragmatic decision‑making, balancing innovation with maintainability and long‑term value.

To ensure Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees’ ability to work effectively, the self‑provided internet service of Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees must meet the following criteria:

At minimum, a download speed of 25 Mbps and an upload speed of 10 Mbps is required; wireless, wired cable or DSL connection is suggested.

Satellite, cellular and microwave connection can be used only if approved by leadership.

Employees who live and work from Home in the state of California, Illinois, Montana, or South Dakota will be provided a bi‑weekly payment for their internet expense.

Humana will provide Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees with telephone equipment…