Principal AI Lead – Surgical AI

Job Summary

Johnson & Johnson Med Tech is focused on shaping the future of digital surgery and expanding its robotics and digital solutions across the entire portfolio. We’re seeking a Principal AI Lead for the Polyphonic Applied AI and ML team located in Santa Clara, CA. This role will shape core workflows for developing and deploying surgical AI models and agents for clinical consumption.

• Conceptualize structured pipelines and agentic workflows, from ingestion to production.
• Build capability primitives such as pre-built models, feature stores, AI-assisted annotations, and proactive insights.
• Develop modular and reusable intelligence components.
• Select appropriate model families based on capability and cost constraints.
• Design and deploy CNN-based, transformer-based, and LLM/VLM-based models.
• Apply prompting, constraints, and reasoning structures to reduce hallucination.
• Integrate sophisticated models with product functionality and ensure reliability, consistency, safety, and user-centric alignment.
• Develop logic for hybrid model usage.
• Collaborate with engineering to optimize latency, cost, and scalability of model inference.
• Bring strong product judgment to the MLOps platform, balancing research, engineering, security, and compliance needs.
• Partner with multi-functional collaborators to define user needs, success metrics, and a prioritized roadmap for platform capabilities.
• Make pragmatic tradeoffs across build- vs-buy, usability vs. flexibility, and time-to-value vs. long-term scalability.

• MS or PhD in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in machine learning engineering or applied AI, with significant ownership of production systems.
• Deep expertise in computer vision-based deep learning.
• Demonstrated experience developing and deploying production models on cloud and edge.
• Strong product competence for ML platforms/MLOps, with the ability to translate multi-functional needs into a clear roadmap and excellent developer/researcher experiences.
• Advanced proficiency in PyTorch and the modern ML ecosystem.
• Strong software engineering skills in Python and experience designing scalable ML systems.
• Proven track record to lead sophisticated technical initiatives and influence technical direction across teams.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills.

• Experience building or working on ML or developer platforms for data scientists and researchers, including driving adoption through documentation, templates, and self-serve workflows.
• Familiarity with MLFlow, Kubeflow, or similar MLOps platforms.
• Experience developing AI systems in regulated environments (e.g., SaMD) with attention to traceability, validation, and auditability.
• Experience with foundation models, multimodal AI, or vision-language architectures.
• Prior experience mentoring or leading ML engineering teams.
• Experience working with large-scale datasets or distributed training systems.

• Annual base pay $ - $.
• Eligible to participate in the Company’s long-term incentive program.
• Vacation – 120 hours per calendar year.
• Sick time – 40 hours per calendar year (48 hours for Colorado, 56 hours for Washington).
• Holiday pay, including floating holidays – 13 days per calendar year.
• Work, personal and family time – up to 40 hours per calendar year.
• Parental leave – 480 hours within one year of birth/adoption/foster care of a child.
• Bereavement leave – 240 hours for an immediate family member, 40 hours for an extended family member per year.
• Caregiver leave – 80 hours in a 52-week rolling period.
• Volunteer leave – 10 days.
• Military spouse time-off – 80 hours per calendar year.

Johnson & Johnson is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other characteristics protected by federal, state or local law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.