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.

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.

What You’ll Do 

• 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 behavior.
• 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.

Use your skills to make an impact

Required Qualifications 

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

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience shaping engineering culture or influencing architectural direction across teams. 
• Experience with generative AI tooling (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, PydanticAI, or similar). 
• Strong understanding of deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow). 
• 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.

Additional Information

This position follows a hybrid work style and must be performed at one of our designated IT hub locations: Louisville, KY; Tampa, FL; Dallas, TX; Boston, MA; New York City; or Washington, D.C.

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 appropriate to meet the business requirements for their position/job.
Work from a dedicated space lacking ongoing interruptions to protect member PHI / HIPAA information.

Scheduled Weekly Hours

40

Pay Range

The compensation range below reflects a good faith estimate of starting base pay for full time (40 hours per week) employment at the time of posting. The pay range may be higher or lower based on geographic location and individual pay will vary based on demonstrated job related skills, knowledge, experience, education, certifications, etc.

$172,200 - $236,900 per year

This job is eligible for a bonus incentive plan. This incentive opportunity is based upon company and/or individual performance.

Description of Benefits

Humana, Inc. and its affiliated subsidiaries (collectively, “Humana”) offers competitive benefits that support whole-person well-being. Associate benefits are designed to encourage personal wellness and smart healthcare decisions for you and your family while also knowing your life extends outside of work. Among our benefits, Humana provides medical, dental and vision benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan, time off (including paid time off, company and personal holidays, volunteer time off, paid parental and caregiver leave), short-term and long-term disability, life insurance and many other opportunities.

About Us
Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) is committed to putting health first – for our teammates, our customers and our company. Through our Humana insurance services and CenterWell healthcare services, we make it easier for the millions of people we serve to achieve their best health – delivering the care and service they need, when they need it. These efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare, Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large.

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Equal Opportunity Employer

It is the policy of Humana not to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability or protected veteran status. It is also the policy of Humana to take affirmative action, in compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, to employ and to advance in employment individuals with disability or protected veteran status, and to base all employment decisions only on valid job requirements. This policy shall apply to all employment actions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, upgrading, promotion, transfer, demotion, layoff, recall, termination, rates of pay or other forms of compensation and selection for training, including apprenticeship, at all levels of employment.