Principal AI Lead - Surgical AI

This job is with Johnson & Johnson, an inclusive employer and a member of myGwork – the largest global platform for the LGBTQ+ business community. Please do not contact the recruiter directly.

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com

As guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson is responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We provide an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual. At Johnson & Johnson, we respect the diversity and dignity of our employees and recognize their merit.

Job Function:

R&D Product Development

Job Sub Function:

R&D Machine Learning

Job Category:

Scientific/Technology

All Job Posting Locations:

Santa Clara, California, United States of America

Job Description:

Overview

Johnson & Johnson MedTech is focused on shaping the future of digital surgery and expanding its robotics and digital solutions offerings across the entire portfolio, with multi-specialty, end-to-end solutions in endoluminal intervention, general surgery and a comprehensive digital portfolio. This includes the Polyphonic® platform, a first-of-its-kind digital platform that advances patient empowerment, surgical performance, operating room (OR) collaboration and operational efficiency by synchronizing devices, data and AI driven insights in one place to simplify access, build confidence and unify a non-linear care experience.

We are recruiting for a Principal AI Lead within the Polyphonic® Applied AI and ML team located in Santa Clara, CA . J&J is building the next generation intelligence infrastructure and platforms to capture, extract, and apply intelligence from the OR and surgical workflows and this role will play a key role in shaping and defining core workflows for developing and deploying surgical AI models and agents for the clinical consumption.

This is an opportunity to work with a multi-functional high-value team of product managers, applied scientists, software engineers, and clinical experts who will push the boundaries for surgical AI and make it widely accessible. The candidate will own and drive technical direction across the full ML lifecycle-from research and model development to scalable deployment, bringing both deep technical expertise and strong product acuity to build the right platform and user experiences for data scientists and developers, while mentoring engineers and partnering closely with product, engineering, and clinical domain experts.

What You Will Do

AI Development Standardization

• Conceptualize structured pipelines (ingestion to production), planning flows, agentic workflows

• Build capability primitives such as pre-built models, feature stores, AI-assisted annotations, proactive insights

• Develop modular and reusable intelligence components

Applied AI/ML Features & Model Strategy

• Select appropriate model families based on capability and cost constraints

• Lead the design and deployment of CNN-based, transformer-based and LLM/VLM-based models

• Apply prompting, constraints, and reasoning structures to reduce hallucination

Model Integration & Inference Optimization

• Integrate sophisticated models with product functionality and ensure output reliability, consistency, safety, and user-centric alignment

• Develop logic for hybrid model usage

• Collaborate with engineering to optimize latency, cost, and scalability

Product Acuity

• Bring strong product judgement to the development of the MLOps platform, balancing researcher/data scientist workflows with engineering, security, and compliance constraints.

• 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 for ML platform components.

Required Qualifications

• 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 (or equivalent experience).

• 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.

Preferred Qualifications

• 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), such as surgical, medical imaging, or healthcare-related ML/AI applications, 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.

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.

Johnson and Johnson is committed to providing an interview process that is inclusive of our applicants needs. If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request an accommodation, please email the Employee Health Support Center (View email address on click.appcast.io) or contact AskGS to be directed to your accommodation resource.

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Required Skills:

Preferred Skills:

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cognitive Computing, Curious Mindset, Data Governance, Data Structures, Emerging Technologies, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Human-Computer Relationships, Industry Analysis, Machine Learning (ML), Process Improvements, Program Management, Quality Assurance (QA), Research and Development, SAP Product Lifecycle Management, Scripting Languages, Tactical Planning, Technical Credibility

The anticipated base pay range for this position is :

$157,000.00 - $271,400.00

Additional Description for Pay Transparency:

This position is eligible to participate in the Companys long-term incentive program.

Subject to the terms of their respective policies and date of hire, employees are eligible for the
following time off benefits:

Vacation -120 hours per calendar year

Sick time - 40 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Colorado -48 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Washington -56 hours per calendar year

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 the birth/adoption/foster care of a child

Bereavement Leave - 240 hours for an immediate family member: 40 hours for an extended family member per calendar year

Caregiver Leave - 80 hours in a 52-week rolling period10 days

Volunteer Leave - 32 hours per calendar year

Military Spouse Time-Off - 80 hours per calendar year

For additional general information on Company benefits, please go to: -