Principal Software Engineer

Job Title Principal Software Engineer Location Providence, Rhode Island, United States (on-site) Position Summary We are hiring a Principal Software Engineer who thrives on solving complex problems, writing production code, and elevating the engineers around them. You will serve as the senior engineering voice across a portfolio of mission‑critical clinical decision‑support applications that combine low‑latency distributed architectures with advanced LLM, OCR, and ML pipelines on Google Cloud. What You’ll Do Own architecture and execution – Lead the technical direction of a real‑time, multi‑service clinical platform on GCP while personally building the most critical and performance‑sensitive components. Build production‑grade LLM systems – Design and operate scalable LLM pipelines (e.g., Claude, Gemini, GPT‑4‑class) including prompt engineering, structured outputs, evaluation frameworks, retrieval/vector search, OCR‑based document understanding, grounding, guardrails, and hallucination mitigation. Deliver real‑time, high‑performance systems – Architect distributed, event‑driven, streaming services that support sub‑second clinician experiences under heavy load, with strict SLOs and strong fault tolerance. Operationalize machine learning – Lead deployment and lifecycle management of models on Vertex AI, including feature pipelines, model registries, drift detection, A/B and shadow testing, and CI/CD‑integrated quality controls. Design for scalability and change – Build flexible APIs, microservices, and data contracts that support rapid iteration, backed by strong testing, observability, and progressive delivery practices. Raise the engineering bar – Drive high‑quality code reviews, establish standards across testing, CI/CD, security, and observability, and mentor engineers across full‑stack and ML disciplines. Own outcomes end‑to‑end – Translate ambiguous clinical and business needs into delivered solutions, monitor real‑world performance, and continuously iterate based on data. Partner across disciplines – Collaborate with Data Science, Product, Clinical SMEs, AI Governance, and Security teams to ensure solutions meet enterprise standards for compliance, privacy, and safety. Required Qualifications 10+ years of software engineering experience with a strong record of delivering production systems at scale. 5+ years as a hands‑on Staff or Principal‑level engineer (actively coding, not removed from implementation). Expert proficiency in Python , including performance tuning, concurrency, and system optimization. 5+ years building real‑time distributed systems (event‑driven, streaming, Pub‑Sub) with clear latency and reliability requirements. 5+ years working in a major public cloud (GCP preferred: Vertex AI, GKE, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, BigQuery, IAM, etc.). Deep experience with microservices architecture, API design (REST), and resilient systems (retries, backpressure, tracing). 3+ years building and operating production ML systems (MLOps, monitoring, retraining, deployment pipelines). 3+ years developing LLM‑powered applications in production, including prompt design, RAG/vector search, evaluation frameworks, and performance optimization. Experience building modern UI components with React or Angular. Strong computer science fundamentals, including distributed systems, algorithms, and concurrency. Preferred Qualifications Experience operating LLM systems in regulated environments (PII/PHI, governance, security, auditability). Familiarity with vector databases (e.g., Vertex Vector Search, Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector) and advanced retrieval techniques. Experience designing evaluation frameworks for LLM systems (gold datasets, regression testing, LLM‑as‑judge). Strong background in CI/CD, SRE practices, and SLO‑driven engineering. Experience with healthcare data standards (FHIR, HL7) and compliance frameworks (HIPAA, HITRUST). Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex systems to both technical and non‑technical audiences. Proven track record of mentoring engineers into senior and staff roles. Education Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent experience). Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related discipline is a plus. Pay Range Typical pay range: $144,200.00 – $288,400.00 per year (base). This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short‑term incentive program in addition to the base pay range. It also includes an award target in the company's equity award program. Benefits This full‑time position includes a comprehensive benefits package that supports the physical, emotional, and financial well‑being of colleagues and their families. Benefits include medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, retirement savings options, wellness programs, and other resources based on eligibility. EEO Statement Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws. #J-18808-Ljbffr