Principal Architect (, IL, United States)

Overview

We’re building a world of health around every individual — shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you’ll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger – helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Position Summary: We are hiring a Principal Applied AI Architect to take ownership of how we build AI‑powered products and applications at CVS Health. This role sits within our Enterprise Architecture organization and is responsible for designing, building, and shipping AI applications across the enterprise. LLMs, agents, and AI coding tools have matured to where they can drive real production systems, and we are investing in this capability across the enterprise. We need someone who can identify the right products to build, design and architect each system, write the specs, and ship working applications using modern AI coding agents while keeping production quality high. We use foundation models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, AWS Bedrock, and Azure OpenAI, and build agentic systems on frameworks such as LangGraph, CrewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK, and MCP. AI applications must integrate cleanly with our enterprise platforms, identity, and data services, working alongside the platform and system owners who run them. This role also includes coaching other architects and senior engineers on advanced applied‑AI coding techniques and AI‑augmented workflows so the existing team can move faster on their current work. This is a hands‑on role: you will write PRDs, design systems, build prototypes that become production references, ship code using AI coding agents, review AI‑generated code, coach other architects, and present to leadership. This position can work remotely from anywhere in the continental USA.

Responsibilities

• System Design & AI Product Architecture: Identify high‑value AI use cases across CVS Health and shape them into products with clear scope, user need, and success criteria. Design and architect each AI system end‑to‑end, including retrieval, agent orchestration, tool and MCP integration, evaluation harnesses, observability, and human‑in‑the‑loop hand‑offs. Write product requirements, design documents, and architecture decision records for the AI products you own. Build production implementations using AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, and equivalents), with disciplined testing, review, and observability. Partner with platform and system owners to integrate AI applications cleanly with our enterprise platforms, identity, and data services, following CVS standards for security and compliance.
• AI‑Augmented Build & Engineering Judgment: Use modern AI coding agents as a primary production build tool to compress build cycles while maintaining high production quality. Apply engineering judgment to review AI‑generated code at architectural depth, catching integration mistakes and design drift before production. Coach other architects and engineers on applied‑AI coding techniques and AI‑augmented workflows. Build reusable building blocks from the products you ship so other teams can adopt them. Identify where coding agents and agentic workflows can speed up work and help those teams adopt the practice.
• Architecture Community & Influence: Participate in cross‑functional architecture working groups covering applications, platforms, and integrations that use AI. Publish architecture decision records and reference implementations. Mentor architects and engineers and conduct architecture reviews of AI systems. Collaborate with security and compliance on HIPAA, SOX, and PCI requirements. Represent CVS Health in vendor evaluations and partner programs and stay connected to the open‑source AI ecosystem.

Qualifications

• Required Qualifications: 12+ years in software engineering and architecture with progression from production developer to enterprise architect to applied‑AI builder. 8+ years at the architecture level delivering scalable systems. 2+ years building and shipping production AI applications using LLMs, agentic systems, RAG, MCP, and evaluation frameworks. Hands‑on experience with at least one major foundation model provider and at least one agent framework, with a clear opinion on tradeoffs. Strong Python plus one additional production language (TypeScript, Java, Go, or similar). Solid system‑design fundamentals across distributed systems, cloud, data pipelines, and enterprise integration patterns. Strong product instinct and the ability to write specs independently. Proven track record of AI applications shipped to production with disciplined evaluation and observability. Ability to communicate clearly with engineers and senior leadership.
• Preferred Qualifications: Experience with multiple foundation model providers and a point of view on when to use each. Experience building MCP servers and tool integrations for agent ecosystems. AI evaluation tooling experience. Hands‑on experience using AI coding agents as production build tools. Experience publishing PRDs or technical strategy documents. Contributions to open‑source AI projects. Healthcare, insurance, or financial services experience. Patent filings, conference talks, or published technical writing on applied AI. Cloud certifications are a plus.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.

Pay Range & Benefits

The typical pay range for this role is: $144,200.00 - $288,400.00. This is the base salary range for positions in the job grade. The actual offer depends on experience, education, geography and other factors. This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short‑term incentive program in addition to base pay, and includes an award target in the company’s equity program.

Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve. We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the physical, emotional, and financial well‑being of colleagues and their families, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, retirement savings options, wellness programs, and more. Details are provided during the application process and on Benefits Moments. This opening’s application window is expected to close on: 08/31/2026.

Equal Opportunity

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws. Our Work Experience is the combination of everything that’s unique about us: our culture, core values, sustainability, recognition programs, and people. We are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.