Lead Applied AI Software Engineer ( AI)

About the Role

The Enterprise AI organization at Humana is a pioneering force, driving AI development across our Insurance and CenterWell business segments. We are seeking an accomplished Lead Applied AI Engineer who will architect and deliver advanced AI systems, integrate Generative AI capabilities, and ensure compliance with healthcare regulations.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect comprehensive end-to-end AI systems, including sophisticated RAG pipelines with multi‑stage retrieval and re‑ranking. Include complex agent orchestration systems that coordinate multiple specialized agents, and multi‑model integrations that leverage different AI models for their respective strengths.
• Define rigorous standards for prompt engineering, including templates, versioning, and testing methodologies. Establish comprehensive evaluation metrics that capture both technical performance and business value. Devise performance‑optimization strategies such as model‑selection criteria, caching approaches, and resource‑utilization patterns.
• Lead deployment of AI systems into production environments with strong observability, detailed logging, and tracing. Ensure reliable operation with graceful degradation, circuit breakers, real‑time dashboards, automated alerting, and robust incident‑response procedures.
• Design scalable data‑ingestion architectures that process diverse data sources, implement efficient retrieval using vector databases and hybrid search, develop preprocessing pipelines, and establish data‑quality monitoring.
• Drive quantitative evaluation and continuous improvement of AI systems through evaluation frameworks, A/B testing, user‑feedback analysis, and systematic iteration on prompts and model configurations.
• Collaborate strategically with platform teams to ensure infrastructure readiness for AI workloads, including GPU availability, networking, data storage, model‑serving, feature‑stores, and integration with enterprise services.
• Mentor engineers, provide technical guidance, code reviews, architecture discussions, and career‑development support. Elevate AI engineering best practices, create documentation, deliver training, and foster a responsible‑AI culture.
• Ensure AI solutions meet healthcare‑compliance requirements through detailed documentation, fairness assessment, regulatory adherence, and ethical standards.

Required Qualifications

• Over 7 years of experience in software engineering with a strong focus on applied AI/ML, building distributed systems at scale and full‑stack architectures.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience and recognized contributions to the AI engineering community.
• Deep expertise designing and deploying production‑grade generative AI systems, including RAG architectures, agent orchestration, multi‑model systems, and conversational AI that maintain context.
• Experience leading complex AI initiatives across multiple specialized teams and driving projects from conception to production.
• Strong technical proficiency in Python, modern web frameworks (React, FastAPI), and AI‑specific technologies (vector databases, embedding models, LLM APIs, orchestration frameworks).
• Experience establishing organization‑wide best practices for prompt engineering, systematic testing, version control, evaluation frameworks, cost and performance tracking, and benchmarking.
• Familiarity with responsible AI principles, governance, model‑risk management, validation, and regulatory deployment challenges.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience providing technical direction across organizational boundaries and mentoring talent.
• Strong cross‑functional collaboration skills.
• Experience in the healthcare industry.

Additional Information

This is a hybrid office position where employees primarily work from the company office with occasional work from home. Designated technology‑market locations: New York City; Louisville, KY; Dallas, TX.

Employees who work from home in California, Illinois, Montana, or South Dakota will receive a bi‑weekly payment for internet expenses. Employees must meet minimum internet‑speed requirements: 25 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload.

Employees must work from a dedicated space to protect PHI and HIPAA information.

Scheduled Weekly Hours

40 hours per week

Pay Range

$170,800 – $234,800 per year. Compensation may vary by location and experience. This role is eligible for a bonus incentive plan.

Benefits

Humana offers medical, dental, vision benefits, a 401(k) retirement plan, paid time off, disability coverage, life insurance, and more.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Humana is an equal‑opportunity employer that does not 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. Humana takes affirmative action, in compliance with the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, to employ and advance in employment individuals with disability or protected veteran status. All employment actions are based solely on valid job requirements.