Senior Applied AI Software Engineer ( AI)

Senior Applied AI Engineer

The Enterprise AI organization at Humana is a pioneering force, driving AI innovation across our Insurance and CenterWell business segments. By collaborating with world-leading experts, we are at the forefront of delivering cutting-edge AI technologies for improving care quality and experience of millions of consumers. Our goal is to create safe AI solutions that will revolutionize and improve healthcare experience and outcomes for our customers.

We are actively seeking top talent to join us in shaping the future of healthcare through AI excellence. Join our rapidly expanding team of dedicated product managers, data scientists, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders as we work together to build impactful and beneficial AI systems.

At Humana, we are strategically leveraging advanced artificial intelligence technologies to fundamentally transform healthcare delivery, enhance member experiences through personalization and intelligent automation, and improve clinical outcomes through data-driven insights. We are seeking a talented Senior Applied AI Engineer to design and implement production-grade AI solutions that deliver measurable business value, with a strong emphasis on Generative AI technologies, sophisticated Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, and intelligent agent architectures that can automate complex workflows and provide personalized assistance.

This critical role focuses on the practical application of cutting-edge AI capabilities within secure and compliant healthcare systems that handle sensitive protected health information. The successful candidate will build robust AI-powered features that deliver measurable impact on member satisfaction, operational efficiency, and clinical quality, while ensuring reliability through comprehensive testing and monitoring, following ethical AI practices that prevent bias and ensure fairness, and maintaining strict alignment with healthcare regulatory standards including HIPAA privacy and security requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement sophisticated AI-powered application features using modern AI SDKs and orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel), incorporating best practices for prompt engineering, context management, error handling, and user experience design to create AI capabilities that seamlessly integrate into healthcare applications and deliver intuitive, helpful experiences for members and healthcare providers.
• Build and deploy comprehensive RAG pipelines including generation of high-quality embeddings using state-of-the-art models, implementation and optimization of vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma) for efficient similarity search, sophisticated retrieval optimization techniques such as hybrid search and re-ranking, and integration of retrieved context with large language models to generate accurate, contextually relevant responses.
• Develop scalable backend APIs in Python using modern frameworks (e.g., FastAPI, Flask) to serve AI-enabled healthcare applications with low latency and high throughput, implementing proper authentication and authorization, comprehensive error handling and logging, rate limiting and resource management, and monitoring capabilities that enable operational teams to maintain service quality.
• Integrate advanced AI capabilities into full-stack web applications, working with modern frontend frameworks (e.g., React, Vue) to create responsive user interfaces that leverage AI features effectively, implementing streaming responses for improved perceived performance, handling asynchronous AI operations gracefully, and providing appropriate user feedback and error messages.
• Optimize prompts through systematic experimentation and evaluation, implement sophisticated context management strategies to maximize information density while respecting token limits, and develop token usage optimization strategies including prompt caching, model selection based on task requirements, and batching where appropriate to control costs while maintaining quality.
• Implement comprehensive evaluation frameworks including both automated metrics (e.g., relevance scores, semantic similarity) and human evaluation workflows, develop and deploy guardrails to prevent harmful outputs and ensure responses remain within appropriate boundaries, and establish monitoring systems that track AI system performance, detect anomalies, and alert teams to potential issues.
• Collaborate closely with product managers to translate healthcare use cases into technical requirements, work with data teams to ensure access to high-quality training and retrieval data, partner with clinical subject matter experts to validate AI system outputs, and coordinate with compliance teams to ensure AI-driven solutions meet regulatory requirements and ethical standards.
• Ensure all AI systems rigorously meet privacy requirements through appropriate data handling practices, implement robust security controls including encryption and access management, and adhere to regulatory requirements (e.g., HIPAA Security Rule, FDA regulations for clinical decision support) through comprehensive documentation, validation testing, and ongoing compliance monitoring.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering with strong hands-on development experience in Python including modern language features and best practices, and substantial experience building full-stack systems that combine backend services with interactive frontend applications, evidenced by successfully delivered projects that serve real users in production environments.
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience developing user-facing applications using modern UI frameworks (React, Vue, Solid, or Angular), including state management, component architecture, responsive design, accessibility considerations, and integration with backend APIs, with demonstrated ability to create intuitive user experiences that effectively leverage AI capabilities.
• Practical experience integrating modern AI/ML capabilities into production systems, including at least one year working intensively with contemporary AI SDKs or orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, Anthropic SDK, OpenAI API), with demonstrated understanding of prompt engineering principles, model selection criteria, and the unique challenges of deploying generative AI in production environments.
• Hands-on experience building and deploying AI-powered features such as RAG pipelines with embeddings generation and vector search, embeddings-based retrieval systems for semantic similarity, intelligent agent workflows with tool use and multi-step reasoning, or conversational AI interfaces, with understanding of evaluation methodologies and quality assurance approaches specific to AI systems.
• Demonstrated experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Gemini CLI) to significantly enhance engineering productivity, accelerate development velocity, improve code quality, and reduce time spent on routine coding tasks, with awareness of best practices for effective AI-assisted development and understanding of when to rely on AI assistance versus manual implementation.
• Solid understanding of AI system evaluation methodologies including automated metrics and human evaluation, observability approaches for AI systems including logging of inputs/outputs and performance metrics, and reliability considerations such as handling model failures gracefully, implementing fallback strategies, and managing rate limits and quotas effectively.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong verbal and written communication skills with ability to explain complex AI concepts to non-technical stakeholders, excellent cross-functional collaboration skills enabling effective work with product managers, designers, clinicians, and compliance specialists, and demonstrated success working within regulated or high-accountability environments such as healthcare, finance, or government.
• Experience in healthcare industries

Additional Information

This position follows a hybrid work style and must be performed at one of our designated IT hub locations: New York City; Louisville, KY; Tampa, FL; Dallas, TX; Boston, MA 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: $141,100 - $194,000 per year

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

Referral Bonus Information: This requisition is not eligible for a referral bonus.

About Us

About Humana: Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) is a leading U.S. healthcare company. Through our Humana insurance services and our 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 and Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. Learn more about what we offer at Humana.com and at CenterWell.com.

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