Principal AI Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Ohio.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the multi-year technical strategy and roadmap for the enterprise AI platform across all teams.

• Establish model strategy, RAG/retrieval architecture, connector ecosystems, and evaluation frameworks.

• Act as the ultimate technical escalation point for complex architectural and reliability challenges across various teams and systems.

• Set, review, and enhance architecture, security, and evaluation standards.

• Provide guidance to VP- and executive-level leadership on AI platform strategy, model risk, and investment trade-offs.

• Lead architecture and prototyping for the most ambiguous and high-risk AI initiatives.

• Develop Lead and Senior AI Engineers through design reviews, technical mentoring, and structured knowledge-sharing initiatives.

• Influence enterprise-wide AI governance policy in collaboration with Legal, Compliance, and Privacy leadership.

• Oversee evaluation and long-term strategy for foundation model providers and AI infrastructure vendors.

• Represent McKesson’s AI engineering capabilities in industry forums, partner/vendor relationships, and senior technical recruiting efforts.

• Shape the direction and investment of the AI platform across the broader enterprise.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience; fewer years required with a relevant Master's or Doctorate.

• Typically 12+ years of software engineering experience.

• 6+ years specifically focused on AI/ML, LLM, or NLP systems in a production environment.

• 3+ years serving as a senior individual-contributor technical leader.

• Proven technical leadership exceeding that of a Lead AI Engineer across multiple teams.

• Experience in establishing a technical strategy that is embraced by multiple teams.

• Hands-on experience in building production LLM applications at scale, including prompt engineering, RAG, agentic workflows, tool utilization, and evaluation harnesses.

• Familiarity with commercial LLM APIs such as Anthropic and OpenAI.

• Proficiency in tool-integration protocols like Model Context Protocol (MCP).

• Strong skills in Python and/or Java, REST APIs, event-driven architecture, microservices, and cloud-native design.

• Azure preferred; AWS/GCP are acceptable.

• Experience with vector/graph retrieval systems, embeddings, and knowledge-base architectures at production scale.

• In-depth knowledge of LLMOps/MLOps, usage attribution, cost/spend monitoring, abuse detection, and model evaluation pipelines.

• Ability to influence senior engineering and executive stakeholders without direct authority.

• Familiarity with regulated/healthcare data environments and AI governance frameworks, including model risk review, connector approval tiers, and PHI handling.

• Preferred: advanced degree in Computer Science, AI/ML, or a related technical field.

• Preferred: experience as a Principal, Staff, or Distinguished Engineer setting AI/ML strategy across multiple teams in healthcare IT or another highly regulated sector.

• A track record of publications, patents, open-source contributions, or industry speaking engagements on applied AI/LLM systems is preferred.

• Experience in shaping enterprise-wide AI governance policy is preferred.

• Awareness of the GenAI/agentic landscape and the ability to differentiate between sustainable technical investments and hype.

• Experience in managing strategic relationships with AI infrastructure vendors and model providers.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills for executive, board-level, and external technical audiences.

• Must reside in the United States; sponsorship is currently unavailable and will not be offered in the future.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive compensation package.

• An annual bonus may be offered.

• Long-term incentive opportunities may be available.

• Benefits available through McKesson’s Total Rewards program.

• Equal employment opportunities provided.

• Reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.