We are seeking an Associate Director, Applied AI Engineering to lead and grow a high-performing team of AI engineers focused on building safe, scalable, and impactful AI solutions for the enterprise. This is a people-first leadership role for a technically strong engineering leader who is passionate about developing talent, establishing engineering excellence, and delivering AI-powered products at scale.
You will lead a multi-disciplinary engineering team responsible for production AI applications, agentic systems, conversational AI experiences, and intelligent automation capabilities while fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, inclusion, and continuous learning.
Supporting Humana's enterprise AI book of work, this leader partners closely with data science, machine learning, product, business, architecture, security, and technology teams to ensure high-quality data is available for AI use cases across the organization. The Associate Director applies cloud-native engineering practices, modern software development patterns, big data technologies, and AI/ML data enablement strategies to help Humana better serve its members.
This role requires a strong understanding of how organizational capabilities interrelate across departments and is responsible for identifying and resolving complex technical and operational challenges. The Associate Director may lead multiple managers or highly specialized professional associates and provides strategic and technical leadership for enterprise AI data engineering delivery.
Key ResponsibilitiesTeam Leadership: Lead and grow a team of AI engineers building foundational services, frameworks, and tools for agentic AI applications-enabling consistent, scalable, and cost-effective development across the organization
Industry Expertise: Stay current with industry trends in generative AI (e.g., foundation models, evaluation techniques, retrieval-augmented generation, fine-tuning approaches, and open-source tooling) and help the team apply them effectively
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Drive cross-functional alignment with enterprise architecture, security, data engineering, DevOps, and application leads to ensure the generative AI platform is well-integrated and aligned with broader enterprise goals
Mentorship: Mentor and coach AI engineers, helping them grow their technical skills and career paths while fostering a culture of experimentation, humility, and excellence
Engineering Practices: Ensure strong engineering practices including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and incident response for all services owned by the team
Strategic Planning: Define and drive strategic plans, goals, and team performance based on company-wide agentic AI initiatives, balancing near-term needs with long-term platform investments
System Design: Lead collaboration with application teams to understand their needs and design systems which solve complex challenges with reusable components on the agentic AI platform (e.g., LLM orchestration frameworks, experiment tracking, evaluation pipelines, model proxy/gateways, observability, etc.)
Problem Solving: Work with broad guidelines and technical knowledge to solve highly complex problems with long-term impacts
Use your skills to make an impact Required Qualifications- Master's degree or Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field.
- 7+ years of software engineering, AI engineering, or machine learning engineering experience.
- 2+ years of people leadership experience managing engineers or technical teams.
- Experience building and deploying AI/ML solutions in production environments.
- Strong proficiency in Python and modern software development practices.
- Experience with AI and machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, LangGraph, or comparable technologies.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience leading teams delivering Generative AI, RAG, conversational AI, or agent-based solutions.
- Experience working in healthcare, health insurance, or other highly regulated industries.
- Familiarity with AI observability, evaluation frameworks, governance, and safety practices.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to explain technical concepts to diverse audiences.
- Experience partnering with product managers, data scientists, clinicians, compliance teams, and business stakeholders.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think strategically and execute methodically.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and helping teams deliver complex technical initiatives.
- Strong understanding of software engineering best practices, system design, and scalable architecture patterns.
Scheduled Weekly Hours40
Pay RangeThe compensation range below reflects a good faith estimate of starting base pay for full time (40 hours per week) employment at the time of posting. The pay range may be higher or lower based on geographic location and individual pay will vary based on demonstrated job related skills, knowledge, experience, education, certifications, etc.
$206,600 - $284,300 per year
This job is eligible for a bonus incentive plan. This incentive opportunity is based upon company and/or individual performance.
Description of BenefitsHumana, Inc. and its affiliated subsidiaries (collectively, "Humana") offers competitive benefits that support whole-person well-being. Associate benefits are designed to encourage personal wellness and smart healthcare decisions for you and your family while also knowing your life extends outside of work. Among our benefits, Humana provides medical, dental and vision benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan, time off (including paid time off, company and personal holidays, paid parental and caregiver leave), short-term and long-term disability, life insurance and many other opportunities.
