Principal Software Engineer - Applied AI

At CVS Health, we’re building a world of health around every consumer and surrounding ourselves with dedicated colleagues who are passionate about transforming health care.

As the nation’s leading health solutions company, we reach millions of Americans through our local presence, digital channels and more than 300,000 purpose-driven colleagues – caring for people where, when and how they choose in a way that is uniquely more connected, more convenient and more compassionate. And we do it all with heart, each and every day.

Position Summary

CVS Health is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the design and delivery of enterprise-scale Generative AI solutions that power next-generation healthcare experiences. This role goes beyond hands-on coding—you will define technical strategy, establish architectural standards, and guide multiple teams in building secure, scalable, and cost-effective AI platforms across AWS (Bedrock) and Google Cloud (Vertex AI API). You will partner with product, security, compliance, and enterprise architecture teams to ensure solutions meet business objectives, regulatory requirements, and performance goals.

The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise with leadership skills—capable of influencing cross-org architecture decisions, mentoring engineering teams, and driving responsible AI practices in production.

• This position can work remotely anywhere in the continental USA.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end platform delivery of highly scalable, secure AI services and applications leveraging AWS Bedrock (Foundation Models, Knowledge Bases, Agents, Guardrails) and Google Cloud Vertex AI (Gemini via Vertex AI API, Agent Builder, Vector Search, Search & Grounding).
• Architect and implement Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions, integrating proprietary data from sources like Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage/BigQuery, and using Bedrock Knowledge Bases and/or Vertex AI Search & Grounding with Vector Search to improve relevance and accuracy.
• Design solutions that use function/tool calling and multimodal input processing across both platforms (e.g., Bedrock Converse API and Vertex AI API), and integrate with enterprise systems via secure, well-governed service interfaces.
• Define reference architectures, golden paths, and guardrails for multi-cloud AI development; drive adoption through design reviews, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and clear SLOs for latency, resiliency, safety, and cost.
• Champion Responsible AI: implement safety filters, policy-enforced guardrails, data minimization, and red-teaming playbooks using capabilities such as Bedrock Guardrails and Vertex AI Safety.
• Partner with Security, Privacy, and Legal to ensure compliance with HIPAA/PHI, encryption, access control, and continuous auditability.
• Build evaluation and observability frameworks (groundedness, hallucination rates, relevance, toxicity, drift, cost attribution, A/B testing) and drive FinOps practices (prompt optimization, caching, batching, model selection) across clouds.
• Mentor Staff/Senior Engineers, elevate coding and design standards, and foster a culture of learning (design clinics, brown bags, communities of practice).
• Monitor the rapidly evolving AI landscape (LLMs, agent frameworks, platform features) and translate advances into actionable platform strategy and roadmaps.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive, hands-on IT experience spanning systems analysis, application design, application development, and leading engineering teams.
• 7+ years designing and developing modern microservices architectures and cost-effective APIs for enterprise-scale solutions.
• 7+ years managing stakeholder requirements and translating them into robust, secure, and scalable technical solutions.
• 5+ years building or leading large-scale, mission-critical applications with a focus on performance, resiliency, and security.
• 5+ years of hands-on delivery for enterprise cloud initiatives on public cloud platforms (AWS and/or Google Cloud), including architecture, deployment, and optimization.
• 5+ years implementing DevOps and CI/CD automation, including containerization and orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker)
• 3+ years of software development with a strong emphasis on Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs); familiarity with AI/ML frameworks and libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn) and productionizing AI systems.
• Demonstrated ability to influence architecture decisions, lead cross-functional teams, and deliver complex solutions in compliance-conscious environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with AWS Bedrock (Converse API, Agents, Knowledge Bases, Guardrails) and/or Google Cloud Vertex AI (Vertex AI API for Gemini, Agent Builder, Vector Search, Search & Grounding, Model Garden).
• Expertise in RAG architectures, including embeddings, chunking, retrieval/reranking, vector databases, and caching strategies—implemented on Bedrock and/or Vertex AI.
• Proven track record implementing Responsible AI: safety guardrails, bias/fairness testing, red-teaming, human-in-the-loop workflows, and policy compliance.
• Strong background in observability and evaluation for AI systems: tracing/telemetry, token/inference cost attribution, A/B testing and offline/online evals (groundedness, hallucination), and drift monitoring.
• Experience with FinOps for AI workloads (prompt optimization, caching/batching, model selection, distillation/quantization strategies, streaming).
• Familiarity with infrastructure as code and platform engineering (e.g., Terraform, CDK, GitOps) and event-driven architectures.
• Background in regulated industries (e.g., healthcare) and working knowledge of HIPAA/PHI, data governance, encryption, and access control.
• Multi-cloud awareness (e.g., Azure OpenAI) and vendor/model evaluation frameworks.
• Relevant certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect – Professional, AWS Machine Learning – Specialty, AWS Certified AI Practitioner, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, or Google Cloud ML Engineer.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; advanced degree or equivalent experience preferred.

Pay Range

The Typical Pay Range For This Role Is

$144,200.00 - $288,400.00

This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls. The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors. This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above. This position also includes an award target in the company’s equity award program.

Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve and we are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.

Great Benefits For Great People

We take pride in our comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits – investing in the physical, emotional and financial wellness of our colleagues and their families to help them be the healthiest they can be. In addition to our competitive wages, our great benefits include:

• Affordable medical plan options, a 401(k) plan (including matching company contributions), and an employee stock purchase plan.
• No-cost programs for all colleagues including wellness screenings, tobacco cessation and weight management programs, confidential counseling and financial coaching.
• Benefit solutions that address the different needs and preferences of our colleagues including paid time off, flexible work schedules, family leave, dependent care resources, colleague assistance programs, tuition assistance, retiree medical access and many other benefits depending on eligibility.

For more information, visit https://jobs.cvshealth.com/us/en/benefits

We anticipate the application window for this opening will close on: 12/31/2025

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws.