Principal, AI Models

League; Canada; Hybrid; CAD 217,000 - 272,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading healthcare technology firm in Canada is seeking a Principal, AI Models to build and scale a small language model platform for healthcare. This role involves overseeing the entire model development pipeline and collaborating across teams to implement AI solutions. Ideal candidates will have extensive experience in applied ML/AI, proven success with fine-tuned models, and strong communication skills. The position offers a competitive salary range of $217,600 - $271,500 CAD and the possibility of flexible remote work.

Qualifications

• Significant experience in applied ML/AI is required.
• Expertise in leading model-training teams is a strong plus.
• Proven experience with fine-tuned LLMs/SLMs is essential.

Responsibilities

• Own the SLM pipeline and operationalize League’s training platform.
• Develop multiple healthcare-domain SLMs optimized for healthcare reasoning.
• Lead data strategy aligned with privacy and compliance requirements.

Skills

Applied ML/AI experience

Fine-tuning teams leadership

Communication of technical strategy

Education

Bachelor’s or graduate degree in Computer Science or Machine Learning

Tools

NeMo

Hugging Face

GCP

Job description

Founded in 2014, League is the leading healthcare consumer experience (CX) platform, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), reaching more than 63 million people around the world and delivering the highest level of personalization in the industry. Payers, providers, and consumer health partners build on League’s platform to deliver high‑engagement healthcare solutions proven to improve health outcomes. League has raised over $285 million in venture capital funding to date, powering the digital experiences for some of healthcare’s most trusted brands, including Highmark Health, Manulife, Medibank, and Shoppers Drug Mart.

The Role

We are seeking a senior leader to build and scale League’s small language model (SLM) platform for healthcare. This leader will own the end‑to‑end pipeline for developing domain‑specific, safety‑tuned models that power our agentic health solutions. The Principal, AI Models will be responsible for data curation, synthetic data generation, fine‑tuning and distillation of open‑source models, reinforcement learning (RLHF/RLAIF), and model serving strategies (e.g., vLLM). They will shape how League’s AI agents learn, reason, and act safely — creating a core source of competitive differentiation in our healthcare platform.

In This Role You Will

• Own the SLM pipeline — design and operationalize League’s small‑model training and serving platform, including data ingestion, fine‑tuning, evaluation, and deployment.
• Develop multiple healthcare‑domain SLMs — deliver a portfolio of small, high‑efficiency language models (single‑digit billions of parameters) optimized for healthcare reasoning and accuracy.
• Lead data strategy — inventory League’s internal data assets; design curation, labeling, and synthetic data generation pipelines aligned with privacy and compliance requirements.
• Drive safety and alignment — lead RLHF/RLAIF, enable red‑team‑ing, and collaborate to establish evaluation frameworks to ensure clinical and ethical integrity.
• Define model‑serving strategy — evaluate and implement serving architectures to ensure low‑latency, cost‑efficient deployment.
• Partner across AI leadership — collaborate with our other AI teams and delivery teams to embed models into production agents.
• Build and scale the team — recruit, mentor, and retain a high‑caliber model‑engineering group.
• Represent League externally — articulate our Responsible AI practices to partners, investors, and industry forums; contribute thought leadership on small‑model innovation in healthcare.

About You

• Significant experience in applied ML/AI; expertise in leading model‑training or fine‑tuning teams is a strong plus.
• Proven experience shipping fine‑tuned or distilled LLMs/SLMs (1–10B parameters).
• Expertise in PEFT, LoRA, quantization, and distillation pipelines.
• Demonstrated success with RLHF/RLAIF, reward modeling, or safety alignment.
• Track record leading data curation and synthetic data generation initiatives.
• Hands‑on experience with NeMo, Hugging Face, Axolotl or similar, and serving stacks (vLLM, Triton, or similar).
• Familiarity with Cloud (GCP, Vertex AI, or similar) and bare‑metal GPU infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of healthcare data privacy and safety (HIPAA, FHIR, clinical ontologies).
• Exceptional ability to communicate technical strategy to executives, customers, and partners.
• Bachelor’s or graduate degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or equivalent experience.

Security‑Related Responsibilities

• Ensure access management is performed in compliance with the employee's role and responsibilities.
• Responsibility and accountability for executing League’s policies and procedures within the department/team.
• Notification of HR, Legal, Compliance & Security of any incidents, breaches or policy violations.
• Compliance with Information Security Policies.

Compensation Range (Canada Applicants Only)

$217,600 - $271,500 CAD.

Our employees come from different backgrounds, and we celebrate those differences. We are looking for the best candidates for our open roles, but do not expect applicants to meet every qualification in order to be considered. If you are excited about what you could accomplish at League and believe you can add value to our team, we would love to hear from you.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you are an individual in need of assistance at any time during our recruitment process, please contact us at [e-mail].

Our Application Process

Applying to a role you love can be exhausting, and understanding the next steps can feel vague and uncertain. You have done the hard part of submitting your application; let's do ours by sharing potential next steps.

• You should receive a confirmation email after submitting your application.
• A recruiter (not a computer) reviews all applications at League.
• If we see alignment with League’s needs, a recruiter will reach out to learn more about your goals. The recruiter will also share the team‑specific interview process depending on the roles you are exploring.
• The final step is an offer, which we hope you will accept!
• Prior to joining us, we conduct reference and background checks. Additional checks could be required for US candidates, depending on the role you are exploring.

Work Location

We have a mix of office‑centric roles based in our vibrant Toronto office, and remote‑eligible roles based anywhere in Canada or the US. Each job will indicate where the role will be based. Regardless of the role’s posted location, all Toronto‑area Leaguers (living within 65 km of our downtown HQ) collaborate in‑office Monday through Thursday. Depending on your distance to the office, you’ll enjoy 10 or 20 Flexible Remote Days each quarter for focus and deep‑work time. We are committed to fostering a meaningful work environment and connections for all Leaguers regardless of location.

Use of AI Notice

We are committed to ensuring fairness and transparency throughout our hiring process. League may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to assist in the screening of applicants for this position. Please check out our stance on using AI in recruitment here .

Privacy Policy

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