Principal AI Engineer

Novo Nordisk A/S; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Novo Nordisk in Bengaluru is recruiting for an AI Engineer leadership role to turn AI opportunities into reliable products within Enterprise AI. You will work with product managers, data scientists, and engineers across Commercial, Global Manufacturing & Supply, and other strategic areas to deliver value for patients and the business.

The role requires strong software engineering experience, production AI expertise, and the ability to set technical direction across multiple product teams.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering AI or software products.
• Hands-on production AI experience with evaluation, monitoring, and governance.
• Ability to work with cross-functional product teams and stakeholders.
• Strong knowledge of modern AI interfaces and standards.

Responsibilities

• Taking AI- and ML-centric use cases from discovery through production and continuous improvement.
• Engineering the product-specific intelligence layer, including data transformations and integration.
• Partnering with stakeholders to frame problems, shape the build, and define meaningful outcomes.
• Using AI-assisted development tools responsibly while maintaining high code quality.
• Engineering reliable, scalable, secure, and observable solutions with testing and CI/CD practices.
• Applying Responsible AI, data integrity, validation, and auditability in a regulated environment.

Skills

AI engineering

Software development

CI/CD

GitHub

Product collaboration

Stakeholder communication

Education

B.E./B.Tech./M.Tech in Computer Science or related

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

Azure ML

Unity Catalog

Job description

Are you excited about using AI to improve patients' lives? Do you thrive on crafting and delivering high-quality products? Do you enjoy collaborating in a dynamic, multinational environment with experts from different domains? Then you might be interested in joining Enterprise AI, an area of AI and data engineers, software engineers, data scientists, and AI enablement experts in Novo Nordisk's Enterprise IT.

Your new role

In the AI Engineering Solutions team, you will turn strategic AI use cases into reliable products that create value across Novo Nordisk and for the patients we serve. You will be hired into AI Reinvent & Engineering, while much of your work will take place in cross-functional product teams across areas such as Commercial, Global Manufacturing & Supply, as well as in strategic initiatives across the business. Working with product managers, domain experts, data scientists, engineers, and the AI Foundation team, you will ideally bring a strong software-engineering foundation, deep applied AI experience and a product mindset. A central part of the role is determining whether a problem calls for conventional software or rules, optimization, a predictive model, retrieval-grounded GenAI or a carefully bounded agentic workflow. You will set technical direction across multiple AI products, shape architecture and engineering standards, and act as a trusted technical advisor to product and engineering leaders.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Taking AI- and ML-centric use cases from discovery and rapid prototyping through production and continuous improvement, collaborating with product managers, data scientists, engineers, and domain experts
• Engineering the product-specific intelligence layer, including data and feature transformations, decision logic, model and tool integrations, knowledge grounding, user-facing services, human-oversight controls and appropriate fallback behaviour
• Partnering with stakeholders and product managers to frame problems, shape the build, agree priorities, and define meaningful product outcomes
• Using AI-assisted development tools and coding agents productively and responsibly while maintaining high standards for code quality and review
• Engineering reliable, scalable, secure, and observable solutions with appropriate testing, evaluation, documentation, and CI/CD practices
• Applying Responsible AI, data integrity, validation, traceability, and auditability requirements in a regulated pharmaceutical environment
• Working with the AI Foundation team to reuse shared capabilities and turn lessons from individual deliveries into reusable components and engineering patterns
• Providing technical direction for complex use cases, aligning stakeholders, and coaching engineers without relying on formal authority

Your new team

In Enterprise AI, you will be part of a business area that drives impact across the full Novo Nordisk value chain. We stay close to colleagues in the business so that we solve relevant problems and deliver solutions that support millions of people living with serious chronic diseases.

Within Enterprise AI, AI Reinvent & Engineering turns AI opportunities into products. The AI Engineering Solutions team brings together engineers with different strengths across statistics, machine learning, AI, and software engineering. Although you belong to this engineering community, your day-to-day work will often happen in cross‑functional product teams in Commercial, Manufacturing & Product Supply, and other business areas. This lets us stay close to the problems while maintaining strong links to shared engineering practices and the AI Foundation team.

We are cloud-native and work across technologies such as Azure and AWS, Databricks, Snowflake, foundation-model APIs, and modern AI application frameworks. We value technical rigour, experimentation, direct feedback, and continuous learning.

Your skills & qualifications

We are looking for Principal AI Engineer candidates who enjoy translating technology into business impact and working closely with product teams and stakeholders. All candidates should have a solid foundation in software delivery, production AI, and cross‑functional product collaboration. Deep expertise in selected areas is an advantage, but candidates are not expected to excel across every aspect of AI engineering. You will ideally bring:

• Typically 12+ years of relevant experience building AI or software products; demonstrated scope, influence, and capability matter more than tenure alone
• A proven track record of taking AI-centric applications from idea to production and/or shaping product or platform capabilities used by multiple teams
• Hands‑on experience operating AI solutions in production, including evaluation, monitoring, reliability, security, governance, and cost‑performance trade‑offs
• Deep expertise in one or more AI engineering domains, with broad fluency across statistical and machine‑learning concepts and modern AI application patterns
• Strong programming and software engineering skills, including testing, documentation, APIs, architecture, and modern development practices such as CI/CD, preferably with GitHub
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools and coding agents effectively and responsibly as part of software delivery
• Strong knowledge of modern AI interfaces and standards, such as model and tool integrations, MCP, observability, evaluation, and traceability approaches
• Product sense and the ability to work with senior stakeholders to clarify needs, shape solutions, make investment and trade‑off decisions, and explain technical choices to technical and non‑technical audiences
• Ability to set technical direction across multiple product teams, align complex stakeholder groups, and coach senior engineers and technical leads without relying on formal authority
• Demonstrated ability to establish enterprise‑relevant AI architecture patterns, resolve ambiguous cross‑team trade‑offs, and raise engineering standards through reusable designs, communities of practice, and technical coaching
• A collaborative mindset, good listening skills, self‑motivation, and continuous curiosity about the evolving field of AI
• Defining technical direction and architecture across a portfolio of complex AI products, resolving cross‑product trade‑offs, and raising engineering standards through reusable patterns and reference designs.
• B.E/M.E/B.Tech/M.Tech/PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, or a closely related technical discipline

Additional desirable but not required skills include:

• Familiarity with pharma‑specific AI domains: clinical NLP, drug discovery AI, regulatory automation, or medical knowledge graphs
• Experience with Databricks, Snowflake, Azure ML, and Unity Catalog in an enterprise data/AI platform context
• Knowledge of MCP (Model Context Protocol) server design and enterprise AI platform architecture patterns

Working at Novo Nordisk

Every day we seek solutions that defeat serious chronic diseases. We approach our work with determination, curiosity, and a commitment to finding better ways forward. For more than 100 years, this dedication has shaped a company focused on lasting change for long‑term health. In AI Reinvent & Engineering, your work will help turn AI into reliable products used across a global healthcare company.

What we offer

At Novo Nordisk, you'll join a global healthcare company with a distinct culture and strong results. We offer continuous learning, career development, and benefits tailored to your life and career stage.

Deadline:

25th Sept 2026. Applications are reviewed on an ongoing basis.

We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.

At Novo Nordisk, we're not chasing quick fixes - we're creating lasting change for long‑term health. For over 100 years, we've been driven by a single purpose: to defeat serious chronic diseases and help millions of people live healthier lives. This dedication fuels our constant curiosity and inspires us to push the boundaries of what's possible in healthcare. We embrace diverse perspectives, seek out bold ideas, and build partnerships rooted in shared purpose. Together, we're making healthcare more accessible, treating and preventing diseases, and pioneering solutions that create change spanning generations. When you join us, you become part of something bigger - a legacy of impact that reaches far beyond today.