AI Platform Engineer

Zelis Healthcare, LLC; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 248,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k match

Health benefits

Paid time off

Job summary

Zelis Healthcare, LLC is seeking a hands-on AI Platform Engineer to help build Apollo, our AI-powered platform. You will influence the technical foundations and work across executing environments, governance, and developer experience to enable internal AI applications.

The role emphasizes building safe runtimes, reusable platform services, and thoughtful technology bets while ensuring security and governance are integral to the platform.

Qualifications

• Strong software or platform engineering experience building production systems.
• Experience with distributed systems, AWS or cloud infra, container orchestration, CI/CD, IaC, APIs, observability.
• Hands-on with modern AI technologies such as foundation models, agent frameworks or harnesses, model evaluation, retrieval/context systems.

Responsibilities

• Build the core agentic platform with execution, state, context assembly, model routing, tool contracts, observability.
• Create safe execution environments across containerized, local, and simulation environments.
• Develop reusable platform services like AI Gateway, Context Engine, policy profiles, and observability.
• Evaluate emerging models and toolchains; run experiments and scale successful capabilities.
• Incorporate security and governance: identity-aware access, auditability, and policy-as-code.
• Design developer-friendly APIs, docs, and paved paths for engineers.
• Collaborate with engineers, product partners, security, and executives to drive adoption.

Skills

Distributed systems

AWS

CI/CD

APIs

Observability

Python

TypeScript

Go

Security

Tools

Apollo platform

AI Gateway

MCP technologies

Job description

At Zelis, we Get Stuff Done. So, let's get to it!

A Little About Us

Zelis is modernizing the healthcare financial experience across payers, providers, and healthcare consumers. We serve more than 750 payers, including the top five national health plans, regional health plans, TPAs and millions of healthcare providers and consumers across our platform of solutions. Zelis sees across the system to identify, optimize, and solve problems holistically with technology built by healthcare experts - driving real, measurable results for clients.

At Zelis, AI is woven into the fabric of how we work. Every associate is expected - and empowered - to partner with AI to challenge the status quo, accelerate innovation, and amplify their impact. This is a place for builders with a growth mindset who act with agility, embrace change, and use modern technology to shape smarter solutions, exceptional experiences, and the future of our industry for our clients, customers, and our culture.

A Little About You

You bring a unique blend of personality and professional expertise to your work, inspiring others with your passion and dedication. Your career is a testament to your diverse experiences, community involvement, and the valuable lessons you've learned along the way. You are more than just your resume; you are a reflection of your achievements, the knowledge you've gained, and the personal interests that shape who you are.

Position Overview

Why Zelis?

Healthcare is one of the most complex industries in the world-and one of the biggest opportunities for AI to create meaningful impact.

Zelis sits at the center of the healthcare financial ecosystem, connecting payers, providers, and millions of healthcare consumers. We're investing in AI not simply as a productivity tool, but as a new way to build technology and solve complex business problems.

At the center of that work is Apollo, our internal agentic AI platform. Apollo gives engineers the infrastructure, tools, controls, and reusable capabilities they need to safely build and deploy AI-powered applications across Zelis.

We're looking for a hands-on AI Platform Engineer to help build it. You'll join while the platform is still taking shape and have meaningful influence over the technical foundations other engineers will build on.

What You'll Do

This role sits at the intersection of AI, platform engineering, developer experience, and enterprise-scale delivery. You'll help turn rapidly evolving AI capabilities into dependable platform primitives that engineers across Zelis can use to build real applications.

You'll have significant influence over how Apollo evolves-from the agent harness and execution environment to model and tool governance, context, observability, evaluation, and developer experience.

You will:

• Build the core agentic platform. Design and evolve capabilities across agent execution, workflow state and orchestration, context assembly, model routing, tool contracts, evaluation, observability, policy enforcement, and automated repair loops.
• Create safe execution environments. Build and operate isolated agent runtimes across containerized, local, and simulation environments, supporting persistent sessions, testing, previews, adversarial review, and diagnose-and-repair workflows.
• Develop reusable platform services. Help shape capabilities such as our AI Gateway, Context Engine, policy profiles, semantic models, project bootstrap tools, observability, and delivery integrations.
• Make thoughtful technology bets. Evaluate emerging foundation models, coding agents, MCP technologies, workflow engines, developer tools, and commercial and open-source platforms. Run disciplined experiments and turn the right ones into supported Apollo capabilities.
• Make security and governance part of the platform. Build identity-aware access, isolation, policy-as-code, auditability, and controls for model and tool usage so engineers can move quickly without creating unnecessary risk.
• Design for developers. Create clear APIs, interfaces, documentation, and paved paths that allow application engineers to take advantage of sophisticated AI infrastructure without needing to understand every element of the underlying control plane.
• Learn from real-world use. Work closely with forward-deployed/agentic AI and business-unit engineers, understand what is working and where they are getting stuck, and turn repeatable patterns into reusable platform capabilities.

What You’ll Bring

We care less about matching every technology on a checklist and more about finding someone who has built complex systems, thinks clearly about tradeoffs, and is energized by the opportunity to help define how AI engineering should work at scale.

You’ll likely bring:

• Strong software or platform engineering experience, including building and operating production systems used by other engineers.
• Experience with distributed systems, AWS and cloud infrastructure, container orchestration, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, APIs, and observability.
• Hands-on experience building with modern AI technologies such as foundation models, AI gateways, agent frameworks or harnesses, model evaluation, MCP, retrieval/context systems, or safe execution environments.
• Strong programming skills in Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, or another modern language, with the ability to move comfortably between application and platform code.
• A practical understanding of model behavior, evaluation, prompt and tool design, token and latency tradeoffs, and model-provider integration.
• Experience assessing new technologies with an eye toward security, reliability, maturity, cost, maintainability, and long-term platform value-not simply technical novelty.
• An understanding of identity, secrets management, network boundaries, audit logging, and policy enforcement in enterprise environments.
• The ability to work through ambiguity, run focused experiments, make clear technical decisions, and adjust course based on what you learn in production.
• Strong communication skills and an interest in working directly with engineers, product partners, security, architecture, and senior stakeholders to drive adoption.
• Experience building an internal developer platform, AI or agent platform, or engineering productivity product is especially relevant. Experience operating in healthcare, financial services, or another highly regulated environment is helpful but not required.

Please note at this time we are unable to proceed with candidates who require visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Location and Workplace Flexibility

Zelis is headquartered in the U.S., with multiple locations across the country and in Hyderabad, India. Check out our locations to learn more about our offices. All employee work locations are based on the needs of the position and are determined by the Leadership team. In-office work and activities vary based on work and team objectives in accordance with Company policies.

While location expectations vary by role, candidates within approximately 50 miles of a U.S. office are generally preferred to support collaboration when needed. Our hybrid approach is flexible, and in-office presence is guided by team and business needs rather than a fixed weekly schedule.

Base Salary Range

$180,000.00 - $247,500.00

At Zelis we are committed to providing fair and equitable compensation packages. The base salary range allows us to make an offer that considers multiple individualized factors, including experience, education, qualifications, as well as job-related and industry-related knowledge and skills, etc. Base pay is just one part of our Total Rewards package, which may also include discretionary bonus plans, commissions, or other incentives depending on the role.

Zelis' full-time associates are eligible for a highly competitive benefits package as well, which demonstrates our commitment to our employees' health, well-being, and financial protection. The US-based benefits include a 401k plan with employer match, flexible paid time off, holidays, parental leaves, life and disability insurance, and health benefits including medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Zelis is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and encourage you to apply even if you don't meet 100% of the qualifications for the role. We believe in the value of diverse perspectives and experiences and are committed to building an inclusive workplace for all.

Accessibility Support

We are dedicated to ensuring our application process is accessible to all candidates. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require a reasonable accommodation with any part of the application and/or interview process, please email [e-mail].

Disclaimer

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities, duties, and skills from time to time.