AI Principal Software Engineer (Remote)

Accruit; Oak Brook (IL); Remote; USD 153,000 - 205,000; Full time

Job summary

Inspira Financial in Oak Brook, IL is seeking an AI CoE Principal Software Engineer to own the enterprise AI platform and drive the architecture from discovery to scale. You will shape the semantic router, model hosting, and AI operations, partnering with security, risk, compliance, and data governance teams.

This senior IC role has no direct reports and requires 12+ years building production software, with 4+ years in AI/ML and 2+ years with LLMs or agentic systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.
• AI Practitioner certifications are a plus.
• 12+ years building and operating production software, including 4+ years delivering production AI/ML systems and 2+ years of LLM or agentic systems in production.

Responsibilities

• Architect and operate the shared enterprise AI platform across teams.
• Design semantic routing and model orchestration with cost, latency criteria.
• Ensure governance guardrails for safe AI use at scale.
• Lead multi-agent orchestration across the software development lifecycle.
• Mentor senior engineers and collaborate with security and compliance teams.

Skills

Agentic workflows

Semantic routing

AI governance

Production AI

Technical leadership

Education

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

AI Practitioner Certifications

Tools

GitHub Copilot

Claude Code

ONA

Job description

Take the next step in your journey at Inspira Financial.Guided by our mission to enable better health and greater wealth, we help businesses and individuals thrive today, tomorrow, and into retirement by strengthening and simplifying the health and wealth journey.

Serving more than 7 million clients and representing over $62 billion in assets, Inspira partners with thousands of employers, plan sponsors, recordkeepers, TPAs, and other institutional partners to help the people they support plan, save, and invest for a brighter future. Through solutions including automatic rollover services, health savings accounts, emergency savings, and custody services, Inspira is focused on delivering better outcomes for all. Learn more at inspirafinancial.com .

Our values shape how we show up every day. WeLead with Heartby acting with compassion, empathy, and doing what's right;Cultivate Trustthrough integrity, transparency, and accountability;Aim Higherby never settling for what's expected and continually raising the standard; andWin Togetherby collaborating inclusively to achieve the best outcomes.

Our growth and culture haven't gone unnoticed -- we've been recognized on Crain's Fast 50 and Inc. 5000 for remarkable growth, and named to Built In's 2025 Best Places to Work and Gallagher's 2022 Best-In-Class Employer for our workplace culture and benefits.

Don't meet every single requirement? That's okay. We know growth comes from people who are willing to learn and challenge themselves, not just check every box. If you're energized and inspired by meaningful work, continuous development, and being part of a team that turns collective effort into real impact.

Our office locations are designed to bring people together, foster collaboration, and build meaningful connections. While some roles are based at one of our office locations, remote status and role locations are subject to change, and relocation is not provided.

Job Summary & Responsibilities

Position Summary:

The AI CoE Principal Software Engineer will report to the Sr. Director, AI Center of Excellence, in the Technology Department . This role is the most senior individual contributor on the team and the technical owner of the enterprise AI engineering foundation, including the semantic router, model and harness hosting, the enterprise AI gateway, and the AI operations layer used across the business. The role is responsible for setting AI engineering architecture and standards and then building them, carrying a multi-year capability roadmap from discovery through prototype, validation, and production scale. Primary duties include designing and building the shared AI platform and semantic routing layer; product inference and personali zation, partnering with AI-Ops on monitoring, evaluation, and governance guardrails; building secure, compliant AI integration patterns for a regulated financial services and health and benefits environment s ; leading agentic pipeline and multi-agent orchestration work; delivering production AI services for CoE -enabled business functions; developing reusable reference architectures for other engineering teams; managing AI unit economics; prototyping emerging AI capabilities; mentoring senior and lead engineers; and partnering with security, risk, compliance, and data governance. This role does not have direct reports.

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Architect, build, and operate the shared enterprise AI platform, including core semantic data, model, harness, and hosting capability used across developer and in-product personalization use cases.
• Design and maintain intelligent request routing using semantic analysis and deterministic logic to direct requests to the best-fit LLM, internal tool, or agentic pool, using cost, latency, and privacy as routing criteria.
• Partner with AI-Ops to enable metric-based reporting, quality, performance, and drift monitoring across live systems, build model evaluation harnesses, and establish governance guardrails for safe AI use at scale.
• Design and implement secure, compliant AI integration patterns appropriate for a regulated financial services environment.
• Build and scale agentic pipelines and multi-agent orchestration across the software development lifecycle, from pilot through measured engineering capacity across product teams.
• Deliver production AI services supporting document intelligence and claims adjudication, conversational and voice self-service, call intelligence, fraud and anomaly detection, and regulatory monitoring.
• Develop reusable reference architectures and standard patterns so other engineering teams and embedded consultants can build AI solutions without rebuilding the foundation.
• Evaluate unit economics for AI workloads, including cost per transaction, token and inference spend, latency budgets, and build-versus-buy and self-host-versus-vendor decisions.
• Identify and prototype emerging AI capabilities relevant to the business and technology roadmap, including fast, focused feasibility spikes with clear recommendations.
• Lead hands-on training sessions and pair directly with engineering teams on new development methods and prototype or pattern adoption.
• Monitor the AI landscape and translate findings into roadmap recommendations on what to pilot, what to watch, and what to decline.
• Set technical direction and standards for embedded AI consultants and the coaching network to scale AI delivery capacity beyond the CoE .
• Mentor senior and lead engineers across business units, review AI designs, and serve as the escalation point for complex agentic and integration issues.
• Partner with security, risk, compliance, and data governance teams to support safe and compliant AI delivery.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Preferred Qualifications

Education & Experience:

• Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science .
• AI Practitioner Certifications are a plus
• 12+ years building and operating production software, including 4+ years delivering production AI/ML systems and 2+ years of LLM or agentic systems in production, with a track record as the most senior technical owner of an enterprise-scale platform.

Skills & Abilities:

• Architecting and operating production agentic workflows as state machines, including branching logic, retry and recovery paths, and precise control over multi-step process flow.
• Deep fluency with AI-assisted development environments such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, or ONA, with a track record of driving adoption and measured impact across engineering teams.
• Semantic routing and model orchestration, including embedding-based intent analysis, deterministic fallback logic, and policy-based model selection across multiple providers on cost, latency, and privacy criteria.
• Observability and AI Ops for non-deterministic systems, including distributed tracing, behavioral analysis, usage and quality metrics, drift detection, and cost and latency telemetry for executive reporting.
• Security-aware engineering with demonstrated experience handling PII and sensitive data, including encryption, secrets management, least-privilege access, and audit trails in a regulated environment.
• Model hosting and serving experience, including deploying and operating commercial and open-weight models behind a gateway or proxy, with sound self-host-versus-vendor judgment.
• Evaluation and reliability engineering for probabilistic systems, including eval harnesses, golden datasets, offline and online scoring, guardrails, red-teaming, hallucination mitigation, and human-in-the-loop review design.
• Technical leadership without formal authority, including architecture decision records, design reviews, mentoring senior and staff engineers, and communicating trade-offs to executive stakeholders.
• Ability to own a multi-year capability roadmap, moving work from discovery through prototype, production validation, and scale against defined business metrics.
• Ability to move fluidly between abstract system thinking and tactical, incremental delivery while managing stakeholders and delivering against a critical path.
• Financial services, healthcare benefits, or other regulated industry experience preferred, with HSA/FSA, claims, custody, or payments domain exposure especially valuable.
• Knowledge of AI governance and compliance frameworks preferred, such as NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, model risk management, SOC 2, or HIPAA control environments.
• Experience with rapid prototyping and feasibility assessment in an R&D or innovation capacity preferred.
• Experience facilitating technical learning sessions or pairing with engineers at varying skill levels preferred.
• Multi-agent system design experience preferred, including role assignment and coordination, agent-to-agent conversation patterns, and code execution loops for iterative problem solving.
• API and integration experience across REST, event-driven, and MCP patterns preferred, including integrating AI into systems of record and workflow platforms.

Other Requirements:

• Ability to occasionally work outside normal business hours to meet project deadlines as needed.
• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.

Pay Range

$152,700-$205,000 per year

The compensation for this position will vary depending on factors such as your location, skills and experience. The compensation package may also include incentive and bonus opportunities.

Inspira provides industry-leading benefits including, but not limited to: healthcare, 401K savings plan, company holidays, paid time off, parental leave and an employee assistance program.

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