Lead AI Software Engineer

Humana Inc; Nashville (TN); Hybrid; USD 129,000 - 178,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

401(k) retirement plan

Paid time off

Job summary

Humana Inc. is seeking a Lead AI Software Engineer to drive the design, development, and scaling of production-grade AI solutions.

You will mentor engineers and data scientists, partnering with platform, infra, and DevOps teams to ensure scalable, observable, and cost-efficient AI systems in a fast-moving enterprise environment. The role emphasizes leadership, hands-on development, and governance to deliver impactful AI products across cloud-native architectures.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with demonstrated technical leadership.
• Proven experience building and delivering large-scale, production-grade software platforms.
• Strong backend development expertise with Python, Java, or similar languages.
• Experience designing distributed systems and cloud-native applications.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives from architecture through deployment.
• Experience working in agile environments with frequent delivery and iteration.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic AI initiatives, driving architecture, design decisions, and engineering excellence.
• Design and build scalable, secure, cloud-native AI platforms and services.
• Architect solutions leveraging generative AI, LLMs, document processing, and data-driven apps.
• Lead design reviews, code reviews, and technical planning.
• Establish engineering standards, reusable frameworks, and best practices for scalable delivery.
• Provide technical guidance across the full software development lifecycle.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

Cloud-native

Python/Java

Technical leadership

Agile

Job description

Become a part of our caring community

We're seeking a Lead AI Software Engineer to help build the next generation of AI-powered products and platforms. This is a hands-on technical leadership role focused on designing, developing, and scaling production-grade AI solutions that deliver real business impact.

You will work closely with engineers, data scientists, product leaders, and architects to turn innovative ideas into real-world applications using modern AI technologies, including large language models (LLMs), intelligent automation, and cloud-native architectures. If you're passionate about building, mentoring, and solving complex engineering challenges, this is an opportunity to help shape the future of Applied AI.

While this role provides mentorship and technical leadership to a talented group of engineers and data scientists, it remains strongly anchored in design, development, and execution within a fast-moving, enterprise-scale environment.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Serve as the technical lead for strategic AI initiatives, driving architecture, design decisions, and engineering excellence.
• Design and build scalable, secure, cloud-native AI platforms and services.
• Architect solutionsleveraginggenerative AI, large language models, intelligent document processing, and data-driven applications.
• Lead design reviews, code reviews, and technical planning efforts.
• Establish engineering standards, reusable frameworks, and best practices that enable teams to deliver atscale.
• Providetechnical guidance across the full software development lifecycle.

AI Solution Development

• Build end-to-end AI solutions, including APIs, microservices, data pipelines, orchestration layers, and evaluation frameworks.
• Develop production-grade applications integrating AI and machine learning capabilities.
• Partner with platform, infrastructure, and DevOps teams to ensure solutions are scalable, reliable, observable, and cost-efficient.
• Drive technical execution from concept through production deployment in an agile delivery environment.
• Evaluate and adopt emerging AI technologies to accelerate innovation and business value.

Mentorship & Team Leadership

• Mentor and develop software engineers and data scientists through technical coaching and hands-on collaboration.
• Promote best practices in software engineering, AI development, cloud architecture, and operational excellence.
• Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, continuous learning, and high-quality execution.
• Help teams balance rapid delivery with long-term maintainability and technical excellence.

AI Governance & Operational Excellence

• Implement evaluation, testing, and validation frameworks for AI-powered applications.
• Support monitoring, performance optimization, and incident response for AI systems in production.
• Drive responsible AI practices focused on reliability, security, compliance, and risk management.
• Ensure AI solutions meet enterprise standards for scalability, operational readiness, and governance.

Use your skills to make an impact

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience withdemonstratedtechnical leadership.
• Proven experience building and delivering large-scale, production-grade software platforms.
• Strong backend developmentexpertisewith Python, Java, or similar languages.
• Experience designing distributed systems and cloud-native applications.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives from architecture through deployment.
• Experience working in agile environments with frequent delivery and iteration.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building and deploying AI, machine learning, or generative AI solutions in production.
• Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs) and modern AI application architectures.
• Knowledge of AI orchestration frameworks, agent-based systems, and model-serving platforms.
• Experience with GCP, AWS, or Azure cloud platforms.
• Familiarity with RAG, embeddings, vector databases, semantic search, OCR, and intelligent document processing.
• Background in data engineering, data science, orMLOps.
• Experience building APIs, microservices, and event-driven architectures.
• Experienceoperatingwithin complex or highly regulated enterprise environments.
• Strong communicationand stakeholder management skills.

Additional Information

Location & Work Style

This is a hybrid role based in one of our technology hub locations: Louisville, KY; Nashville, TN; Tampa, FL; Fort Lauderdale, FL; or Dallas, TX. Team members are expected to work onsite several days per week to collaborate with engineering, product, and business partners while maintaining flexibility to work remotely.

Scheduled Weekly Hours

40

Pay Range

The compensation range below reflects a good faith estimate of starting base pay for full time (40 hours per week) employment at the time of posting. The pay range may be higher or lower based on geographic location and individual pay will vary based on demonstrated job related skills, knowledge, experience, education, certifications, etc.

$129,300 - $177,800 per year

This job is eligible for a bonus incentive plan. This incentive opportunity is based upon company and/or individual performance.

Description of Benefits

Humana, Inc. and its affiliated subsidiaries (collectively, “Humana”) offers competitive benefits that support whole-person well-being. Associate benefits are designed to encourage personal wellness and smart healthcare decisions for you and your family while also knowing your life extends outside of work. Among our benefits, Humana provides medical, dental and vision benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan, time off (including paid time off, company and personal holidays, paid parental and caregiver leave), short-term and long-term disability, life insurance and many other opportunities.

About Us

About Humana: Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) is a leading U.S. healthcare company. Through our Humana insurance services and our CenterWell healthcare services, we make it easier for the millions of people we serve to achieve their best health – delivering the care and service they need, when they need it. These efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare and Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. Learn more about what we offer atHumana.comand atCenterWell.com.

Equal Opportunity Employer

It is the policy of Humana not to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability or protected veteran status. It is also the policy of Humana to take affirmative action, in compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, to employ and to advance in employment individuals with disability or protected veteran status, and to base all employment decisions only on valid job requirements. This policy shall apply to all employment actions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, upgrading, promotion, transfer, demotion, layoff, recall, termination, rates of pay or other forms of compensation and selection for training, including apprenticeship, at all levels of employment.

Humana complies with all applicable federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or religion. We also provide free language interpreter services. See our https://www.humana.com/legal/accessibility-resources?source=Humana_Website.