Principal AI Architect, Enterprise Platform & Strategy

Mckesson Corporation; Columbus (OH); On-site; USD 195,000 - 325,000; Full time

Job summary

McKesson Corporation seeks a Principal AI Engineer to lead the multi-year architecture strategy for our AI platform, spanning model strategy, RAG, and governance. You will be the primary technical voice with executive leadership on AI risk and investment decisions.

In a regulated healthcare context, you will unblock cross-team risk, mentor engineers, and shape governance across PHI handling and vendor strategy. Columbus, OH area preferred; sponsorship not available.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree; typically 12+ years of software engineering experience, incl. 6+ years AI/ML, LLM, or NLP in production.
• Proven ability to lead across multiple teams and set technical direction.
• Deep hands-on experience building production LLM applications at scale (prompt engineering, RAG, tooling).
• Experience with commercial LLM APIs and integration protocols like MCP.

Responsibilities

• Own multi-year AI platform strategy and roadmap spanning model strategy, RAG, tool ecosystems, and evaluation.
• Serve as final technical escalation point for architecture and reliability across teams.
• Set architecture, security, and evaluation standards adopted by several teams.
• Advise executive leadership on AI platform strategy, model risk, and investments.
• Lead architecture and prototyping for high-ambiguity, high-risk AI initiatives.
• Mentor Lead/Senior AI Engineers to become technical leaders.
• Shape enterprise-wide AI governance, PHI handling, and risk policies.
• Own long-term strategy for foundation models and AI infrastructure vendors.
• Represent the company’s AI capability externally to forums and partners.
• Influence AI platform direction across the enterprise.

Skills

AI leadership

LLM/RAG

Python/Java

Cloud-native

Model risk governance

Executive communication

Vendor strategy

Security standards

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience

Tools

OpenAI API

Anthropic API

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Job description

McKesson Corporation seeks a Principal AI Engineer to lead the multi-year architecture strategy for our AI platform, spanning model strategy, RAG, and governance. You will be the primary technical voice with executive leadership on AI risk and investment decisions.

In a regulated healthcare context, you will unblock cross-team risk, mentor engineers, and shape governance across PHI handling and vendor strategy. Columbus, OH area preferred; sponsorship not available.