Principal Applied AI Engineer

Qualified Health; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 230,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Flexible hours

Hybrid work option

Job summary

Qualified Health is building a leadership platform for agentic AI across its healthcare product portfolio. We’re seeking a Principal Applied AI Engineer to define the vision, set standards, and drive production-grade AI infrastructure and governance.

You will influence multiple teams, mentor senior engineers, and stay ahead of AI frontier with new models and frameworks to align with company strategy.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree plus 10+ years in CS/Engineering, or master's with 8+ years.
• 1. Strong production software experience and system design.
• 2. Deep expertise in MLOps, model deployment, and workflow automation.
• 3. Proven ability to set technical direction across multiple teams.
• 4. Experience shaping platform-level engineering standards.
• 5. Comfortable leading in ambiguous, high-stakes environments.

Responsibilities

• Define multi-year technical strategy and architecture for agentic workflow infra.
• 2. Represent Applied AI engineering in leadership decisions on product direction.
• 3. Set org-wide standards for LLM evaluation, safety, and monitoring.
• 4. Act as escalation point for hardest, high-ambiguity problems.
• 5. Mentor Staff engineers and shape the technical career ladder.
• 6. Evaluate emerging models/frameworks and guide adoption across teams.
• 7. Partner with founders on AI infrastructure investments.

Skills

Python

Production software

LLM/AI systems

MLOps

Technical leadership

Stakeholder influence

Education

Bachelor's + 10y or Master's + 8y in CS/Engineering

Tools

OpenAI

Anthropic

Mistral

Job description

Transform healthcare with us.

At Qualified Health, we're redefining what's possible with Generative AI in healthcare. Our infrastructure provides the guardrails for safe AI governance, healthcare-specific agent creation, and real-time algorithm monitoring—working alongside leading health systems to drive real change.

This is more than just a job. It's an opportunity to build the future of AI in healthcare, solve complex challenges, and make a lasting impact on patient care. If you're ambitious, innovative, and ready to move fast, we'd love to have you on board.

Join us in shaping the future of healthcare.

Job Summary:

We're hiring a Principal Applied AI Engineer to set the technical vision for how Qualified Health builds agentic AI systems across the entire product portfolio. This is a company-level technical leadership role: you'll shape multi-year infrastructure strategy, represent engineering in decisions about AI direction at the leadership table, and set the bar for what "production-grade agentic AI in healthcare" means at QH. You'll still write code and dive into hard technical problems directly, but your primary impact will be through the systems, standards, and people you influence across teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define the multi-year technical strategy and architecture for agentic workflow infrastructure supporting the full QH product portfolio (100+ workflows and growing).

• Represent applied AI engineering in cross-functional and leadership-level decisions on product direction, build-vs-buy, and platform investment.

• Set org-wide engineering standards for LLM evaluation, deployment, safety, and monitoring — informing QH's broader AI governance approach.

• Act as a technical escalation point for the hardest, highest-ambiguity problems across product lines.

• Mentor and develop Staff-level engineers; help shape the technical career ladder for applied AI roles.

• Stay ahead of the frontier — evaluate emerging models, frameworks, and techniques (OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, etc.) and determine what's worth adopting at QH.

• Partner with founders and engineering leadership on how AI infrastructure investment ties to company strategy.

Required Qualifications:

• Deep software engineering foundation (Python required) with a track record of architecting systems used company-wide.

• 8+ years building production software, including 4+ years building and scaling AI-powered/LLM-driven applications in production.

• Proven experience setting technical direction and standards adopted across multiple teams, not just a single product line.

• Deep expertise in MLOps, model deployment, and workflow automation at an organizational/platform level.

• Demonstrated ability to operate with full autonomy on ambiguous, high-stakes technical and strategic problems.

• Strong track record influencing technical decisions at the leadership level, including with non-technical stakeholders.

Desirable Skills:

• Bachelor's degree + 10 years OR Master's degree + 8 years in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).

• Recognized expertise (internally or externally — talks, publications, open source, prior platform-level roles) in applied AI/agentic systems.

• Experience building AI infrastructure in a regulated or high-stakes domain (healthcare, finance, etc.).

• History of founding or scaling a technical function from the ground up in a startup environment.

• Experience mentoring Staff-level engineers and shaping technical career ladders.

Why Join Qualified Health?

This is an opportunity to join a fast-growing company and a world-class team, that is poised to change the healthcare industry. We are a passionate, mission-driven team that is building a category-defining product. We are backed by premier investors and are looking for founding team members who are excited to do the best work of their careers.

Our employees are integral to achieving our goals so we are proud to offer competitive salaries with equity packages, robust medical/dental/vision insurance, flexible working hours, hybrid work options and an inclusive environment that fosters creativity and innovation.

Our Commitment to Diversity

Qualified Health is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace is essential to our success, and we are committed to building a team that reflects the world we live in. We encourage applications from all qualified individuals, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, marital status, disability, or veteran status.

Pay & Benefits: The pay range for this role is between $230,000 and $280,000, depending on skills, qualifications, experience, and location. This role is also eligible for equity and benefits.