Principal Engineer, Clinical Data and AI Platforms

CVS Health; Texas; Hybrid; USD 144,000 - 288,000; Full time

Job summary

CVS Health in Texas seeks a Principal Engineer to design and grow a cloud-based platform that turns clinical, claims and document data into actionable insights for patients, providers and payers. You will lead AI-assisted development and operations, coding critical components and shaping governance in a regulated health environment.

You’ll partner with engineering, security and product leaders to build scalable data pipelines on Google Cloud (GKE, BigQuery, Spanner) and to define guardrails,

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience building production distributed systems.
• 5+ years leading architecture across multiple teams at the staff or principal level.
• Experience designing and delivering large-scale batch and streaming data platforms in a demanding engineering environment.
• Current, hands-on coding experience in Python and either Go, Java, or C#.
• Deep experience with cloud platforms, preferably Google Cloud, including GKE, BigQuery, Spanner, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Vertex AI and VPC Service Controls.
• Production experience with machine learning or large language model systems, including retrieval, extraction, evaluation and serving at scale.
• Extensive use of AI agents across your own design, development, testing and code review work, with measurable impact on delivery.
• A creative, collaborative approach to problem solving, and comfort working through ambiguity and changing requirements.
• Experience in a regulated environment, including designing controls and supporting systems through audits.
• Strong written communication and diagramming skills, and experience presenting to senior executives.

Responsibilities

• Design platform architecture on Google Cloud with engineering leadership across data, identity, FHIR, data products, LLMs and rules engines.
• Lead evolution of platform design to adapt to changing needs while controlling trade-offs in scale, cost and reliability.
• Write production code for the platform's most critical components and turn prototypes into reference implementations.
• Lead AI-assisted development, defining guardrails, code review, evaluation and human oversight.
• Run pilots with teams, measure impact on delivery speed and quality, and share best practices.
• Maintain architecture diagrams and documentation as code for consistency.
• Design AI-assisted operations for incident triage, runbooks, capacity and cost management.
• Build approval gates, least-privilege access for AI agents, and an audit trail of actions.
• Propose SLOs and observability to measure automation impact.
• Design enterprise controls including change management, data lineage, and governance.
• Automate audit evidence collection with security, privacy, compliance, and AI governance teams.
• Explain complex systems to engineers, product leaders, executives and customers; provide diagrams.
• Help develop technical business cases and present to senior leadership.

Skills

Distributed systems

Architecture leadership

Python coding

Go/Java/C#

Google Cloud

GKE

LLM systems

AI agents

Regulated environment

Written communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or related field

Master's degree preferred

Tools

GKE

BigQuery

Spanner

Dataflow

Pub/Sub

Vertex AI

VPC Service Controls

Job description

We're building a world of health around every individual - shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you'll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger - helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Position Summary

We're building the platform that turns clinical, claims and document data into insight for patients, providers and payers. As Principal Engineer, you'll design and build that platform on Google Cloud, and lead how our teams use AI agents to develop and operate it. The scope is broad and the pace is fast: priorities and requirements evolve quickly, and the systems we build will evolve with them. You'll bring creative problem solving, a collaborative approach and an AI-first way of working. You'll also bring the discipline to run well-governed systems in a regulated environment.

Primary Responsibilities

Platform design

• Design the platform architecture on Google Cloud with engineering leadership. It spans data acquisition, identity resolution, FHIR harmonization, data products, LLM and rules engines, as well as customer-facing products.
• Design systems to evolve quickly as needs change, and lead their evolution over time.
• Frame key trade-offs in isolation, data rights, scale, reliability and cost, and recommend options.

Engineering

• Write production code for the platform's most critical and complex components.
• Turn prototypes into reference implementations that teams can adopt.

AI-assisted development

• Lead the development of practices for using AI coding agents, including specifications, guardrails, code review, evaluation and human oversight.
• Run pilots with engineering teams, measure the effect on delivery speed and quality, and recommend practices for wider adoption.
• Maintain architecture, diagrams and documentation as code, so engineers and AI agents work from the same source.

AI-assisted operations

• Design AI-assisted operations for incident triage, runbook automation, and capacity and cost management.
• Build in approval gates, least-privilege access for AI agents, and a full audit trail of agent actions.
• Propose service-level objectives and the observability needed to measure the impact of automation.

Compliance and controls

• Design for enterprise control conformance within the systems we build, including change management, separation of duties, access reviews, data lineage, and model and prompt governance.
• Automate the collection of audit evidence, in partnership with security, privacy, compliance and AI governance teams.

Communication

• Explain complex systems clearly to engineers, product leaders, executives and customers, in writing and in diagrams.
• Help develop technical business cases and present them to senior leadership.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience building production distributed systems.
• 5+ years leading architecture across multiple teams at the staff or principal level.
• Experience designing and delivering large-scale batch and streaming data platforms in a demanding engineering environment.
• Current, hands-on coding experience in Python and either Go, Java, or C#.
• Deep experience with cloud platforms, preferably Google Cloud, including GKE, BigQuery, Spanner, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Vertex AI and VPC Service Controls.
• Production experience with machine learning or large language model systems, including retrieval, extraction, evaluation and serving at scale.
• Extensive use of AI agents across your own design, development, testing and code review work, with measurable impact on delivery.
• A creative, collaborative approach to problem solving, and comfort working through ambiguity and changing requirements.
• Experience in a regulated environment, including designing controls and supporting systems through audits.
• Strong written communication and diagramming skills, and experience presenting to senior executives.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with healthcare data standards, including FHIR, HL7v2, C-CDA, X12 claims, OMOP and CQL, and with national health information exchange through TEFCA and QHINs.
• Experience with master patient index and identity resolution at population scale.
• Payer or provider domain experience, such as quality measurement, risk adjustment, utilization management or care management.
• Security architecture experience, including zero trust, attribute- and relationship-based access control, and threat modeling.
• Experience leading teams' adoption of AI-assisted development practices.
• Public technical work, such as open-source contributions, conference talks or published writing.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
• Master's degree preferred.

Pay Range

The typical pay range for this role is:

$144,200.00 - $288,400.00

This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls. The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors. This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above. This position also includes an award target in the company's equity award program.

Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve and we are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.

Great benefits for great people

We take pride in offering a comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits that reflects our commitment to our colleagues and their families.

This full-time position is eligible for a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the physical, emotional, and financial well‑being of colleagues and their families. The benefits for this position include medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, retirement savings options, wellness programs, and other resources, based on eligibility.

Additional details about available benefits are provided during the application process and on Benefits Moments.

We anticipate the application window for this opening will close on: 02/05/2027

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws.