Senior Principal Engineer - AI

ZipRecruiter; Sacramento (CA); Remote; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology consultancy is seeking a Senior Principal Engineer - AI to join the Department of Healthcare Services in California. The role involves architecting and building AI systems to improve healthcare for Californians. Candidates should have extensive experience in software engineering, AI/ML systems, and a track record of delivering impactful products. This is a remote position with occasional meetings in Sacramento.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering with 1+ years building production AI/ML systems.
• Proven track record of shipping products that generated $10M+ in value.
• Extensive hands-on coding experience across full stack development.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build AI systems that enhance healthcare services.
• Develop APIs, SDKs, and libraries for AI integration.
• Implement production inference systems and monitoring frameworks.

Skills

Software engineering

AI/ML systems

Python

Java

TypeScript/JavaScript

React

APIs

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

FastAPI

Terraform

Job description

Overview

Speridian Technologies is recruiting for a Senior Principal Engineer - AI for our State of California Client, the Department of Healthcare Services, Behavioral Health. This person will be part of a long-term, fully budgeted, state-of-the-art, extremely vast technical modernization project working with a variety of cross-functional teams and stakeholders. This is a remote role; however, there will be meetings in the Sacramento area several times a year. Candidates are expected to work business hours, Monday-Friday, Pacific Time Zone.

Join DHCS’s Behavioral Health Transformation: Where Purpose Meets Innovation

Location: Remote

Department: Department of Healthcare Services (DHCS), Behavioral Health Transformation (BHT)

Commitment: Full-Time Consultant (W2 employee of Speridian or 1099/IC for Speridian)

Why DHCS?

At DHCS we are leading a transformative journey in Behavioral Health, reshaping systems and services to ensure better outcomes for communities across California. Our Behavioral Health transformation initiative is more than a project—it’s a movement to make California a leader in accessible, high-quality health services. We’re setting the stage for a new era of government services built on agile methodologies, cutting-edge technology, continuous improvement, and a relentless commitment to serving the public good. We’re looking for innovators who are passionate about purposeful work and excited by the opportunity to drive lasting change through innovative solutions. Our core values are what make us successful and define the impact we have on the DHCS program and California’s future.

• Partnership: Respect Other, Practice Empathy, Earn Trust
• Ownership: Take Accountability, Show Reliability, Act with Integrity
• Grit: Bring Passion, Exhibit Perseverance, Demonstrate Resilience
• Value: Drive Outcomes, Maximize Impact, Keep Improving

Ready to pioneer the future of AI in government healthcare? Join the Department of Healthcare Services (DHCS) as a Senior Principal Engineer in our AI Organization, where you'll architect and build AI systems that revolutionize healthcare for 15 million Californians.

As a Senior Principal Engineer, you'll be a founding member of our AI Organization, a small team of exceptional engineers building production AI systems that actually ship and create massive impact. You'll be a part of the entire product lifecycle from fine-tuning foundational models to building the interfaces real people use daily, while also creating platforms that enable hundreds of developers across DHCS to build AI-powered features.

DHCS offers the unique opportunity to apply AI to healthcare at massive scale with real human impact, that will save human lives. You'll have technical ownership, access to current industry leading models and compute resources, and the mandate to build AI systems that ship to production and improve health outcomes.

We're seeking an exceptional engineer with a track record of shipping AI products that matter – someone who has built features that millions of people use daily or created hundreds of millions of dollars in business value, who can fine-tune GPT models before breakfast and ship a production feature by lunch, and who understands that democratizing AI across an organization multiplies impact exponentially.

AI Platform Development

• Write the APIs, SDKs, and libraries that enable developers to integrate AI
• Build developer tools, debugging interfaces, and observability systems
• Implement platform services for model serving, caching, and rate limiting
• Code the infrastructure and deployment pipelines for multi-tenant AI systems
• Create the systems and mechanisms to accelerate all types of development with AI

End-to-End AI Product Development

• Build complete AI products writing code from backend services to React frontends
• Fine-tune and deploy foundational models (GPT, Claude, LLaMA) for healthcare use cases
• Implement production inference systems, write APIs, and build user interfaces
• Code monitoring systems, A/B testing frameworks, and data pipelines

Technical Architecture & Implementation

• Design and code AI architecture patterns used across the organization
• Build MLOps systems for model versioning, deployment, and rollback
• Write infrastructure as code for scalable, multi-tenant AI systems
• Implement cost optimization through code-level improvements

Cross-Functional Technical Leadership

• Partner with teams to identify AI opportunities and build solutions
• Enable other teams through platform development and hands-on assistance
• Mentor senior engineers through code reviews and pair programming
• Translate technical decisions and trade-offs to executive leadership

Safety & Compliance Implementation

• Code safety measures and HIPAA compliance into AI systems
• Build explainability features and audit logging systems
• Implement evaluation frameworks for model performance and bias
• Write automated testing for AI safety and compliance

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering with 1+ years building production AI/ML systems
• Proven track record of shipping products that either generated $10M+ in value OR became household names for millions of users
• Extensive hands-on coding experience across full stack development
• Experience building developer platforms, APIs, or SDKs
• Experience fine-tuning and deploying large models in production
• Strong coding skills in Python, Java, TypeScript/JavaScript, and modern frameworks
• Bachelor\'s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience

Technical Skills

• LLM Technologies: GPT-4, Claude, LLaMA, Gemini fine-tuning and deployment
• AI Frameworks: Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, OpenAI APIs, Anthropic APIs

• Backend Development: Python, FastAPI, C#, microservices architecture, etc
• Frontend Development: React, C#, TypeScript, modern CSS, etc
• Platform Development: API design, SDK development, developer tools
• Databases: SQL, noSQL, document databases, vector databases, data stores, etc
• Cloud Platforms: AWS, GCP, etc
• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines
• Monitoring: Datadog, Weights & Biases, custom observability
• Version Control: Git, GitHub, code review processes

Other Skills

• Track record of shipping high-impact products to production
• Ability to code quickly while maintaining quality
• Strong debugging and problem-solving abilities
• Experience building platforms used by other developers
• Clear technical communication and documentation skills

Interview process

• Recruiter call and then:
• Codility Assessment
• Written Assessment
• Interviews - 3 interviews
• Leadership interview #1 (2 hours)
• Leadership interview #2 (1 Hour)
• Leadership interview #3 (30 minutes)

**Note:** Speridian is an EEO employer

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