Senior Staff ML Ops Engineer

abbott; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 131,000 - 261,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Career development

Health coverage

Retirement plan

Tuition reimbursement

FreeU education benefit

Job summary

Abbott in Santa Clara, CA is seeking a Senior Staff ML Ops Engineer to lead enterprise AI platforms within Medical Devices Digital. You will architect scalable ML infrastructure, drive MLOps practices, ensure regulatory compliance, and mentor teams across data science and software engineering.

You will partner with executives to shape the AI roadmap and deliver production-grade AI solutions at scale. This role requires strong leadership and deep cloud/MLOps expertise in a regulated environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field.
• 8+ years of experience, Master’s with 6+ years, or PhD with 4+ years of related experience.
• Deep experience building ML infrastructure for experiment tracking, model training, data versioning, annotation tools, model serving, monitoring and observability.
• Experience with GenAI and Agentic AI development infrastructure including grounding, RAG, MCP and prompt engineering.
• Experience developing AI products on cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/Google), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), pipelines (Airflow), IaC (Terraform).
• Proficient in Azure ML SDK, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, Spark, etc.
• Strong data modeling and database knowledge (SQL/NoSQL).
• Experience with Agile (SCRUM/Kanban) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Security-by-design in AI product dev.
• Leadership engagement with senior execs.
• Architecture practices across business, data, security, infra, governance.
• Microservices and distributed systems experience.
• Experience selecting Architectures and tools.
• Certifications in AI/ML and cloud platforms.
• Excellent communication and mentorship skills.

Responsibilities

• Architect scalable ML infrastructure spanning data ingestion to monitoring.
• Bridge between ML scientists and engineers.
• Implement CI/CD for ML models with testing, rollout, rollback, and governance.
• Ensure HIPAA/GDPR compliance and SaMD guidelines.
• Align architecture strategy with business leaders and roadmaps.
• Mentor ML and SW engineers, set coding standards, perform design reviews.

Skills

ML Ops

Leadership

Cloud platforms

CI/CD for ML

Security by design

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering/Math

8+ years experience or 6+ with MS or 4+ with PhD

Tools

Azure ML SDK

Docker

Kubernetes

Airflow

Terraform

Job description

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 122,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Our medical devices help more than 10,000 people have healthier hearts, improve quality of life for thousands of people living with chronic pain and movement disorders, and liberate more than 500,000 people with diabetes from routine fingersticks.

Working at Abbott

At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and family, be your true self and live a full life. You’ll also have access to:

• Career development with an international company where you can grow the career you dream of.

• Employees can qualify for free medical coverage in our Health Investment Plan (HIP) PPO medical plan in the next calendar year

• An excellent retirement savings plan with high employer contribution

• Tuition reimbursement, the Freedom 2 Save student debt program and FreeU education benefit - an affordable and convenient path to getting a bachelor’s degree.

• A company recognized as a great place to work in dozens of countries around the world and named one of the most admired companies in the world by Fortune.

• A company that is recognized as one of the best big companies to work for as well as a best place to work for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This Senior Staff ML Ops Engineer position can work out of our Santa Clara, CA location.

Senior Staff ML Ops Engineer will provide technical leadership for Abbott's Medical Devices Digital (MDD) AI initiatives, driving the architecture, scalability, and operational excellence of enterprise AI platforms. This role bridges advanced AI innovation with production-grade engineering, defining technical strategy, establishing best practices for MLOps and AI governance, and leading the design and evolution of robust, scalable AI infrastructure. The Senior Staff ML Ops Engineer will partner closely with data scientists, algorithm developers, infrastructure teams, product leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders to accelerate the deployment of AI solutions, ensure reliability and compliance, and influence the long-term AI technology roadmap across the organization.

What You’ll Work On

• Architecta highly available, secure, scalable cloud/on-prem hybrid ML infrastructure that includes data ingestion,annotation,feature engineering, training, validation, deployment, and monitoring.

• Engage directly with ML scientists and act as the team’s bridge/glue between science and engineering.

• Implement robust CI/CD workflows for ML models, including testing, rollout, rollback strategies, and compliance governance.

• Ensure strict compliance with regulatory and privacy standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, and Software as aMedical Device (SaMD) guidelines.

• Drive alignment and adoption of architecture strategy with business leaders.

• Mentor and guide ML engineers andSW engineers,establishcoding standards, and conduct detailed design and architectural reviews.

Qualifications

• BachelorsDegreein Computer Science, Engineering Mathematics, or related field.

• Minimum8+ years of experience,Master’s Degreewith 6+ years of related experience, or Ph.D. with4+ years of related experience.

• Deep experiencebuildingMLinfrastructurefor experiment tracking,model training,data versioning,annotation tools,model serving,monitoringand observability.

• Experience with GenAI and Agentic AI development infrastructure includinggrounding,RAG, MCP and prompt engineering.

• Experience developing AI products on cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), pipeline orchestration tools (e.g.Airflow),IaC(e,g., Terraform).

• Proficient in tools like Azure ML SDK, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, Spark, or related technologies.

• Strong understanding of database technologies (e.g., SQL, NoSQL) and data modeling principles.

• Significant experienceworking with agile software development methods, such as scrum andKanbanand working within CI/CD pipelines.

• Experience incorporating Security by Design principles into AI product development.

• Experience of senior executive/leadership engagement.

• Exposure to various aspects of architecture practices and frameworks: business, application, data, security,infrastructureand governance.

• Experience withmicroservicesarchitecture and distributed systems.

• Experience in reviewing and selecting Technical and Applications Architectures solutions.

• Certifications and specializations in AI/ML, LLMs and Cloud platforms.

• Excellent oral, written and presentation communication skills.

• Team leadership experience anddemonstratedmentorship capabilities.

Preferred

• Experience working in an FDA-regulated business (e.g. validated software related to medical, pharmaceutical, or life sciences products).

• Experience with FDA 510(k) submissions and clinical-grade ML product development.

• Solid understanding of the design thinking process, as well as a passion and know-how for influencing design strategy.

• Publications, patents, or notable contributions to open-source projects.

• Background in signal processing, computer vision, or multimodal learning.

• Familiarity with data security best practices, data anonymization, synthetic data generation, and federated learning.

The base pay for this position is

$130,700.00 – $261,300.00

In specific locations, the pay range may vary from the range posted.

JOB FAMILY: Product Development

DIVISION: MD Medical Devices

LOCATION: United States > Santa Clara : Building B - SC

WORK SHIFT: Standard

TRAVEL: Yes, 5 % of the Time

MEDICAL SURVEILLANCE: Not Applicable

SIGNIFICANT WORK ACTIVITIES: Continuous sitting for prolonged periods (more than 2 consecutive hours in an 8 hour day), Keyboard use (greater or equal to 50% of the workday)

Abbott is an Equal Opportunity Employer of Minorities/Women/Individuals with Disabilities/Protected Veterans.EEO is the Law link - English: http://webstorage.abbott.com/common/External/EEO_English.pdfEEO is the Law link - Espanol: http://webstorage.abbott.com/common/External/EEO_Spanish.pdf

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