Staff AI Platform Engineer

Thornton Tomasetti; United States; On-site; USD 129,000 - 259,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Free medical coverage in HIP PPO plan

Excellent retirement savings plan

Tuition reimbursement

Freedom 2 Save student debt program

FreeU education benefit

Job summary

Abbott is seeking a senior platform engineer to drive architecture and delivery for enterprise AI capabilities with autonomy. You will define platform direction, partner with tech leads, and raise the technical bar for consuming teams across multiple capability areas.

You’ll lead design decisions, focus on observability, security controls, and incident response, while mentoring engineers and aligning with product roadmaps. This onsite role is based in the United States.

Qualifications

• 8–10 years of software/ platform engineering experience.
• Hands-on design and operation of enterprise GenAI platforms in production.
• Strong Python and at least one of TS/Go/Java for distributed systems.
• Deep knowledge of multiple platform capabilities and governance areas.
• Experience with containers, orchestration, IaC, CI/CD and cloud services.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Ability to drive technical decisions with autonomy and influence peers.

Responsibilities

• Lead design of major platform capabilities with minimal oversight.
• Document architecture decisions balancing scalability, security, cost, operability.
• Drive observability, tracing, and performance signals for platforms.
• Lead security, guardrails, and responsible-AI controls across services.
• Own platform reliability: define SLOs, manage incident response, root-cause analysis.
• Set engineering standards via reviews and docs; mitigate systemic risk.
• Provide build-vs-buy analysis with product and architect partners.
• Mentor mid-level/junior engineers and act as technical lead.
• Collaborate with Product Manager to align roadmaps with stakeholders.

Skills

GenAI platforms

Distributed systems

Python

TypeScript/Go/Java

Kubernetes

Cloud services

SLOs and incident response

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Kubernetes

CI/CD

IaC

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

At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and your family, be your true self, and live a full life.

• 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 a 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 worldwide 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 the best place to work for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists.

Opportunity

A senior individual‑contributor engineering role that drives architecture and delivery for significant portions of Abbott’s enterprise AI Platform. This role sets technical direction for one or more platform capability areas, partners closely with the Tech Lead/Architect on reference architecture decisions, and is a primary technical escalation point for consuming teams. Expected to operate with substantial autonomy and to raise the technical bar for the team.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the design of major platform capabilities (e.g., multi-provider model gateway, GenAI runtime, agent/model registries, evaluation and tracing pipelines) with minimal oversight, in partnership with the Tech Lead/Architect.
• Make and document architecture decisions and tradeoffs for the platform’s control plane, paved‑road SDKs, and developer experience, weighing scalability, security, cost, and operability.
• Drive platform observability and evaluation strategy, including distributed tracing, quality/drift/latency/cost signals, and standards other engineers build against.
• Lead implementation of security, guardrails, and responsible‑AI controls (PII/PHI handling, prompt‑injection defenses, identity‑on‑behalf‑of, policy enforcement) across platform services.
• Own platform reliability engineering: define SLOs, lead incident response for high‑severity issues, drive root‑cause analysis, and improve resilience.
• Set engineering standards through architecture reviews, design docs, and code reviews; identify and resolve systemic technical risk before it blocks delivery.
• Make build‑versus‑buy and vendor recommendations with cost/tradeoff analysis, in partnership with the Tech Lead/Architect and Product Manager.
• Mentor and technically develop mid‑level and junior engineers; act as a technical lead on cross‑team initiatives without formal people‑management responsibility.
• Partner with the Product Manager, AI Platform to sequence roadmap, and directly engage senior stakeholders across AI/Agentic Engineering, Applied Data Science, and security on feasibility and design.

Education and Experience You’ll Bring

• 8–10 years of software engineering, platform engineering, distributed systems, or infrastructure experience, with a track record of owning significant technical scope.
• Hands‑on experience designing and operating enterprise AI/GenAI platforms or comparable developer, data, or ML platforms in production at scale.
• Strong software engineering ability in Python and at least one of TypeScript, Go, or Java, including distributed systems, API design, testing, and secure SDLC.
• Deep technical understanding of at least two of: model gateways, GenAI runtimes, RAG, agent/model registries, evaluation, observability/tracing, guardrails, or platform governance.
• Experience with containers and orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes), infrastructure as code, CI/CD, cloud services, and production SLO/on‑call practices, including leading incident response.
• Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent professional experience.
• Demonstrated ability to drive technical decisions with significant autonomy, influence engineers outside a direct reporting line, and communicate clearly with technical leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building enterprise GenAI or agent platforms using capabilities such as multi‑model routing, agent registries, prompt management, evaluation harnesses, and GenAI tracing.
• Experience in a highly regulated environment such as health tech, med‑tech, or life sciences, with GxP, HIPAA, validation, and change‑control constraints.
• Experience implementing security, responsible‑AI, privacy, policy, or cost/FinOps controls for shared AI infrastructure.
• Experience with open standards and tooling such as MCP, OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, and cloud‑native platform engineering practices; prior informal technical leadership or mentoring track record.

Misc

• This is an onsite role at Abbott location in IL.
• This is not a remote role/opportunity.

Job Family & Details

• JOB FAMILY: IT Services & Solutions Delivery
• DIVISION: BTS Business Technology Services
• LOCATION: United States > Abbott Park : AP06C
• ADDITIONAL LOCATIONS: United States > Chicago : Willis Tower Building 233 S Wacker Dr.
• WORK SHIFT: Standard
• TRAVEL: Yes, 10 % 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)

Salary

The base pay for this position is $129,300.00 – $258,700.00. In specific locations, the pay range may vary from the range posted.

EEO Statement

Abbott is an Equal Opportunity Employer of Minorities/Women/Individuals with Disabilities/Protected Veterans. Abbott is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to employee diversity.

EEO is the Law link - English: http://webstorage.abbott.com/common/External/EEO_English.pdf

EEO is the Law link - Espanol: http://webstorage.abbott.com/common/External/EEO_Spanish.pdf

Company Culture

Abbott is about the power of health. For more than 135 years, Abbott has been helping people reach their potential — because better health allows people and communities to achieve more. With a diverse, global network serving customers in more than 160 countries, we create new solutions — across the spectrum of health, around the world, for all stages of life. Whether it’s next‑generation diagnostics, life‑changing devices, science‑based nutrition, or novel reformulations, we are advancing some of the most innovative and revolutionary technologies in healthcare, helping people live their best lives through better health. The people of Abbott come to work each day with relentless energy, enthusiasm and a promise to enhance the health and well‑being of millions of people. They push the boundaries to help manage and treat some of life’s greatest health challenges. We invite you to explore opportunities at Abbott, to see if your talents and career aspirations may fit with our openings. An equal opportunity employer, Abbott welcomes and encourages diversity in our workforce.