AI Engineer IV

Workforce Classification:

Join Our Team: Do Meaningful Work and Improve People’s Lives 

Our purpose, to improve customers’ lives by making healthcare work better, is far from ordinary. And so are our employees. Working at Premera means you have the opportunity to drive real change by transforming healthcare.

To better serve our customers, we are fostering a culture that emphasizes employee growth, collaborative innovation, and inspired leadership. We are dedicated to creating an environment where employees can excel and where top talent is attracted, retained, and thrives. As a testament to these efforts, Premera has been recognized on the 2025 America's Dream Employers list. Newsweek honored Premera as one of America's Greatest Workplaces, America's Greatest Workplaces for Inclusion, and America's Greatest Workplaces For Mental Well-Being, Forbes ranked Premera among America’s Best Midsize Employers for the fourth time.

Learn how Premera supports our members, customers and the communities that we serve through our Healthsource blog:  https://healthsource.premera.com/.

As an AI Engineer IV, you'll contribute leadership in a team developing AI/ML solutions for complex business problems from conception to production. Your role involves guiding the solutioning of sophisticated multi-agent systems, implementing cutting-edge retrieval techniques, and prototyping new AI products using advanced orchestration patterns. With substantial experience in deploying AI systems and strong software engineering skills, you'll ensure the creation of reliable and maintainable AI infrastructure leveraging protocols like A2A and MCP. Your expertise will drive innovative AI systems, mentor junior engineers, and push for adoption of cutting-edge AI research and technologies for enterprise-scale agent platforms.

This is a telecommuter position, working from home.

What you’ll do:

• Recommend and develop comprehensive multi-agent systems and enterprise AI systems for complex applications and products.

• Pitch concepts to team leadership and lead construction of prototypes and minimum viable products to validate AI/ML solutions before committing substantial resources.

• Assist in designing and implementing the cloud architecture of large multi-faceted AI systems on Kubernetes using platforms like Azure AI Foundry with comprehensive agent governance.

• Assist in the design and scaffolding of robust data pipelines that drive large complex AI systems including graph databases, tensor-based fusion, and multi-model retrieval.

• Develop specifications for enterprise-wide agent communication standards, tool governance, and evaluation harnesses to deploy AI models at scale.

• Develop the code for monitoring models and AI systems including customer evaluation metrics, agent behavior analytics, and comprehensive drift detection that ensures consistent and reliable performance.

• Actively participate in a team that exercises principled, agile-like development practices.

• Create and maintain thorough documentation that is consistent with team procedures, corporate policies, and expectations including architectural decision records.

• Ensure peer review on all assigned work, as well as conduct peer reviews over the work of others as requested.

• Guide and mentor junior AI engineers on AI/ML and industry best practices and methodologies and emerging standards like A2A, MCP, and novel reasoning/retrieval techniques.

• Keep abreast of new tools and concepts through reading documentation or literature and actively practicing skills development.

• Advise team and division leadership on matters such as enterprise AI strategies, AI related technology strategies and roadmaps, AI related infrastructure strategies, and roadmaps.

• Meet and collaborate with external stakeholders to conceptualize AI solutions that realize business value while ensuring AI governance adherence, AI best practices, and data quality.

• Provide thought leadership to the Premera AI community.

What you’ll bring:

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field, or 2+ years of experience in a related, professional IT/analytics position.

• Minimum of 5 years of industry experience in developing, deploying, and maintaining AI or ML systems. Up to two years of industry experience may be substituted with an AI centered Master’s/PhD degree or AI Engineering certifications.

Preferred Qualifications

• At least 4 years of experience in developing enterprise scale multi-agent systems using advanced orchestration and evaluation frameworks.

• Previous experience with novel fusion techniques (TRF, learned rankers) and production GraphRAG at scale.

• Experience implementing enterprise AI systems with comprehensive governance, security, and compliance features.

• Publications, patents, or significant open-source contributions in agent architectures or advanced retrieval systems.

• Minimum of 4 years of experience in successfully productionizing AI models, including constructing scalable data pipelines and establishing robust monitoring systems.

• At least 5 years working within agile-like teams and environments.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Mastery of complex multi-agent architectures including distributed orchestration.

• Expert knowledge of advanced fusion methods (TRF, tensor-based ranking).  

• Ability to design enterprise-scale RAG systems with comprehensive governance.  

• Deep expertise in agent evaluation and benchmarking methodologies.  

• Proficiency in implementing agent safety systems and attack mitigation.  

• Advanced knowledge of graph-augmented retrieval and ontology alignment.  

• Experience with multi-modal agent systems and embeddings.  

• Ability to design agent communication standards and protocols.  

• Expertise in token optimization and cost management at scale.  

• Knowledge of agent pool management and scale-to-zero architectures.  

• Experience with agent simulation and testing frameworks.  

• Ability to mentor teams on cutting-edge AI engineering practices.  

• Understanding of regulatory compliance for agentic AI systems.

• Ability to articulate the technical details and tradeoffs of AI solutions to non-technical stakeholders in a clear and concise manner.

Physical Requirements

The following have been identified as essential physical requirements of this job and must be performed with or without an accommodation:

• This is primarily a sedentary role which requires the ability to exert up to 10 lbs. of force occasionally and/or a negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects, including the human body.

• This role requires the ability to keyboard and to communicate clearly and understandably in person and over the telephone.

Premera total rewards

Our comprehensive total rewards package provides support, resources, and opportunities to help employees thrive and grow. Our total rewards are more than a collection of perks, they're a reflection of our commitment to your health and well-being. We offer a broad array of rewards including physical, financial, emotional, and community benefits, including:

• Medical, vision, and dental coverage with low employee premiums.

• Voluntary benefit offerings, including pet insurance for paw parents.

• Life and disability insurance.

• Retirement programs, including a 401K employer match and, believe it or not, a pension plan that is vested after 3 years of service.

• Wellness incentives with a wide range of mental well-being resources for you and your dependents, including counseling services, stress management programs, and mindfulness programs, just to name a few.

• Generous paid time off to reenergize.

• Looking for continuing education? We have tuition assistance for both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

• Employee recognition program to celebrate anniversaries, team accomplishments, and more.

For our hybrid employees, our on-campus model provides flexibility to create your own routine with access to on-site resources, networking opportunities, and team engagement.

• Commuter perks make your trip to work less impactful on the environment and your wallet.

• Free convenient on-site parking.

• Subsidized on-campus cafes make lunchtime connections with colleagues fun and affordable.

• Participate in engaging on-site activities such as health and wellness events, coffee connects, disaster preparedness fairs and more.

• Our complementary fitness & well-being center offers both in-person and virtual workouts and nutritional counseling.

• Need a brain break? Challenge someone to a game of shuffleboard or ping pong while on campus.

Equal employment opportunity/affirmative action:

Premera is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Premera seeks to attract and retain the most qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, genetic information or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

If you need an accommodation to apply online for positions at Premera, please contact Premera Human Resources via email at careers@premera.com or via phone at 425-918-4785.

Premera is hiring in the following states, with some limitations based on role or city: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin.

The pay for this role will vary based on a range of factors including, but not limited to, a candidate’s geographic location, market conditions, and specific skills and experience.

The salary range for this role is posted below; we generally target up to and around the midpoint of the range.

National Salary Range:

National Plus Salary Range:

*National Plus salary range is used in higher cost of labor markets including Western Washington and Alaska.

We’re happy to discuss compensation further during the interview because we believe that open communication leads to better outcomes for all. We’re committed to creating an environment where all employees are celebrated for their unique skills and contributions.