Senior Principal AI Engineer
Vertex Pharmaceuticals1 month ago
Boston, MA, USAStaff+
Base Salary
$188k - $282k/yr
Responsibilities
- Define the technical vision, architecture, standards, and roadmap for Vertex’s enterprise agentic AI platform.
- Design and build reusable platform services for AI-powered applications, including model integration, routing, provider abstraction, orchestration, and workflow execution.
- Own the architecture, implementation, and day-to-day operation of the centralized AI Gateway/Control Tower for model access, monitoring, governance, cost management, and operational oversight.
- Lead development of RAG pipelines, vector search, document retrieval, knowledge integration, prompt workflows, tool use, and agent orchestration.
- Establish agent lifecycle capabilities covering deployment, versioning, evaluation, monitoring, observability, reliability measurement, and continuous improvement.
- Develop guardrails and controls for content safety, prompt-injection defense, data-loss prevention, sensitive-data handling, identity, access, privacy, compliance, and responsible AI.
- Build observability, telemetry, quality monitoring, reliability metrics, incident response, usage analytics, immutable audit trails, and executive reporting capabilities.
- Implement AI FinOps capabilities for token and consumption visibility, budgeting, chargeback/showback, cost allocation, forecasting, and model-cost optimization.
- Define platform APIs, service contracts, architecture patterns, engineering practices, and reusable components for other teams.
- Evaluate emerging AI technologies, frameworks, and vendors; mentor engineers and influence cross-functional technical direction.
- Ensure platform solutions meet enterprise requirements for scalability, resilience, security, maintainability, and regulated-environment governance.
Requirements
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- 10+ years of experience designing and building enterprise-grade AI/ML platforms and distributed systems.
- Deep expertise in agentic AI architectures, LLM-based applications, platform engineering, RAG systems, vector search, document retrieval, and knowledge integration.
- Strong experience with AI orchestration frameworks, workflow engines, multi-step agent execution, centralized monitoring, governance, observability, and control platforms.
- Experience designing architecture, standards, and reusable services for large-scale enterprise environments.
- Experience using AI-assisted software development and autonomous coding agents across complex enterprise systems, including establishing responsible-use standards and governance.
- Strong understanding of AI evaluation, quality measurement, performance optimization, platform engineering, distributed systems, API design, telemetry, logging, security, and enterprise controls.
- Preferred qualifications include experience in regulated or highly governed environments, policy engines, guardrails, audit frameworks, ML infrastructure, model serving, production AI operations, cloud-native architectures, DevOps/MLOps, human-in-the-loop workflows, and responsible AI.
- Ability to lead technical teams through platform transformation, influence cross-functional stakeholders, translate technical capabilities into enterprise adoption strategies, and balance strategic architecture with hands-on execution.
Benefits
- Annual bonus and annual equity awards are available for eligible roles.
- Benefits include medical, dental, vision, generous paid time off, week-long summer and winter company shutdowns, educational assistance including student loan repayment, commuting subsidy, charitable donation matching, and 401(k).
- The role is hybrid, as indicated by the #LI-HYBRID designation.
Categories
About Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Vertex Pharmaceuticals is a public biotechnology company that discovers, develops, and sells prescription medicines for serious genetic diseases. It markets multiple cystic fibrosis therapies and, with CRISPR Therapeutics, co-developed CASGEVY, an approved gene-editing treatment for sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia. Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Boston, the company is listed on NASDAQ (VRTX) and is advancing programs in APOL1-mediated kidney disease, type 1 diabetes, pain, and other indications.