Senior Principal AI Engineer

Vertex Pharmaceuticals is hiring a Senior Principal AI Engineer in Boston to design and scale shared agentic AI platform capabilities for production model integration and lifecycle management.

Responsibilities

• Build/bring-your-own-agents capability (primary focus): create frameworks, SDKs, templates, interfaces, and guardrails so teams across Vertex can build, integrate, customize, and operationalize agents using shared platform standards
• Platform services: deliver model integration, prompt and workflow orchestration, tool use, memory patterns, and agentic task coordination for other teams to build upon
• Agent lifecycle and quality: implement agent registration, configuration, testing, deployment, versioning, monitoring, and retirement, plus evaluation and benchmarking frameworks
• Developer experience ownership: enable self-service onboarding, documentation, reference implementations, and enablement resources to reduce time from concept to production
• Standards and technical leadership: define platform APIs, service contracts, architecture patterns, and engineering practices that keep custom agents safe, reliable, and supportable
• Architect and develop shared AI and agentic platform services for enterprise AI products and internal workflows
• Own build/bring-your-own-agents systems that let teams create, register, integrate, deploy, and manage their own agents within the enterprise platform
• Establish reusable SDKs, templates, interfaces, and guardrails to standardize agent build and onboarding
• Define and deliver agent lifecycle capabilities including registration, configuration, testing, deployment, monitoring, versioning, and retirement
• Build and maintain integrations with foundation models, model gateways, APIs, enterprise tools, and related AI infrastructure
• Design and implement systems for prompt orchestration, workflow execution, tool use, memory patterns, and agentic task coordination
• Develop reusable frameworks for evaluation, benchmarking, and validation of AI model, agent, and workflow performance
• Establish observability capabilities including monitoring, tracing, logging, and alerting for AI workloads and autonomous agent interactions
• Optimize performance, scalability, latency, reliability, and cost efficiency for production AI and agentic systems
• Partner with product, data, engineering, security, and architecture teams to enable enterprise-ready AI solutions
• Translate prototypes and experimental concepts into hardened, maintainable, production-grade services
• Define engineering standards, best practices, and design patterns for AI platform development and deployment
• Support governance, risk management, and responsible AI practices via measurable controls, policy enforcement, and technical safeguards for agent behavior
• Drive platform adoption through reusable components, documentation, onboarding patterns, and developer enablement resources
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across AI platform initiatives
• Evaluate emerging tools, frameworks, and architectural patterns in generative AI and agentic systems to inform platform strategy

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Machine Learning, Data Engineering, or a related technical field; advanced degree preferred
• Significant industry experience in software engineering, machine learning engineering, or AI platform development, including experience in senior or principal-level technical roles
• Proven track record designing and delivering production-scale AI or ML platforms
• Strong experience building distributed systems, APIs, microservices, and cloud-native applications
• Demonstrated experience operationalizing machine learning, generative AI, or agent-based solutions in enterprise environments
• Experience designing extensible platform capabilities that enable internal teams to build or integrate custom applications, tools, or services
• Deep understanding of software engineering best practices including testing, CI/CD, version control, code review, and system reliability
• Deep understanding of AI-native software engineering practices, including establishing standards, governance, and best practices for responsible use of AI coding assistants and software engineering agents
• Experience defining architecture, standards, and reusable services for large-scale enterprise environments
• Experience leading complex technical initiatives and influencing architecture across cross-functional teams
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to varied audiences
• Experience balancing experimentation speed with production engineering discipline, security, and maintainability

Technologies

• APIs
• Microservices
• Cloud-native applications
• CI/CD
• Version control
• AI/ML platforms
• Foundation models
• Model gateways
• CLIs
• Vector databases

Benefits

• Eligible for an annual bonus and annual equity awards
• Health insurance
• Dental benefits
• Vision benefits
• Generous paid time off, including a week-long company shutdown in the Summer and the Winter
• Educational assistance programs, including student loan repayment
• Generous commuting subsidy
• Matching charitable donations
• 401(k)
• Overtime pay (in accordance with federal and state requirements, for some roles)

Preferred Skills

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related discipline
• Experience with enterprise AI platforms, developer platforms, or internal tooling ecosystems
• Experience building frameworks or platforms that support bring-your-own-component or extensible developer patterns
• Developer experience focus, including self-service onboarding, SDKs, CLIs, sandboxes, templates, and documentation to reduce friction and accelerate time to first deployment
• Familiarity with model gateways, retrieval-augmented generation, and evaluation frameworks
• Experience implementing AI governance, responsible AI controls, and compliance-oriented technical solutions
• Knowledge of vector databases, knowledge retrieval systems, and orchestration layers for intelligent applications
• Experience in regulated industries such as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, or life sciences
• Strong mentoring and technical leadership experience in highly collaborative environments
• Ability to assess emerging AI technologies and translate them into practical platform capabilities

Pay Range

• $188,000 - $282,000 per year

Location

• Boston, MA (onsite)

Company Information

• Vertex is a global biotechnology company that invests in scientific innovation
• Vertex is committed to equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination
• Vertex is an E-Verify Employer in the United States
• Vertex provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities in accordance with applicable law
• For accommodation requests related to the hiring process and/or essential functions, contact [email protected]