Principal Solutions Architect for Conversational AI

Humana

4d • Remote

About The Position

The Principal Solutions Architect works with user groups to solve business problems with available technology including hardware, software, databases, and peripherals. The Principal Solutions Architect provides strategic advice and guidance to functional team(s). Highly skilled with broad, advanced technical experience. Role Summary The Principal Architect for Conversational AI owns the end-to-end technical architecture for enterprise-grade voice and chat experiences—from NLU/LLM orchestration and dialog policy to integrations, observability, security, and production reliability. You will define standards, reference architectures, and platform patterns that enable multiple product teams to build consistent, safe, scalable conversational journeys across channels. This role blends hands-on systems design with strategic technical leadership: you’ll shape platform direction, guide engineering teams, and ensure solutions meet performance, compliance, and customer experience goals.

Requirements

• 10+ years software engineering experience with 3+ years in AI/ML systems or conversational platforms.
• Proven architecture ownership for distributed systems in production (high availability, scalable, observable).
• Deep knowledge of at least one: Contact center / conversational platforms (Genesys, NICE, Twilio, Amazon Connect, Dialogflow, Nuance, etc.) LLM orchestration frameworks/patterns (tool use, RAG, retrieval, safety layers, prompt/versioning)
• Strong experience with: API design (REST/gRPC), event-driven systems (Kafka/PubSub), and integration patterns Cloud architecture (AWS/Azure/GCP), IaC, CI/CD Data security practices for sensitive data (PII/PHI) and governance controls
• Ability to communicate architecture clearly to executives and engineers (diagrams, decision records, tradeoffs).

Nice To Haves

• Experience deploying voice systems: ASR/TTS tuning, barge-in, turn-taking, latency optimization.
• Experience with evaluation & testing for LLM/agent systems: automated conversation testing, hallucination detection, rubric scoring, red teaming
• Experience in regulated environments (healthcare, finance, insurance, public sector).
• Familiarity with knowledge graphs, ontology-driven reasoning, or deterministic policy engines.
• Track record of leading multi-team platforms (enablement, adoption, governance).

Responsibilities

• Enterprise conversational architecture Define target-state architecture for conversational AI across voice + chat + messaging. Establish reference patterns for: intent/routing, dialog management, LLM tools/function calling, RAG, and human handoff.
• LLM + NLU orchestration Design hybrid approaches using NLU (intents/entities) where deterministic behavior is needed and LLMs where flexibility adds value. Build patterns for prompt engineering, tool use, safety rails, grounding, and response evaluation.
• Conversation design meets engineering Partner with Conversation Designers to translate journeys into scalable dialog systems. Formalize conversation state models, slot-filling strategies, fallbacks, barge-in, and recovery behavior.
• Integrations + enterprise systems Architect integrations to CRM, scheduling, claims, EHR/EMR, identity, billing, knowledge bases, ticketing, and contact center platforms. Standardize APIs, event-driven flows, caching, and data contracts.
• Platform capability leadership Own architectural decisions for: ASR/TTS pipelines (voice) channel adapters session/state persistence policy engines personalization and context experimentation / A/B testing
• Reliability, security, compliance Define guardrails for PHI/PII handling, data retention, encryption, key management, audit logging. Ensure compliance alignment (HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR—depending on industry). Set SLOs, error budgets, DR patterns, and scalability targets.
• Observability + quality Implement conversation analytics standards: containment, task completion, deflection, CSAT proxies, latency, hallucination rates, escalation reasons. Establish evaluation frameworks (offline + online), regression testing, and golden conversation sets.
• Technical leadership Serve as the principal technical advisor across teams. Lead architecture reviews, mentor senior engineers, influence roadmap and investment priorities. Identify build vs buy opportunities and vendor selection criteria.

Benefits

• Humana provides medical, dental and vision benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan, time off (including paid time off, company and personal holidays, volunteer time off, paid parental and caregiver leave), short-term and long-term disability, life insurance and many other opportunities.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed