Senior Principal AI/ML Engineer

Abbott Laboratories • Santa Clara, CA

13h • Onsite

About The Position

This Senior Principal AI/ML Engineer position can work out of our Santa Clara, CA location.
The Principal ML Ops Engineer will work from our Santa Clara office within the Medical Devices Digital Solutions organization. In this role, you will lead the technical execution of Abbott’s Medical Devices Digital (MDD) AI initiatives, bridging advanced AI technology development with scalable engineering solutions. You will be vital in designing, developing and maintaining a robust AI platform, establishing production-grade MLOps capabilities, and collaborating closely with data scientists, infrastructure specialists, and algorithm teams to ensure effective AI solution deployments.

Requirements

• Bachelors Degree (± 16 years) in Computer Science, Engineering Mathematics, or related field.
• Minimum 10+ years of experience, Master’s Degree with 7+ years of related experience, or Ph.D. with 5+ years of related experience.
• Deep experience building ML infrastructure for experiment tracking, model training, data versioning, annotation tools, model serving, monitoring and observability.
• Experience with GenAI and Agentic AI development infrastructure including grounding, RAG, MCP and prompt engineering.
• Experience developing AI products on cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), pipeline orchestration tools (e.g. Airflow), IaC (e,g., Terraform).
• Proficient in tools like Azure ML SDK, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, Spark, or related technologies.
• Strong understanding of database technologies (e.g., SQL, NoSQL) and data modeling principles.
• Significant experience working with agile software development methods, such as scrum and Kanban and working within CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience incorporating Security by Design principles into AI product development.
• Experience of senior executive/leadership engagement.
• Exposure to various aspects of architecture practices and frameworks: business, application, data, security, infrastructure and governance
• Experience with microservices architecture and distributed systems.
• Experience in reviewing and selecting Technical and Applications Architectures solutions.
• Certifications and specializations in AI/ML, LLMs and Cloud platforms.
• Excellent oral, written and presentation communication skills.
• Team leadership experience and demonstrated mentorship capabilities.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working in an FDA-regulated business (e.g. validated software related to medical, pharmaceutical, or life sciences products).
• Experience with FDA 510(k) submissions and clinical-grade ML product development.
• Solid understanding of the design thinking process, as well as a passion and know-how for influencing design strategy.
• Publications, patents, or notable contributions to open-source projects.
• Background in signal processing, computer vision, or multimodal learning.
• Familiarity with data security best practices, data anonymization, synthetic data generation, and federated learning.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end ML solutions development and delivery, including data ingestion, annotation, feature engineering, training, validation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Architect a highly available, secure, scalable cloud/on-prem hybrid ML infrastructure.
• Engage directly with ML scientists and act as the team’s bridge/glue between science and engineering.
• Implement robust CI/CD workflows for ML models, including testing, rollout, rollback strategies, and compliance governance.
• Ensure strict compliance with regulatory and privacy standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, and Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) guidelines.
• Drive alignment and adoption of architecture strategy with business leaders.
• Mentor and guide ML engineers and SW engineers, establish coding standards, and conduct detailed design and architectural reviews.

Benefits

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

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior