Principal AI Engineer

About the role

McKesson is an impact-driven, Fortune 10 company that touches virtually every aspect of healthcare. We are known for delivering insights, products, and services that make quality care more accessible and affordable. Here, we focus on the health, happiness, and well-being of you and those we serve – we care.

What you do at McKesson matters. We foster a culture where you can grow, make an impact, and are empowered to bring new ideas. Together, we thrive as we shape the future of health for patients, our communities, and our people. If you want to be part of tomorrow’s health today, we want to hear from you.

The Principal AI Engineer provides the highest level of individual-contributor technical leadership for the company's AI platform, operating one level above the Lead AI Engineer role. This person sets the multi-year architecture strategy for agentic and LLM-powered systems — spanning model strategy, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool/connector ecosystems, and evaluation/governance tooling — across every team that builds on the AI platform, not just one. In a highly regulated healthcare environment, the Principal AI Engineer resolves the hardest, most ambiguous technical problems facing the platform, is a primary technical voice with executive leadership on AI strategy and risk, and shapes how the entire engineering organization adopts AI safely and effectively.

Success is measured by the durability and adoption of the technical strategy this role sets across multiple teams, this role's ability to unblock cross-organizational technical risk before it becomes a delivery or compliance problem, and its influence on AI investment decisions at the executive level.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise AI Strategy: Own the multi-year technical strategy and roadmap for the AI platform across all teams building on it, not a single product or team — model strategy, RAG/retrieval architecture, connector ecosystems, and evaluation frameworks.

Technical Authority: Serve as the final technical escalation point for the hardest, most ambiguous architecture and reliability problems on the AI platform, spanning multiple teams and systems.

Cross-Team Standards: Set architecture, security, and evaluation standards that multiple Lead AI Engineers and their teams adopt; audit and evolve those standards as the platform and threat landscape change.

Executive Advisory: Serve as a primary technical voice to VP- and executive-level leadership on AI platform strategy, model risk, and investment trade-offs.

Deep Technical Delivery: Personally lead architecture and prototyping for the organization's highest-ambiguity, highest-risk AI initiatives — the problems no existing team or pattern already solves.

Mentorship at Scale: Develop Lead and Senior AI Engineers into stronger technical leaders through design review, technical coaching, and structured knowledge-sharing across teams.

Responsible AI & Governance: Shape enterprise-wide AI governance policy — model risk review, connector/tool approval frameworks, and PHI-handling standards — in partnership with Legal/Compliance/Privacy leadership.

Vendor & Model Strategy at Scale: Own evaluation and long-term strategy for foundation model providers and AI infrastructure vendors across the company, not just a single team's stack.

External Technical Representation: Represent the company's AI engineering capability externally — industry forums, partner/vendor technical relationships, and recruiting for senior technical talent.

Organizational Impact: Influence AI platform direction and investment across the broader enterprise, extending beyond a single business unit.

Priority will be given to candidates who reside in the Columbus, OH metropolitan area.

We are unable to provide sponsorship for this role, presently or in the future.

Minimum Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience; typically 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 6+ years focused on AI/ML, LLM, or NLP systems in production and 3+ years operating as a senior individual-contributor technical leader. Fewer years required with a relevant Master's or Doctorate.

Critical Skills

One level of demonstrated technical leadership above a Lead AI Engineer — e.g., setting technical direction and standards across multiple teams, not just owning architecture for a single team or platform area.

Proven track record setting technical strategy that multiple teams adopt, not just delivering within one team's roadmap.

Deep, hands-on expertise building production LLM applications at scale: prompt engineering, RAG, agentic workflows, tool use, and evaluation harnesses — with the judgment to know which patterns will and won't hold up over multiple years.

Experience with commercial large language model APIs (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI) and tool-integration protocols such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), including evaluating emerging alternatives.

Strong software engineering fundamentals: Python and/or Java, REST APIs, event-driven architecture, microservices, and cloud-native design (Azure preferred; AWS/GCP acceptable).

Experience with vector/graph retrieval systems, embeddings, and knowledge-base architectures at production scale across multiple products.

Deep working knowledge of LLMOps/MLOps: usage attribution, cost/spend monitoring, abuse detection, and model evaluation pipelines, including designing these systems from scratch.

Demonstrated ability to influence and align senior engineering and executive stakeholders without direct authority.

Deep familiarity with regulated/healthcare data environments and AI governance frameworks (model risk review, connector approval tiers, PHI handling).

Preferred Qualifications

Advanced degree (M.S. or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, AI/ML, or a related technical field.

Prior experience as a Principal, Staff, or Distinguished Engineer setting AI/ML technical strategy across multiple teams inside healthcare IT or another highly regulated industry.

Track record of publications, patents, open-source contributions, or industry speaking on applied AI/LLM systems.

Experience shaping enterprise-wide AI governance policy in partnership with Legal, Compliance, and Privacy leadership.

Additional Skills

Deep awareness of the fast-moving GenAI/agentic landscape and a demonstrated ability to separate durable technical bets from hype.

Experience managing strategic relationships with AI infrastructure vendors and model providers at the enterprise level.

Exceptional written and verbal communication for executive, board-level, and external technical audiences.

We are proud to offer a competitive compensation package at McKesson as part of our Total Rewards. This is determined by several factors, including performance, experience and skills, equity, regular job market evaluations, and geographical markets. The pay range shown below is aligned with McKesson's pay philosophy, and pay will always be compliant with any applicable regulations. In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered. For more information regarding benefits at McKesson, please click here.

Our Base Pay Range for this position

$195,000 - $325,000

McKesson has become aware of online recruiting-related scams in which individuals who are not affiliated with or authorized by McKesson are using McKesson’s (or affiliated entities, like CoverMyMeds or RxCrossroads) name in fraudulent emails, job postings or social media messages. In light of these scams, please bear the following in mind:

McKesson Talent Advisors will never solicit money or credit card information in connection with a McKesson job application.

McKesson Talent Advisors do not communicate with candidates via online chatrooms or using email accounts such as Gmail or Hotmail. Note that McKesson does rely on a virtual assistant (Gia) for certain recruiting-related communications with candidates.

McKesson job postings are posted on our career site: careers.mckesson.com .

McKesson is an Equal Opportunity Employer

McKesson provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, age, genetic information, or any other legally protected category. For additional information on McKesson’s full Equal Employment Opportunity policies, visit our Equal Employment Opportunity page.

McKesson is committed to being an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers including job seekers with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, please contact us by sending an email to (United States) Disability_Accommodation@McKesson.com or (Canada) Accessibility@mckesson.ca . Resumes or CVs submitted to this email box will not be accepted.

Join us at McKesson!

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USA, OH, Columbus, United States of America

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