AI/ML Engineer

## About the Role
Vida Health is seeking a **Principal AI/ML Engineering Lead** to help build and scale the data, infrastructure, and AI/ML platform supporting its healthcare technology.
Vida is rebuilding its data platform with a strong focus on **protecting patient data, governing data access and sharing, enabling self-serve analytics, and supporting production AI/ML capabilities**. In this hands-on engineering role, you will work across software engineering, data engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, security, and AI/ML to establish a platform where advanced capabilities can be developed and deployed safely and efficiently.
You will collaborate with platform, security, IT, and DevOps teams while helping establish technical patterns that support scalable AI/ML systems and protect **protected health information (PHI)**.
## Key Responsibilities
### Data & Platform Engineering
* Contribute to the development of the data and technology platform across:
* Data ingestion
* Data transformation
* Canonical data modeling
* Entity resolution
* Event backbone
* Configuration as code
* API and serving layers
* Help establish scalable and reliable foundations for AI/ML and data-driven applications.
### DevOps & Platform Reliability
* Strengthen **DevOps and production reliability** across the technology platform.
* Develop and maintain **CI/CD** workflows.
* Implement and manage **infrastructure as code**.
* Support environment management and deployment processes.
* Build observability across **metrics, logs, traces, and service-level objectives (SLOs)**.
* Help maintain reliable production infrastructure for AI/ML and data workloads.
### Security & Data Protection
* Partner with **Security and IT teams** to strengthen platform security.
* Support data classification and access-control enforcement.
* Implement secure secrets and key management.
* Maintain controls aligned with **HIPAA and HITRUST**.
* Keep **protected health information (PHI)** within controlled security boundaries.
* Favor **in-VPC or local inference** where required.
* Ensure AI/ML implementations do not introduce pathways for sensitive data leakage.
### AI/ML Platform Engineering
* Build the foundation for Vida's **AI/ML platform**.
* Develop **model serving and inference gateway** capabilities.
* Build feature and training data pipelines.
* Support the complete machine learning lifecycle, including:
* Model registry
* Model evaluation
* Model deployment
* Model monitoring
* Integrate **LLM applications** with grounding and guardrails.
* Support retrieval, evaluation, and knowledge-graph-based AI applications.
* Integrate AI/ML models into real-world production applications.
### Technical Leadership
* Work alongside existing team leads to increase **AI/ML fluency** across platform, security, and DevOps teams.
* Establish technical patterns and engineering practices that other teams can build upon.
* Work effectively across backend, infrastructure, data, and AI/ML systems.
* Take on additional responsibilities as needed.
## Required Qualifications
* **Bachelor's degree** at a minimum.
* **7–10+ years of experience** building and scaling production-grade **AI, machine learning, or ML systems**.
* Demonstrated experience as a **generalist Software Engineer** across backend engineering, infrastructure, and data.
* Substantial hands-on experience building and deploying **AI/ML systems in production**.
* Experience with:
* **MLOps**
* Model serving
* Inference infrastructure
* Feature pipelines
* Data pipelines
* Production model integration
* Strong cloud engineering experience, ideally with **Google Cloud Platform (GCP)**.
* Experience with GCP technologies such as:
* **Vertex AI**
* **BigQuery**
* **Cloud Run**
* **Pub/Sub**
* **Cloud SQL**
* **GKE**
* AWS or Azure equivalents are also welcome.
* Strong **DevOps and reliability engineering** skills.
* Experience with:
* **CI/CD**
* **Terraform** or similar infrastructure-as-code tools
* Containers
* Kubernetes
* Production observability
* Strong data engineering skills, including:
* **SQL**
* Pipeline tooling such as **dbt**
* Data warehousing
* Security-focused mindset and comfort working with **sensitive data in regulated environments**.
* Experience with **LLM applications**, including:
* Retrieval
* Evaluation
* Guardrails
* Knowledge graphs
* Comfortable working with ambiguity and moving quickly from technical concepts to production solutions.
* Ability to go deep in one technical area while working effectively across the broader technology stack.
## Preferred Qualifications
* Experience with **entity resolution** or **master data management (MDM)**.
* Experience in **healthcare** or another regulated data domain.
* Experience with **GraphQL** or a federated serving layer.
* Experience with **privacy-enhancing technologies**.
* Familiarity with **HIPAA or HITRUST**.
## Core Technical Skills
* AI/ML Engineering
* Machine Learning
* MLOps
* Model Serving
* Inference Infrastructure
* LLM Applications
* Retrieval
* AI Evaluation
* AI Guardrails
* Knowledge Graphs
* Feature Engineering
* Data Pipelines
* Data Engineering
* SQL
* dbt
* Data Warehousing
* Backend Software Engineering
* GCP / Google Cloud
* Vertex AI
* BigQuery
* Cloud Run
* Pub/Sub
* Cloud SQL
* GKE
* AWS
* Azure
* Terraform
* Kubernetes
* Containers
* CI/CD
* Infrastructure as Code
* Production Observability
* Data Security
* HIPAA
* HITRUST
* Entity Resolution
* Master Data Management
* GraphQL
* Privacy-Enhancing Technologies
## Work Arrangement
* **Remote**
* Location listed: **Baton Rouge, LA, US**
* Vida employees must reside in and be able to work from the **United States**.
* International work is prohibited.
* Applicants must be **authorized to work in the U.S.**
* Vida is **unable to sponsor work visas**.
* Eligibility is also subject to whether Vida is authorized to conduct business in the applicant's state.
## Compensation
* **$250,000–$275,000 per year**
## About Vida Health
Vida Health is a virtual, personalized healthcare provider focused on helping people manage obesity and related conditions including **diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, and depression**.
Vida combines advanced technology with healthcare professionals, including **Obesity Medicine-Certified Physicians, Registered Dietitians, Expert Coaches, and Licensed Therapists**, to provide whole-person care.
The company works with Fortune 100 companies, national payers, and large healthcare providers to help people improve their health.
## Equal Employment Opportunity
Vida is an **Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer**.
Vida states that qualified applicants receive consideration without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status, consistent with applicable law.
Vida also considers qualified applicants with criminal histories in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local law and provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans during the application process.
## Hiring Process & AI Use
Vida may use **artificial intelligence (AI) tools** to support parts of its hiring process, including reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, assessing responses, and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials.
These tools assist the recruiting team but do not replace human judgment. **Final hiring decisions are made by humans.**
## Apply Now
If you are a senior **AI/ML Engineering leader and hands-on Software Engineer** with experience building production AI/ML systems, data platforms, cloud infrastructure, MLOps, DevOps, and secure applications in regulated environments, apply now for the **Principal AI/ML Engineering Lead** opportunity.

Work arrangement
Yes