Associate Principal, AI Engineering

What if the work you did every day could impact the lives of people you know Or all of humanity

At Illumina we are expanding access to genomic technology to realize health equity for billions of people around the world. Our efforts enable life-changing discoveries that are transforming human health through the early detection and diagnosis of diseases and new treatment options for patients.

Working at Illumina means being part of something bigger than yourself. Every person in every role has the opportunity to make a difference. Surrounded by extraordinary people inspiring leaders and world changing projects you will do more and become more than you ever thought possible.

Location

San Diego CA

Summary

The Associate Principal AI Engineer is a senior technical leader who partners with Principal Architects business stakeholders and engineering teams to translate enterprise strategy into scalable AI-enabled technology solutions. This role blends deep hands-on technical depth across full-stack engineering cloud platforms and modern AI architectures with the leadership presence needed to influence cross-functional teams and shape long-range technology direction.

The successful candidate will architect production-grade systems that integrate Generative AI agentic workflows and RAG-based retrieval into core enterprise applications while mentoring engineering teams and establishing the patterns guardrails and platforms that allow AI to scale responsibly across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture and Technical Strategy

• Define reference architectures design patterns and platform standards for AI-enabled enterprise applications spanning web mobile and backend services.
• Partner with the Principal Architect to develop multi-year technology roadmaps that align cloud data AI and application strategy with business objectives.
• Evaluate emerging technologies (foundation models agentic frameworks vector databases MLOps tooling) and translate them into actionable adoption plans.
• Lead architectural reviews ensuring system designs meet requirements for scalability security performance observability and total cost of ownership.

AI and Generative AI Engineering

• Architect Generative AI solutions including RAG systems multi-agent workflows conversational interfaces and domain-specific fine-tuned models.
• Design responsible AI frameworks covering prompt engineering standards evaluation pipelines model governance and content safety controls.
• Establish MLOps and LLMOps practices for model deployment monitoring drift detection and continuous improvement.
• Integrate LLM providers (OpenAI Anthropic Google) and orchestration frameworks (LangChain LangGraph) into production systems with appropriate fallback and cost controls.

Cloud and Platform Engineering

• Design cloud-native solutions on Google Cloud Platform Azure or AWS leveraging managed AI services (Vertex AI AlloyDB Cloud Functions equivalent services).
• Architect CI/CD pipelines infrastructure-as-code and platform automation that accelerate engineering velocity without compromising reliability.
• Define and enforce standards for containerization microservices API design and event-driven architectures.

Leadership and Delivery

• Provide technical leadership to engineering teams of 15 to 30 engineers including UI developers backend engineers ML engineers and platform specialists.
• Mentor senior engineers and tech leads growing the next generation of architects within the organization.
• Partner with product design and business stakeholders to scope initiatives manage trade-offs and deliver measurable business outcomes.
• Represent the architecture function in executive forums vendor evaluations and strategic planning sessions.

Required Qualifications

• 15 or more years of progressive experience in software engineering with at least 5 years in architecture or senior technical leadership roles.
• Deep hands-on expertise across full-stack development including Python and Java ecosystems (Spring Boot Spring Cloud microservices).
• Proven experience architecting and deploying Generative AI solutions in production including RAG systems prompt engineering and LLM integration.
• Strong command of at least one major cloud platform (GCP Azure or AWS) with demonstrated experience designing scalable multi-tenant systems.
• Experience leading distributed engineering teams of 15 or more across multiple time zones.
• Track record of delivering enterprise-grade systems that serve large user bases with measurable performance and revenue outcomes.
• Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science Engineering or a related discipline.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with agentic AI frameworks (LangChain LangGraph AutoGen CrewAI) and multi-agent system design.
• Familiarity with Voice AI and conversational AI platforms including ASR TTS and dialog management.
• Background in commerce platforms (Bloomreach Salesforce Commerce Cloud Adobe Experience Cloud) or industrial and B2B e-commerce.
• Exposure to data platforms (BigQuery Snowflake Databricks) and modern data architectures (lakehouse streaming vector stores).
• Industry certifications such as TOGAF GCP Professional Cloud Architect Azure Solutions Architect Expert or AWS Solutions Architect Professional.
• Active engagement with the technology community through conference talks publications patents or industry awards.
• Senior membership in IEEE ACM or equivalent professional organization.

Technical Skill Profile

• AI and Machine Learning:Generative AI LLMs (GPT-4 Claude Gemini) LangChain LangGraph RAG architectures vector search prompt engineering fine-tuning MLOps responsible AI multi-agent systems Voice AI semantic search.
• Programming and Frameworks:Python Java SE Spring Boot Spring MVC Spring JPA Spring REST Spring Cloud Hibernate REST and GraphQL API design.
• Cloud and DevOps:GCP (Vertex AI AlloyDB Cloud Functions) Azure Docker Kubernetes Bamboo or equivalent CI/CD tooling Terraform observability stacks.
• Web and Mobile:Angular React modern JavaScript frameworks HTML5 responsive design accessibility standards.
• Data:Oracle MySQL SQL Server AlloyDB vector databases (Pinecone Weaviate pgvector) event streaming (Kafka Pub/Sub).

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic Thinking:Ability to see beyond immediate technical decisions and shape multi-year technology direction.
• Influence Without Authority:Effectiveness in moving cross-functional initiatives forward through expertise clarity and trust.
• Executive Communication:Comfort articulating complex technical concepts to non-technical executives and translating business priorities into engineering plans.
• Builders Mindset:Genuine enthusiasm for hands-on problem solving alongside architectural leadership.
• Mentorship:Demonstrated history of growing senior engineers into architects and leaders.

#LI-ONSITE

The estimated base salary range for the Associate Principal AI Engineering role based in the United States of America is: $187400 - $281000. Should the level or location of the role change during the hiring process the applicable base pay range may be updated accordingly. The range reflects longterm growth in the role; therefore most candidates are hired between the minimum and middle of the range. Placement depends on experience skills location and internal equity. Additionally all employees are eligible for one of our variable cash programs (bonus or commission) and eligible roles may receive equity as part of the compensation package. We offer a wide range of benefits as innovative as our work including access to genomics sequencing family planning health/dental/vision retirement benefits and paid time off.

We are a company deeply rooted in belonging promoting an inclusive environment where employees feel valued and empowered to contribute to our mission. Built on a strong foundation Illumina has always prioritized openness collaboration and seeking alternative perspectives to propel innovation in genomics. We are proud to confirm a zero-net gap in pay regardless of gender ethnicity or race. We also have several Employee Resource Groups (ERG) that deliver career development experiences increase cultural awareness and offer opportunities to engage in social responsibility. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to providing employment opportunity regardless of sex race creed color gender religion marital status domestic partner status age national origin or ancestry physical or mental disability medical condition sexual orientation pregnancy military or veteran status citizenship status and genetic information. Illumina conducts background checks on applicants for whom a conditional offer of employment has been made. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable local state and federal laws. Background check results may potentially result in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment. The background check process and any decisions made as a result shall be made in accordance with all applicable local state and federal laws. Illumina prohibits the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the application and interview process. If you require accommodation to complete the application or interview process please contact To learn more visit: The position will be posted until a final candidate is selected or the requisition has a sufficient number of qualified applicants.