Principal Decision Intelligence Engineer

Overview

The Principal Decision Intelligence Engineer is the technical lead for the NBA platform’s decision intelligence capabilities. This principal‑level full stack engineering role owns the entire decision system—from member feature signals through optimization, decisioning logic, and production deployment—while setting technical direction, mentoring engineers, and solving complex architectural problems with full autonomy.

Responsibilities

• Own the complete pipeline from member signals to live decisions, including feature engineering, scoring, and production monitoring.
• Design the decision intelligence architecture that determines actions for each member, translating business objectives into reward structures, constraints, and optimization formulations.
• Develop the member feature layer on the Databricks Lakehouse, collaborating with data engineering to ensure signals are accurate, timely, and available.
• Lead planning and optimization of action sequences across member journeys, balancing short‑term engagement with long‑term outcomes.
• Own the flow of decision outputs into live systems: scoring pipelines, serving infrastructure, action masking, and real‑time feedback loops.
• Design holdout frameworks and online evaluation strategies to isolate the impact of decisioning changes and define success metrics.
• Lead and grow a multifunctional engineering team, running design reviews, setting technical standards, and maintaining architectural cohesion.
• Mentor team members through code reviews, pairing, and continuous technical guidance.
• Champion the use of AI coding and research tools across the team to maximize productivity.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience with deep exposure to data‑intensive applications, applied AI, or decision systems.
• 2–5 years of product people leadership experience.
• Experience leading a multifunctional technical team, setting direction, removing blockers, and being accountable for results.
• Strong foundation in optimization and sequential decision‑making, including objective functions, constraints, trade‑offs over time, and system design impacts.
• Experience designing reward structures, evaluation criteria, or planning frameworks that translate business goals into system‑optimizable objectives.
• Hands‑on experience with Python and the full engineering stack, including backend services, data pipelines, and AI/ML tooling (PyTorch, MLflow, PySpark, or equivalents).
• Experience building and owning pipelines on a cloud data platform (Databricks, Snowflake, or equivalent) at scale.
• Strong grounding in experimental design, including constructing clean tests, avoiding confounding, and interpreting results correctly.
• Capacity to make independent architectural decisions on complex, ambiguous problems.
• Passion for improving consumer experiences in an organization focused on continuous enhancement.
• Strong communication skills across technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Fluency with AI productivity tools (Claude, GitHub Copilot, or similar).

Strong Plus

• Master’s degree.
• Experience with linear programming, integer programming, or constraint‑based optimization in production.
• Background in personalization, recommendation systems, or next‑best‑action platforms.
• Familiarity with Kafka‑based event pipelines and real‑time feedback loop design.
• Experience with causal inference or uplift modeling.
• Background in healthcare, insurance, or other regulated industries with PHI/HIPAA constraints.

Work Style & Logistics

• Hybrid – Boston, MA with occasional travel to Humana’s offices for training or meetings.
• Typical business hours: Monday‑Friday, 8 hours/day, 5 days/week (some flexibility).
• Minimum internet speed requirement: 25 Mbps download × 10 Mbps upload via DSL/cable; satellite and wireless internet not allowed.
• Work‑from‑home setting must provide a dedicated space free from interruptions to protect PHI/HIPAA information.

Compensation

$187,900 – $258,500 per year. This range reflects a good‑faith estimate of starting base pay for full‑time (40 hours per week) employment at the time of posting. Salary may vary based on geographic location and individual qualifications. Eligible for a bonus incentive plan based on company and/or individual performance.

Benefits

Competitive medical, dental, and vision coverage; 401(k) retirement savings plan; paid time off (including holidays, parental and caregiver leave); short‑term and long‑term disability; life insurance; and additional wellness programs.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Humana is an equal‑opportunity employer and complies with applicable laws and regulations. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability, or protected veteran status. We also take affirmative action to employ and advance qualified individuals with disability or protected veteran status, considering only valid job requirements for all employment decisions.