Director, Principal AI Engineer

Working with Us
Challenging. Meaningful. Life-changing. Those aren’t words that are usually associated with a job. But working at Bristol Myers Squibb is anything but usual. Here, uniquely interesting work happens every day, in every department. From optimizing a production line to the latest breakthroughs in cell therapy, this is work that transforms the lives of patients, and the careers of those who do it. You’ll get the chance to grow and thrive through opportunities uncommon in scale and scope, alongside high-achieving teams. Take your career farther than you thought possible.

Bristol Myers Squibb recognizes the importance of balance and flexibility in our work environment. We offer a wide variety of competitive benefits, services and programs that provide our employees with the resources to pursue their goals, both at work and in their personal lives. Read more: careers.bms.com/working-with-us.

Position Summary

As a Principal AI Engineer within Bristol Myers Squibb’s AI Accelerator program, you will lead a small, cross-functional pod to design and deliver generative AI solutions that transform core business processes across Commercialization, R&D, Manufacturing, and Enabling Functions. You will act as a player-coach—spending roughly 60% of your time hands-on in technical architecture, system and solution design, and building cloud-native GenAI applications, and 40% leading and developing your team. You will own one to two 12-week Accelerator projects at a time, shaping project charters, guiding technical decisions, and delivering AI-powered solutions using modern LLM, ML, and Cloud services and coding agents. Partnering closely with business, product, and technology stakeholders, you will establish reusable patterns, promote responsible AI practices, and help transition successful proofs of concept for scale into impactful, enterprise-wide solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Lead AI Accelerator Projects

·       Own end-to-end delivery of 12-week AI Accelerator projects, from problem framing and solution design through experimentation and handover.

·       Shape use cases, scope, and success metrics in collaboration with business stakeholders, product owners, and the AI Accelerator Hub.

·       Manage trade-offs between experimentation and robustness to keep projects on track and outcome-focused.

·       Ensure smooth transition of successful POCs into Scale phase with functional IT and business teams.

People Management & Team Leadership

·       Lead a small, multi-disciplinary pod of frontend engineers, application/cloud engineers, data scientists, and data engineers.

·       Provide coaching, feedback, and technical mentoring to grow skills and foster a high-performing, inclusive culture.

·       Partner with talent acquisition to hire and onboard new team members; onboard and manage staff-augmentation resources, if needed.

·       Establish lightweight, effective ways of working aligned with agile delivery and rapid experimentation.

Hands-On GenAI Architecture & Delivery

·       Act as technical lead and architect for GenAI solutions, driving technical architecture, system design, and solution design for LLM-based applications and agentic systems.

·       Design and implement solutions involving, but not limited to, context engineering, MCP servers, structured and unstructured data retrieval and manipulation, vector search, and multi-modal inputs (text, tables, images).

·       Build and orchestrate agents and tools to integrate enterprise systems and workflows.

·       Use coding agents effectively (e.g., Claude Code, Codex/GitHub Copilot-style tools, Gemini CLI) to accelerate development while maintaining quality.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Responsible AI 

·       Partner with stakeholders across Commercialization, R&D, Manufacturing, and Enabling Functions.

·       Communicate progress, risks, and outcomes clearly to both technical teams and senior leadership.

·       Contribute to shared patterns, templates, and components for future accelerator projects.

·       Embed responsible AI practices, including basic safety, evaluation, and guardrail considerations in GenAI solutions.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Science, Business, or a related field.

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, data science, or related technology roles with increasing responsibility.

• Proven track record designing and delivering GenAI and traditional software applications.

• Deep expertise in Python; experience with TypeScript and modern frontend development (e.g., React).

• Strong experience with MCP, context engineering, multi-modal GenAI inputs, and vector databases.

• Hands-on experience with AWS; familiarity with Azure and/or GCP is a plus.

• Practical experience with Azure OpenAI and AWS Bedrock

• Effective use of coding agents (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI).

• Comfort with GitHub and DevOps practices

• Experience with Databricks, Terraform/CloudFormation, MLOps, or app observability is a plus.

• Knowledge of and experience in agile ways of working

• Demonstrated people-management experience leading small engineering/data teams.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills across technical and executive audiences.

 #LI-Hybrid

#AIEngineering

If you come across a role that intrigues you but doesn’t perfectly line up with your resume, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be one step away from work that will transform your life and career.

The starting compensation range(s) for this role are listed above for a full-time employee (FTE) basis. Additional incentive cash and stock opportunities (based on eligibility) may be available. The starting pay rate takes into account characteristics of the job, such as required skills, where the job is performed, the employee’s work schedule, job-related knowledge, and experience. Final, individual compensation will be decided based on demonstrated experience. 
Eligibility for specific benefits listed on our careers site may vary based on the job and location. For more on benefits, please visit https://careers.bms.com/life-at-bms/.
 

Benefit offerings are subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable plans in effect at the time and may require enrollment. Our benefits include:

• Health Coverage: Medical, pharmacy, dental, and vision care.

• Wellbeing Support: Programs such as BMS Well-Being Account, BMS Living Life Better, and Employee Assistance Programs (EAP).

• Financial Well-being and Protection: 401(k) plan, short- and long-term disability, life insurance, accident insurance, supplemental health insurance, business travel protection, personal liability protection, identity theft benefit, legal support, and survivor support.

​Work-life benefits include:

Paid Time Off

• US Exempt Employees: flexible time off (unlimited, with manager approval, 11 paid national holidays (not applicable to employees in Phoenix, AZ, Puerto Rico or Rayzebio employees)

• Phoenix, AZ, Puerto Rico and Rayzebio Exempt, Non-Exempt, Hourly Employees: 160 hours annual paid vacation for new hires with manager approval, 11 national holidays, and 3 optional holidays

Based on eligibility*, additional time off for employees may include unlimited paid sick time, up to 2 paid volunteer days per year, summer hours flexibility, leaves of absence for medical, personal, parental, caregiver, bereavement, and military needs and an annual Global Shutdown between Christmas and New Years Day.

All global employees full and part-time who are actively employed at and paid directly by BMS at the end of the calendar year are eligible to take advantage of the Global Shutdown.

*Eligibility Disclosure: The summer hours program is for United States (U.S.) office-based employees due to the unique nature of their work. Summer hours are generally not available for field sales and manufacturing operations and may also be limited for the capability centers. Employees in remote-by-design or lab-based roles may be eligible for summer hours, depending on the nature of their work, and should discuss eligibility with their manager. Employees covered under a collective bargaining agreement should consult that document to determine if they are eligible. Contractors, leased workers and other service providers are not eligible to participate in the program.

Uniquely Interesting Work, Life-changing Careers
With a single vision as inspiring as “Transforming patients’ lives through science™ ”, every BMS employee plays an integral role in work that goes far beyond ordinary. Each of us is empowered to apply our individual talents and unique perspectives in a supportive culture, promoting global participation in clinical trials, while our shared values of passion, innovation, urgency, accountability, inclusion and integrity bring out the highest potential of each of our colleagues.

On-site Protocol

BMS has an occupancy structure that determines where an employee is required to conduct their work. This structure includes site-essential, site-by-design, field-based and remote-by-design jobs. The occupancy type that you are assigned is determined by the nature and responsibilities of your role:

Site-essential roles require 100% of shifts onsite at your assigned facility. Site-by-design roles may be eligible for a hybrid work model with at least 50% onsite at your assigned facility. For these roles, onsite presence is considered an essential job function and is critical to collaboration, innovation, productivity, and a positive Company culture. For field-based and remote-by-design roles the ability to physically travel to visit customers, patients or business partners and to attend meetings on behalf of BMS as directed is an essential job function.

Supporting People with Disabilities

BMS is dedicated to ensuring that people with disabilities can excel through a transparent recruitment process, reasonable workplace accommodations/adjustments and ongoing support in their roles. Applicants can request a reasonable workplace accommodation/adjustment prior to accepting a job offer. If you require reasonable accommodations/adjustments in completing this application, or in any part of the recruitment process, direct your inquiries to [email protected]. Visit careers.bms.com/eeo-accessibility to access our complete Equal Employment Opportunity statement.

Candidate Rights

BMS will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, pursuant to applicable laws in your area.

If you live in or expect to work from Los Angeles County if hired for this position, please visit this page for important additional information: https://careers.bms.com/california-residents/

Data Protection

We will never request payments, financial information, or social security numbers during our application or recruitment process. Learn more about protecting yourself at https://careers.bms.com/fraud-protection.

Any data processed in connection with role applications will be treated in accordance with applicable data privacy policies and regulations.

If you believe that the job posting is missing information required by local law or incorrect in any way, please contact BMS at [email protected]. Please provide the Job Title and Requisition number so we can review. Communications related to your application should not be sent to this email and you will not receive a response. Inquiries related to the status of your application should be directed to Chat with Ripley.