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.
About the Role
We are seeking a Principal Engineer to serve as a hands-on technical leader across the full breadth of our platform — data engineering, software engineering, and AI engineering. This is our most senior individual-contributor role and is reserved for engineers who combine deep technical mastery with organization-wide influence.
The Principal Engineer sets technical direction, designs systems that operate reliably and securely at scale, and raises the engineering bar across teams. You will partner closely with engineering leadership, product management, and clinical and scientific stakeholders to solve the hardest problems in precision oncology — from large-scale genomic data pipelines to production AI/ML systems that support clinical and research decision-making. This position reports to the Sr. Director, Genospace Engineering.
What You’ll Do (Responsibilities)
Design cross-domain architecture — define end-to-end architecture for complex systems that span data pipelines, application services, and AI/ML workloads, balancing scalability, reliability, security, and cost.
Lead data engineering at scale — design and deliver ingestion, transformation, storage, and governance for large volumes of genomic and clinical data, with strong data quality and lineage.
Build production software across the stack — architect and implement robust services from back-end data stores through APIs to front-end experiences, with a keen sense for making things fast and efficient.
Productionize AI/ML — design, develop, and deploy AI/ML and GenAI capabilities, and establish the MLOps foundations (training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and responsible-AI practices) that keep them dependable.
Set the engineering bar — establish and champion standards for code quality, testing, security, scalability, and regulatory compliance (e.g., HIPAA / PHI handling).
Drive technical strategy — shape multi-quarter technical roadmaps and make build/buy and platform decisions in partnership with engineering, product, and data-science leadership.
Multiply the team — mentor senior and junior engineers, lead design and code reviews, and grow technical talent and best practices across the organization.
Advance the state of the art — evaluate and introduce new technologies, frameworks, and practices where they create measurable improvement, and stay current with the evolving AI and data landscape.
Partner with stakeholders — work with clients, account management, and clinical stakeholders to translate ambiguous business needs into elegant, durable technical solutions — you enjoy coming up with solutions rather than being told what to build.
Other duties may be assigned as needed to meet company goals.
What We’re Looking For (Requirements)
Degree or equivalent and typically requires 10+ years of relevant experience. Less years required if has relevant Master’s or Doctorate qualifications.
10+ years of software engineering experience, including a demonstrated track record of technical leadership on large, complex, distributed systems.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
Breadth across three disciplines — deep expertise in at least two of, and working fluency across all three of: data engineering, software engineering, and AI/ML engineering.
Proven ability to design and operate distributed systems and data-intensive applications at scale.
Proficiency in one or more modern languages (e.g., Python, Java, C#, Go, or TypeScript) and strong command of data technologies such as SQL and big-data or streaming frameworks.
Hands-on experience building and deploying production AI/ML systems using frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or scikit-learn.
Strong software-engineering fundamentals: design patterns, object-oriented principles, automated testing, and CI/CD.
Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence and align engineering, product, and executive stakeholders without direct authority.
Additional Knowledge & Skills
Data engineering: pipeline orchestration, data modeling, warehouse / lakehouse architectures, and data quality, lineage, and governance.
AI engineering: model development, LLM / GenAI application patterns, MLOps, evaluation, and responsible and secure AI practices.
Cloud & DevOps: depth in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, with modern tooling — infrastructure-as-code, containers, Kubernetes, and observability.
Domain (a strong plus): healthcare, genomics, or life-sciences experience, and familiarity with regulated-data environments (HIPAA / PHI).
Technical leadership: a proven ability to mentor engineers, set technical vision, and lead through influence across teams.
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
$149,600 - $249,400McKesson 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.
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