Principal Data Engineer - AI

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com

As guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson is responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world.  We provide an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual.  At Johnson & Johnson, we respect the diversity and dignity of our employees and recognize their merit.

Job Function:

Data Analytics & Computational Sciences

Job Sub Function:

Data Engineering

Job Category:

Scientific/Technology

All Job Posting Locations:

New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States of America

Job Description:

This is a duration based role that will last 2 years.  Role can be fully remote. 

The Principal Data Engineer- AI owns product engineering and architectural decisions, serving as both the technical visionary and hands-on leader responsible for solution delivery. This role partners closely with Product Owners, Product Group Engineers, Lead Engineers, architects, and cross-functional product squads to solve complex engineering challenges, define scalable technical solutions, and ensure alignment with enterprise technology strategy.

The role is accountable for product technical architecture, engineering standards, technology roadmaps, and the successful delivery of scalable, secure, and governed data and AI solutions. The ideal candidate brings 10+ years of progressive experience in enterprise data engineering, architecture, analytics, and AI, with deep expertise in Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, Power BI, Data Mesh, Data Federation, Data Modeling, Data Governance, Enterprise Data Management, Generative AI, and Agentic AI platforms.

Responsibilities / Key Jobs to be Done (Workday “What You Will Do”)

• Define and own the overall engineering strategy, technology architecture, roadmap, and technical direction for the product in partnership with Product Owners, Product Group Engineers, and Business Unit Architects.
• Ensure technical implementations align with enterprise architecture standards, business objectives, economic frameworks, and long-term technology strategy.
• Partner with business stakeholders to shape product vision, define capabilities, and translate business requirements into scalable data, analytics, and AI solutions.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership, actively contributing to architecture reviews, design reviews, code reviews, proof-of-concepts, and technical enablers.
• Evaluate solution alternatives, validate concepts with stakeholders, and drive informed technology decisions.
• Collaborate across product and platform teams to maximize reuse, standardization, and platform adoption while minimizing redundant solutions.
• Lead technical planning and governance across multiple squads, ensuring consistency in architecture, engineering practices, scalability, and maintainability.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices that improve reliability, performance, security, observability, and delivery quality.
• Own technology lifecycle management, including APIs, data interfaces, integration patterns, and platform modernization initiatives.
• Research emerging technologies and industry trends, conducting innovation spikes and pilots to identify opportunities for business value.
• Support Product Owners and Lead Engineers in backlog prioritization and technical debt management.
• Mentor engineers and technical leaders while fostering a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Manage technical risks, dependencies, impediments, and cross-product integration challenges.
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for ISRM, Quality and Compliance (Q-CSV), vendors, enterprise platform teams, and external partners.

AI, GenAI & Agentic AI Leadership

• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise Generative AI and Agentic AI solutions leveraging Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Services, Microsoft Fabric AI capabilities, Databricks AI/ML, and enterprise knowledge platforms.
• Design and operationalize scalable Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions, vector databases, semantic search capabilities, knowledge graphs, and enterprise document intelligence platforms.
• Build and govern AI-ready data products that provide trusted, secure, and contextualized data for AI applications.
• Establish standards for prompt engineering, model evaluation, observability, guardrails, responsible AI, performance monitoring, and AI lifecycle management (LLMOps/MLOps).
• Develop scalable AI data pipelines supporting embedding creation, vectorization, document ingestion, multimodal processing, and unstructured data management.
• Partner with business, analytics, digital, and experience teams to identify and prioritize high-impact AI use cases that drive measurable business outcomes.
• Ensure AI solutions comply with enterprise security, privacy, governance, regulatory, and responsible AI requirements.
• Evaluate emerging foundation models, copilots, AI agents, and AI platforms, driving adoption where business value can be demonstrated.

Technical Scope & Expectations (Data Engineering Focus)

• Lead the design, development, and implementation of enterprise-scale data products, data platforms, and data pipelines using Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, and modern cloud-native architectures.
• Design and implement Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Product, and Data Sharing architectures supporting enterprise analytics and AI workloads.
• Enable governed analytics and semantic modeling practices through Power BI, including performance optimization, security, scalability, and model governance.
• Apply Data Mesh principles and federated governance approaches to support domain-driven ownership and scalable enterprise data ecosystems.
• Establish and enforce enterprise-wide data modeling standards, including conceptual, logical, physical, dimensional, canonical, and domain-oriented data models.
• Implement robust data governance practices, including data quality management, metadata management, lineage, master data integration, security, and access controls.
• Develop scalable data architectures supporting both structured and unstructured data required for advanced analytics and AI applications.
• Enable interoperability and data product consumption through APIs, event-driven architectures, and enterprise integration patterns.

AI Engineering Expertise

• Demonstrate deep, hands-on expertise with Large Language Models (LLMs), Generative AI, AI agents, embeddings, vector databases, prompt engineering, and enterprise AI architectures.
• Design and operate enterprise AI engineering platforms, including MLOps, LLMOps, model governance, model evaluation frameworks, and responsible AI controls.
• Architect and support AI-ready data foundations that enable trusted, scalable, and governed enterprise AI solutions.

Key Skills (Workday “What You Bring”)

Leadership Skills and Behaviors

• Creates a culture that relentlessly focuses on improving outcomes for customers, employees, and the communities we serve.
• Leads and influences technical teams across multiple squads, functions, geographies, and experience levels.
• Demonstrates commitment to Our Credo, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion by fostering an environment where diverse talent can thrive.
• Brings a strong customer-centric mindset and ensures the delivery of products that anticipate and address customer needs.
• Establishes trusted partnerships with architects, engineering leaders, product leaders, and business stakeholders.
• Coaches, develops, and mentors engineering talent while promoting accountability, ownership, and innovation.

Product / Digital Expertise

• Extensive experience leading Agile delivery organizations, including product development, governance, standards, and organizational change management.
• Deep technical expertise across Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, Power BI, Data Mesh, Data Federation, Data Modeling, Data Governance, Enterprise Data Management, AI Engineering, and Generative AI technologies.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures, API-first design, distributed systems, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Expertise with modern SDLC practices, CI/CD pipelines, test automation, DevOps, containerization, Infrastructure as Code, and platform engineering.
• Proven ability to evaluate technical tradeoffs and guide teams toward scalable, maintainable solutions.

Domain Expertise

• Experience leading the selection, implementation, integration, and operation of enterprise data, analytics, AI, and digital platforms.
• Strong experience managing products and platforms throughout their lifecycle in complex, multi-team environments.
• Deep understanding of enterprise delivery practices including planning, dependency management, governance, compliance, quality management, and operational excellence.
• Ability to align technology investments with business strategy, value drivers, and industry trends.
• Demonstrated success driving measurable business outcomes through data, analytics, and AI solutions.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, or a related field; Master’s degree preferred.
• 15+ years of experience in enterprise data engineering, technical architecture, analytics, AI platforms, and cloud engineering.
• Proven experience leading architecture decisions, technical strategy, and engineering standards across multiple teams and products.
• Hands-on expertise with Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, Power BI, and modern cloud-native technologies.
• Strong experience with Data Mesh, Data Federation, Data Products, Data Modeling, Data Governance, and Enterprise Data Management disciplines.
• Demonstrated expertise with Generative AI technologies including LLMs, RAG, vector databases, AI agents, prompt engineering, and enterprise AI architectures.
• Experience implementing MLOps, LLMOps, Responsible AI, model governance, and AI operationalization frameworks.
• Strong understanding of structured and unstructured data architectures supporting enterprise AI and intelligent automation.
• Exceptional communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proven ability to lead through ambiguity and drive alignment across business and technology organizations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating in highly regulated industries with stringent security, privacy, compliance, and quality requirements.
• Experience partnering with ISRM, Quality & Compliance organizations, and audit functions to ensure operational readiness and control compliance.
• Experience with enterprise knowledge management platforms, document intelligence solutions, and semantic technologies.
• Familiarity with knowledge graphs, graph databases, vector platforms, enterprise search, and advanced AI retrieval strategies.
• Demonstrated experience establishing engineering observability, reliability engineering practices, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and operational excellence frameworks.
• Experience driving measurable business outcomes and value realization through enterprise data and AI initiatives.
• Experience leading enterprise AI transformation programs, AI platform strategy, and adoption of emerging AI technologies at scale.

#JNJTECH

Johnson & Johnson is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by federal, state or local law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.  

Johnson & Johnson is committed to providing an interview process that is inclusive of our applicants’ needs. If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request an accommodation, please contact us via https://www.jnj.com/contact-us/careers or contact AskGS to be directed to your accommodation resource.

Required Skills:

Preferred Skills:

Advanced Analytics, Agility Jumps, Coaching, Critical Thinking, Data Engineering, Data Governance, Data Modeling, Data Privacy Standards, Data Science, Digital Fluency, Execution Focus, Hybrid Clouds, Organizing, Presentation Design, Technical Development, Technical Writing, Technologically Savvy

The anticipated base pay range for this position is :

The anticipated base pay range for this position is: $102,000- $170,000

Additional Description for Pay Transparency:

Subject to the terms of their respective plans, employees and/or eligible dependents are eligible to participate in the following Company sponsored employee benefit programs: medical, dental, vision, life insurance, short- and long-term disability, business accident insurance, and group legal insurance. Subject to the terms of their respective plans, employees are eligible to participate in the Company’s consolidated retirement plan (pension) and savings plan (401(k)). Subject to the terms of their respective policies and date of hire, Employees are eligible for the following time off benefits: Vacation –120 hours per calendar year Sick time - 40 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Washington –56 hours per calendar year Holiday pay, including Floating Holidays –13 days per calendar year Work, Personal and Family Time - up to 40 hours per calendar year Parental Leave – 480 hours within one year of the birth/adoption/foster care of a child Condolence Leave – 30 days for an immediate family member: 5 days for an extended family member Caregiver Leave – 10 days Volunteer Leave – 4 days Military Spouse Time-Off – 80 hours Additional information can be found through the link below. https://www.careers.jnj.com/employee-benefits