AbbVie Posted August 26, 2026

Principal AI Engineer II

North Chicago, IL Full-time
Data & Digital Principal
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AbbVie is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

About this opportunity

Company Description

About AbbVie

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at  www.abbvie.com . Follow @abbvie on  LinkedIn,   Facebook ,  Instagram ,  X  and  YouTube.

Job Description

As a discipline expert and technology leader, the Principal AI Engineer II will define and advance the strategy, architecture, and engineering practices required to develop, deploy, and scale artificial intelligence solutions across AbbVie. This role will investigate, identify, and implement state-of-the-art technology platforms that drive productivity and efficiency gains in own function and throughout multiple business areas. Technical leader acting at a group, department, and cross-functional levels. Responsible for managing the Data, Solutions, Business, and/or technology environments and tying them to the Enterprise Architecture and other architectures designs.

Responsibilities:

Define and advance AI engineering strategy, architecture, standards, and roadmaps aligned with AbbVie’s business and technology objectives.

Architect and build secure, scalable, reusable AI platforms, services, developer tools, and components that support enterprise adoption.

Lead production-grade AI solutions from ideation and prototyping through development, testing, validation, deployment, monitoring, continuous improvement, and retirement.

Integrate AI platforms with AWS services and enterprise data, software, security, identity, and infrastructure environments.

Establish practices for evaluation, testing, versioning, release management, observability, performance monitoring, incident response, and operational support.

Apply risk-based approaches to compliance, GxP, data integrity, privacy, cybersecurity, documentation, traceability, human oversight, and responsible AI.

Partner with Quality, Regulatory, Legal, Privacy, Information Security, scientific, technical, and business stakeholders to deliver fit-for-purpose solutions.

Serve as a trusted technical advisor, facilitate alignment, influence decisions without direct authority, and communicate complex tradeoffs and recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences.

Evaluate emerging technologies, lead innovation and proof-of-concept efforts, and guide promising solutions into sustainable production capabilities.

Mentor engineers, advance engineering maturity, promote knowledge sharing, and represent AbbVie in relevant technical communities and partner engagements.

Qualifications

Required

Bachelor’s degree with 9 years’ experience, Master’s degree with 8 years’ experience, or PhD with 4 years’ in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Demonstrated experience designing, deploying, and operating production-scale AI and machine learning systems.

Strong experience in AI/platform engineering, including scalable platforms, reusable components, and production-grade AI solutions.

Demonstrated experience designing, building, deploying, and supporting solutions using AWS systems and services.

Strong software and cloud engineering practices, including secure design, automated testing, CI/CD, containerization, monitoring, and operational support.

Experience working in a regulated environment, preferably pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare, medical device, or life sciences.

Experience supporting the full solution lifecycle, including feasibility, design, development, testing, validation, deployment, and ongoing operations.

Strong understanding of risk management, validation, change control, data integrity, cybersecurity, privacy, documentation, and quality requirements.

Demonstrated ability to manage complex stakeholders, influence technical and business decisions, and collaborate across organizational boundaries.

Excellent communication skills with senior leaders, technical teams, scientific experts, business partners, and external collaborators.

Demonstrated innovation and mentoring experience, including advancing engineering practices and delivering measurable impact.

Preferred

Experience with enterprise AI governance, responsible AI, model validation, human oversight, and AI lifecycle management.

Experience with MLOps and production engineering, including model evaluation, APIs, microservices, CI/CD, observability, and infrastructure as code.

Open-source contributions or technical thought leadership through publications, patents, or industry working groups.

Experience leading cross-functional product development from feasibility through validation and production implementation.

Enterprise AI or platform experience, including AWS architecture, governance, security, and integration with enterprise environments.

Additional Information

Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law: ​

The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. ​

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick), medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.​

This job is eligible to participate in our long-term incentive programs. ​

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law.​

AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community.  Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.

US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit  https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html

US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:

https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html

Job details

Seniority
Principal
Function
Data & Digital
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
North Chicago, IL
Employment type
Full-time

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Data & Digital role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 221 comparable Principal Data & Digital roles across 41 biopharma companies.

221Comparable roles tracked
208Currently active
41Companies hiring similar roles
27Countries represented

Salary context

77 of 221 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.

This roleSubject $141,500/yr – $268,500/yr
Lowest disclosed · Sr. Associate - Master Data / Supply Chain Associate - API EM · Lilly $58,500/yr – $137,500/yr
Highest disclosed · Director, Analytics Engineering (2 Openings) · Novartis $194,600/yr – $361,400/yr
Peer group range $98,000 – $278,000 (median $223,450)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 221 comparable roles

United States108
India53
Spain10
Germany9
United Kingdom7
Poland6

+ 21 more countries

Seniority mix

221 of 221 peers have a known seniority level

Senior117
Director71
Principal33

Therapeutic area mix

7 of 221 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Immunology4
Oncology3

Similar opportunities

The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.

60%similar
Pfizer Groton, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Novartis Cambridge (USA), United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) Warren, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc (US) Boston, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Amgen USA Inc. Thousand Oaks, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc (US) Boston, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country

Notify me about similar jobs

Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.

Or follow a whole field: get every new Data & Digital job in the United States, and choose locations and companies.

How we calculate "similar"

No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.

Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.

60%
Principal ML/AI Cheminformatics Scientist
Pfizer · Groton, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Principal Statistical Programmer - Internal Medicine
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) · Warren, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Principal Data Engineer
Amgen USA Inc. · Thousand Oaks, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Principal AI Engineer
Johnson & Johnson · Raritan, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.