AbbVie Posted October 7, 2026

Principal Data Engineer, AI Enablement

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

The Principal Data Engineer, AI Enablement will design, develop, and maintain data solutions that drive the advancement and enablement of our AI and machine learning use cases. In this role, you will collaborate closely with data engineers, data scientists, architects, and business analysts to advance the core data capabilities, deliver projects, foster technological innovation, and promote continuous improvement.

Responsibilities:

Collaborate with a cross-functional team of engineers, architects, data scientists, business system analysts and product owners to understand requirements and deliver fit-for-purpose solutions.

Design, develop, and maintain scalable AI-ready data solutions for diverse data sets to support pharma value chain.

Design, develop, and maintain solutions involving the integration of LLMs (such as GPT or Claude or similar technologies) for data mining, knowledge extraction, and automation of data-driven insights.

Design, develop, and maintain solutions to operationalize machine learning models, including model deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management.

Capture and interpret user requirements into expressive data models that enable graph analytics, semantic reasoning, and GenAI integration.

Research and recommend appropriate tools, frameworks, and platforms for graph databases, vector stores, and large language models integration including agent-based solutions.

Provide technical leadership, act as a subject matter expert and advisor to partners on the feasibility and impact of emerging technologies in the AI data space.

Ensure compliance with applicable AbbVie software development, lifecycle policies, and procedures.

Qualifications

Required:

Bachelor's Degree with 8 years of experience; OR Master's Degree with 7 years of experience; OR PhD with 3 years of related work experience and a strong understanding of specified functional area.

Must have experience with MLOps, LLM integration, Data Agents, Agentic Memory and Graph RAG systems, text mining, and unstructured data processing.

Experience designing and building data pipelines, ETL/ELT processes, and data models.

Proficiency with Python, SQL, and distributed data processing frameworks such as Spark.

Experience with CI/CD practices, data quality controls, governance, and security considerations.

Preferred:

Degree in Computer Science or related discipline preferred. Advanced degree preferred.

Experience with Neo4j & Elasticsearch database technologies is preferred.

AWS experience is preferred.

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 72 comparable Principal Data & Digital roles across 18 biopharma companies.

72Comparable roles tracked
66Currently active
18Companies hiring similar roles
8Countries represented

Salary context

24 of 72 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 $124,500/yr – $236,500/yr
Lowest disclosed · Sr Analyst, Data Scientist · Gilead Sciences, Inc. $117,895/yr – $152,570/yr
Highest disclosed · Director, Analytics Engineering (2 Openings) · Novartis $194,600/yr – $361,400/yr
Peer group range $135,233 – $278,000 (median $223,583)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 72 comparable roles

India35
United States25
United Kingdom5
Spain2
Portugal2
Costa Rica1

+ 2 more countries

Seniority mix

72 of 72 peers have a known seniority level

Senior43
Director16
Principal13

Therapeutic area mix

1 of 72 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Oncology1

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
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) Warren, 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
Johnson & Johnson Spring House, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Novartis San Diego, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) Tarrytown, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) Tarrytown, 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.

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 Statistical Programmer - Internal Medicine
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) · Warren, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Principal Data Engineer, Biologics Discovery
Johnson & Johnson · Spring House, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Principal Biostatistician - Hematology
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) · Tarrytown, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
50%
Director, AI Foundations Engineer- Remote
Novartis · Remote, United States · Director
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent 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.