Sr. Staff Engineer- AI (AI incubation)

Job Description

Why choose us?

Are you ready to take the next step in your career? Join us for an exciting opportunity at Albertsons Companies, where innovation and customer service go hand-in-hand!

At Albertsons Companies, we are looking for someone who's not just seeking a job, but someone who wants to make an impact. In this role, you'll have the opportunity to lead, innovate, and contribute to the growth of a company that values great service and lasting customer relationships. This position offers the chance to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment that's constantly evolving.

Main responsibilities:

The AI Incubation team sits within the Data & AI organization and helps identify, shape, and accelerate high-value AI opportunities across the business. This includes advancing Albertsons' Four Big Bets in AI: digital customer experience, merchandising intelligence, empowering associates and leaders, and end-to-end supply chain optimization.

The AI Incubation team has an opening for a Sr. Staff Engineer - AI (AI Incubation). This position is located in Pleasanton, California.

Position Purpose

The Sr. Staff Engineer - AI (AI Incubation) will partner with business, product, and technology leaders to identify, shape, and accelerate high-value AI opportunities across the enterprise. This is a senior role for a leader who can move fluidly from problem framing to solution design, from stakeholder alignment to execution planning, and from incubation to enterprise scale.

Success in this role will come from the ability to convert ambiguity into clear priorities, credible solution paths, and measurable business outcomes. The role will help connect incubation priorities to Albertsons' Four Big Bets in AI and improve the quality and speed with which ideas move from concept to deployment.

Why this role matters?

This role sits at the front end of Albertsons' AI transformation, where enterprise priorities are translated into practical solutions with scale potential. It offers direct exposure to senior stakeholders, high-value problem spaces, and the opportunity to shape how AI is deployed across one of the largest grocery and pharmacy retailers in the U.S.

• Partner with senior leaders to identify, prioritize, and frame high-value AI opportunities tied to enterprise strategy and measurable outcomes.
• Build trusted relationships across business, product, and technology teams to strengthen the AI incubation funnel and improve cross-functional alignment.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into clear problem statements, solution hypotheses, business cases, and roadmaps.
• Orchestrate cross-functional teams across product, engineering, data, architecture, security, and platform functions from discovery through pilot and production readiness.
• Shape AI initiatives across customer, merchandising, marketing, loyalty, operations, supply chain, pharmacy, and corporate domains.
• Design enterprise-scale AI solution architectures spanning Data, ML, Foundation Models, RAG, Agentic Systems, AI Platforms, and enterprise integrations, with robust governance and production readiness.
• Build prototypes and evaluate emerging AI capabilities, including foundation models, prompting strategies, retrieval architectures, and agent orchestration patterns to accelerate production adoption.
• Establish reusable AI reference architectures, engineering standards, and solution accelerators that enable scalable, secure, and cost-effective AI adoption across the enterprise.
• Establish success metrics, experimentation plans, and adoption pathways that improve speed-to-decision and value realization.
• Accelerate initiatives from concept to pilot or production-ready design while improving the quality of governance, evaluation, and handoff into enterprise deployment.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across engineering, platform, and data science teams, influencing architecture and engineering decisions through deep technical expertise.
• Drive technical excellence by defining best practices for AI evaluation, observability, governance, performance, safety, and operational optimization.

We are looking for candidates who possess the following:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Analytics, or a related field.
• 10 plus years of relevant experience in AI-led transformation, AI solutions consulting, product strategy, enterprise architecture, or related roles.
• Demonstrated ability to move from executive-level ambiguity to clear hypotheses, product prototypes, decision points, and action plans.
• Strong executive communication and stakeholder leadership skills, with the ability to influence across business, product, and technology teams.
• Demonstrated expertise designing and deploying production-scale AI systems across multiple enterprise AI layers including Machine Learning, Foundation Models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Agentic Systems, and AI Platforms, with Data Engineering serving as the foundational competency.
• Experience building enterprise-grade AI applications using modern AI frameworks such as LangChain, Semantic Kernel, LlamaIndex, LangGraph, or equivalent technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to establish reusable engineering patterns, technical standards, and enterprise AI best practices.
• Ability to operate effectively in fast-moving environments where priorities evolve and clarity must be created.

Preferred Background

• Experience in AI transformation, innovation, incubation, internal strategy, solutions consulting, product leadership, or enterprise architecture within large enterprises, with exposure on AI, Enterprise GenAI, AI Agents, Multi-agent systems, AI Platform Engineering, Model Evaluation, AI Governance, LLMOps, MLOps, Vector Databases & Enterprise AI Security
• Experience in or exposure to retail, grocery, ecommerce, loyalty, merchandising, supply chain, or pharmacy environments.
• Background from top-tier consulting firms, Fortune 100-scale retailers, hyperscaler AI/solutions organizations, or high-growth AI companies is a plus.
• Familiarity with responsible AI, privacy, security, and risk considerations in enterprise or customer-facing deployments.

We also provide a variety of benefits including:

• Competitive wages paid weekly
• Access to up to 50% of your earned wages before payday, via our partnership with Stream
• Associate discounts
• Health and financial well-being benefits for eligible associates (Medical, Dental, 401k and more!)
• Time off (vacation, holidays, sick pay). For eligibility requirements please visit myACI Benefits
• Leaders invested in your training, career growth and development
• An inclusive work environment with talented colleagues who reflect the communities we serve

Our Values - Click below to view video: ACI Values

#LI-MF1

A copy of the full job description can be made available to you.

About Us

Albertsons Companies is at the forefront of the revolution in retail. Committed to innovation and fostering a culture of belonging, our team is united with a unique purpose: to bring people together around the joys of food and to inspire well-being. We want talented individuals to be part of this journey!

Locally great and nationally strong, Albertsons Companies (NYSE: ACI) is a leading food and drug retailer in the U.S. We operate over 2,200 stores, 1,732 pharmacies, 405 fuel centers, 22 distribution facilities, and 19 manufacturing plants across 34 states and the District of Columbia. Our well-known banners include Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, ACME, Shaw's, Tom Thumb, United Supermarkets, United Express, Randalls, Albertson's Market, Pavilions, Star Markets, Market Street, Carrs, Haggen, Lucky, Amigos, Andronico's Community Markets, King's, Balducci's, and Albertson's Market Street.

Our vision is to be a retail leader admired for national strength with deep local roots, offering an easy, fun, friendly, and inspiring experience, no matter how customers choose to shop with us. We celebrate the rich diversity of the communities we serve, and strive to create a workplace where everyone has equal access to opportunities and resources, and can fully contribute to their and our company's success.

Bring your flavor

Building the future of food and well-being starts with you. Join our team and bring your best self to the table.

Disclaimer

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature of work performed by the employees assigned to this job and are not the official job description for the position. All employees must comply with Company, Division, and Store policies and applicable laws. The responsibilities, duties, and skills of personnel may vary within store and/or from store to store and the official job description will be provided during the application process.

Albertsons is an Equal Opportunity Employer

This Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, or on any other basis prohibited by law. Consistent with applicable state and local law, the Company will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We endeavor to make this site accessible to any and all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact us at 1-(option #4).

About the Team

Pay Transparency:

Starting rates will be no less than the local minimum wage and may vary based on criteria such as location, experience, and qualifications. Candidates with unique qualifications may be considered for compensation above this range. Benefits may include medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance, sick pay, PTO/Vacation Pay or Flexible Time Off, paid holidays, bereavement pay, and retirement benefits (pension and/or 401k eligibility). [If applicable:] Associates in this position may be eligible for a quarterly bonus.