We've made a lot of progress since opening the doors in 1942, but one thing has never changed - our commitment to serve, heal, lead, educate, and innovate. We believe that every award earned, every record broken and every patient helped is because of the dedicated employees who fill our hallways.

At Ochsner, whether you work with patients every day or support those who do, you are making a difference and that matters. Come make a difference at Ochsner Health and discover your future today!

The Agent Engineer is responsible for designing, building, and continuously improving Ochsner’s AI voice and chat agents. Working at the intersection of healthcare operations, frontier AI, and enterprise systems integration, this role closes the gap between what large language models can do and what Ochsner’s patients and staff actually need. The Agent Engineer serves as a technical leader and trusted advisor across the iO, Epic, and broader IS teams, driving the creation, maturation, and implementation of AI-powered solutions that improve efficiency, clinical outcomes, and financial performance.

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential duties.

This job description is a summary of the primary duties and responsibilities of the job and position. It is not intended to be a comprehensive or all-inclusive listing of duties and responsibilities. Contents are subject to change at the company's discretion.

Education

Required - Bachelor’s degree.

Preferred - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, or a related field of science.

Work Experience

Required - None.

Preferred - 5 years of experience in healthcare IT, Epic systems, or enterprise AI/ML platforms.

Certifications

Preferred - Epic certification in at least one clinical application.

Knowledge Skills and Abilities (KSAs)

Software programming skills in multiple languages.
Effective verbal and written communication skills and ability to present information clearly and professionally.
Strong interpersonal skills.
Exceptional critical thinking skills and ability to formulate solutions to complex problems.
Ability to look at problems in unconventional ways, generate new and useful ideas, analyze which ideas are worth pursuing and which are not, and articulate new ideas to others and convince others that ideas are worth pursuing.
Ability to tolerate ambiguity, overcome obstacles, and take reasonable risks.
Ability to be self motivated, solve problems, and take 100% responsibility for his/her actions.
Ability to work under stressful situations with frequent interruptions and changes in priorities.
Ability to work variable hours, including nights, evenings and weekends and occasional out of town travel.

Preferred

Hands-on experience with large language models (LLMs) and generative AI platforms (e.g., Google Gemini, OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, open-source models via Hugging Face).

Experience with prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agentic AI design patterns (tool use, multi-turn reasoning, function calling).

Familiarity with voice AI platforms and telephony integration (e.g.,Cisco,Eleven Labsor similar).

Experience with healthcare interoperability standards (HL7 FHIR, Epic APIs, CDS Hooks).

Knowledge of healthcare compliance frameworks including HIPAA, patient consent management, and clinical data governance.

Experience with MLOps and AI observability tools for monitoring agent performance, latency, and safety in production (e.g., LangSmith, Weights & Biases, Datadog).

Familiarity with conversation design best practices, dialog management frameworks, and natural language understanding (NLU) evaluation.

Experience building CI/CD pipelines for AI agent deployment, including automated testing, regression suites, and canary release strategies.

Understanding of contact center operations and workforce management as they relate to AI-assisted call handling and escalation.

Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and containerized deployment (Docker, Kubernetes).

Prior experience in a healthcare system, health plan, or health-tech startup environment.

Job Duties

Design and build production-grade AI agents across voice and chat channels, including conversation flow, tool orchestration, and safe escalation logic.

Own deep integrations with Ochsner’s core clinical and operational systems, enabling agents to take real action — not just answer questions.

Author and iterate on agent behavior, routing logic, and prompt design grounded in Ochsner workflows and compliance requirements.

Stress-test and refine agents against real-world patient interactions, continuously improving resolution rates and experience quality.

Partner with clinical operations, compliance, and IT to ensure agents meet regulatory, consent, and audit requirements.

Perform in-depth analysis of business processes/functions and associated technologies to identify AI automation opportunities.

Maintain and enhance professional competencies in AI/ML, healthcare IT, and industry best practices.

Mentor and provide technical guidance to the Epic team, AI engineering peers, and other areas of the IS department.

Perform other related duties as required.

The above statements describe the general nature and level of work only. They are not an exhaustive list of all required responsibilities, duties, and skills. Other duties may be added, or this description amended at any time.

Remains knowledgeable on current federal, state and local laws, accreditation standards or regulatory agency requirements that apply to the assigned area of responsibility and ensures compliance with all such laws, regulations and standards.

This employer maintains and complies with its Compliance & Privacy Program and Standards of Conduct, including the immediate reporting of any known or suspected unethical or questionable behaviors or conduct; patient/employee safety, patient privacy, and/or other compliance-related concerns.

The employer is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Physical and Environmental Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Light Work - Exerting up to 20 pounds of force occasionally, and/or up to 10 pounds of force frequently, and/or a negligible amount of force constantly (Constantly: activity or condition exists 2/3 or more of the time) to move objects. Physical demand requirements are in excess of those for Sedentary Work. Even though the weight lifted may be only a negligible amount, a job should be rated Light Work: (1) when it requires walking or standing to a significant degree; or (2) when it requires sitting most of the time but entails pushing and/or pulling of arm or leg controls; and/or (3) when the job requires working at a production rate pace entailing the constant pushing and/or pulling of materials even though the weight of those materials is negligible. NOTE: The constant stress and strain of maintaining a production rate pace, especially in an industrial setting, can be and is physically demanding of a worker even though the amount of force exerted is negligible.

Normal routine involves no exposure to blood, body fluid or tissue and as part of their employment, incumbents are not called upon to perform or assist in emergency care or first aid.

The incumbent has no occupational risk for exposure to communicable diseases.

Because the incumbent works within a healthcare setting, there may be occupational risk for exposure to hazardous medications or hazardous waste within the environment through receipt, transport, storage, preparation, dispensing, administration, cleaning and/or disposal of contaminated waste. The risk level of exposure may increase depending on the essential job duties of the role.

Are you ready to make a difference? Apply Today!

Ochsner Health does not consider an individual an applicant until they have formally applied to the open position on this careers website.

Please refer to the job description to determine whether the position you are interested in is remote or on-site. Individuals who reside in and will work from the following areas are not eligible for remote work position: Colorado, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Washington, and Washington D.C.

Ochsner Health endeavors to make our site accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website, or if you need an accommodation to complete the application process, please contact our HR Employee Solution Center at 504-842-4748 (select option 1) or careers@ochsner.org. This contact information is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.

Ochsner is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any legally protected class, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.

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