A ship power machinery monitoring system can help ship personnel to keep abreast of the operating rules of ship power machinery and equipment and carry out initial fault diagnosis, which is important for improving economic and social benefits. The purpose of this paper is to study the system development and design of ship power machinery in the context of artificial intelligence. The importance of ship power machinery monitoring system and the relevant theory of virtual instrumentation technology are explained, and the feasibility of applying virtual instrumentation technology in ship power machinery monitoring system is analysed and discussed; on the basis of the study of ship power machinery system, the overall design scheme of ship energy machinery monitoring system is proposed in conjunction with the demand analysis of the monitoring system; finally, the parameter configuration and modification are used to determine the alarm scheme of the monitoring system is verified that the design method can improve the rationality of the monitoring system design and can meet the requirements of the system designer, system user and system administrator as far as possible.