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About This Role
We Are
Accenture Security helps organizations prepare, protect, detect, respond, and recover along with all points of the security lifecycle. Cybersecurity challenges are different for every business in every industry. Leveraging our global resources and advanced technologies, we create integrated, turnkey solutions tailored to our client's needs across their entire value chain. Whether we’re defending against known cyberattacks, detecting and responding to the unknown, or running an entire security operations center, we will help companies build cyber resilience to grow with confidence. Our team of the security sector’s brightest people uses the coolest tech to out-hack the hackers and help clients build resilience from within. We blend risk strategy, digital identity, cyber defense, application security, and managed service solutions to rethink the entire security lifecycle.
Do you have the deep functional and technical experience to help implement security solutions that align with our clients’ business objectives? Do you have the expertise to design and deliver solutions for establishing system user's credentials, and processes for applying those credentials to access enterprise systems and applications?
You Are
This is not a security consulting role. It is not a compliance advisory position. It is not a pen test engagement. A Cybersecurity Forward Deployed Engineer is a production engineer who works embedded inside a client’s enterprise—shoulder to shoulder with their security and engineering teams—to make AI systems secure, governed, and resilient in real, complex organizational environments. You own outcomes: reduced attack surface, production-safe AI deployments, measurable security posture improvement.
Agentic coding is not a supporting skill for this role—it is the primary method of delivery. You use Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot as your standard operating environment. You build security tooling, detection systems, threat models, and governance frameworks with AI co-authoring the code alongside you. Engineers who treat AI tools as optional accelerators are not the profile. Engineers who cannot deliver without them are.
The Work
Cybersecurity FDEs operate as part of Accenture’s Reinvention Delivery Engine (RDE) Pod: a small, persistent, outcome-oriented team aligned to a client’s business domain or AI programme. The pod operates in 90-day delivery cycles, owns end-to-end outcomes across build, deploy, and optimize, and embeds directly inside the client’s technology organization.
Key Responsibilities
- Support AI security architecture and threat modeling for production agentic deployments across complex multi-stakeholder client environments—LLM systems, multi-agent pipelines, RAG architectures, and MLOps infrastructure—owning the full security design from assessment through hardened deployment
- Deliver hands-on security engineering using agentic coding tools as the primary build environment: build AI-powered detection systems, automated threat response tooling, security assessment frameworks, and governance automation using Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot in daily delivery practice
- Support AI-specific threat surface management at programme scale: OWASP LLM Top 10 controls, prompt injection hardening, model extraction prevention, adversarial input defences, and AI supply chain security across concurrent client workstreams
- Architect and govern AI security controls across the enterprise stack: identity and access for AI systems, data pipeline security, model serving security, and multi-system integration risk across cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
- Assist with AI governance framework implementation: EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, and model risk management applied to live production systems, not theoretical compliance exercises
- Shape AI reinvention security strategy for client CISO and CTO: build risk-adjusted investment cases, security architecture roadmaps, and AI governance operating models aligned to commercial outcomes
- Define and publish reusable security patterns, playbooks, and accelerators that scale across multiple client engagements and grow the Secure AI practice
- Contribute and support architecture design sessions, threat modeling workshops, and code-with sessions with client engineering and security leadership teams
Travel may be required for this role. The amount of travel will vary from 0 to 100% depending on business need and client requirements.
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Here's what you need
- Minimum of 3 years of engineering experience in production environments with a cybersecurity discipline depth in at least one area: AppSec, SecOps / detection engineering, cloud security, IAM, offensive security / penetration testing, or GRC
- Minimum 1 year of hands-on experience designing and deploying agentic AI solutions in a production environment—non-negotiable; theoretical familiarity does not qualify
- Minimum 3 years working with Cloud platform security fundamentals across at least one provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP): IAM, network security, secrets management, and AI service security configurations
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent (minimum 12 years) work experience. (If Associate’s Degree, must have minimum 6 years work experience
Professional Skills Requirements
- Proven ability to communicate security risk in business terms: can translate threat exposure into risk-adjusted investment rationale a CISO or CFO would act on
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Compensation at Accenture varies depending on a wide array of factors, which may include but are not limited to the specific office location, role, skill set, and level of experience. As required by local law, Accenture provides a reasonable range of compensation for roles that may be hired as set forth below. We anticipate this job posting will be posted until 11/26/2026. Accenture offers a market competitive suite of benefits including medical, dental, vision, life, and long-term disability coverage, a 401(k) plan, bonus opportunities, paid holidays, and paid time off. See more information on our benefits here:
U.S. Employee Benefits | Accenture
Role Location Annual Salary Range California $70,350 to $235,100 Colorado $63,800 to $203,100 Connecticut $63,800 to $203,100 District of Columbia $68,000 to $216,300 Illinois $59,100 to $203,100 Maine $54,400 to $173,100 Maryland $63,800 to $203,100 Massachusetts $63,800 to $216,300 Minnesota $63,800 to $203,100 New York $66,300 to $235,100 New Jersey $68,000 to $235,100 Ohio $59,100 to $188,100 Virginia $59,100 to $216,300 Washington $80,200 to $216,300Requesting an Accommodation
Accenture is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for persons with disabilities or religious observances, including reasonable accommodation when needed. If you are hired by Accenture and require accommodation to perform the essential functions of your role, you will be asked to participate in our reasonable accommodation process. Accommodations made to facilitate the recruiting process are not a guarantee of future or continued accommodations once hired.
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Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
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Candidates who are currently employed by a client of Accenture or an affiliated Accenture business may not be eligible for consideration.
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Salary Context
This $59K-$235K range is below the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $178K across 1623 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 9,079 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At Accenture, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $211,950 based on 13,048 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200. This role's midpoint ($147K) sits 31% below the category median. Disclosed range: $59K to $235K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($256,000) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $111,000; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $229,300; Director: $272,300; VP: $235,830.
Accenture AI Hiring
Accenture has 32 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Safety, AI Software Engineer, Prompt Engineer. Positions span Morristown, NJ, US, Morristown, NJ, Charlotte, NC, US. Compensation range: $135K - $366K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 6% (531 positions) offer remote work, while 8,478 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (3,078 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,646 roles, $261,000 median); Los Angeles (1,486 roles, $210,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 9,079 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 106 entry-level, 4,384 mid-level, 3,343 senior, and 1,246 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (531 positions). The remaining 8,478 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($256,000 median, 66 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 457 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 55 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 9,079 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,862), AI Product Manager (453), AI Software Engineer (451). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (106) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,384) and senior (3,343) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,246 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (531 positions), with 8,478 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,000. Top-quartile roles start at $263,911, and the 90th percentile reaches $318,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $256,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $141,440. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,649 postings), Aws (898 postings), Azure (723 postings), Rag (671 postings), Gcp (536 postings), Pytorch (434 postings), Claude (410 postings), Kubernetes (406 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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