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Summary
The HR Business Partner (HRBP) serves as the primary human resources partner for assigned subsidiaries, departments, contracts, or business units across Ahtna, Incorporated and its family of companies. The HRBP provides guidance and support to employees and leaders in the areas of employee relations, performance management, talent acquisition, organizational development, workforce planning, compensation, compliance, and policy administration.
The position is structured as a progressive series designed to recognize increasing levels of HR knowledge, independent judgment, business partnership, and strategic influence. As the HRBP advances through the levels, responsibilities expand from providing operational HR support and employee services to serving as a trusted advisor to leadership and driving workforce strategies that support organizational objectives.
The salary range for this position is dependent upon the level:
Level 1: $30\.96\-$37\.46 per hour
Level II: $ 74,498\-$90,888 per year
Level III: $92,707\-$114,493 per year
This position comes with a competitive and comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, life insurance, a 401(k) plan with a 3% match, paid time off (PTO), and company\-paid holidays.
This position will be posted for 5 days or until filled.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities (including but not limited to)
HR Business Partner I
- Serves as a primary HR contact for assigned client groups and provides guidance on policies, procedures, and employment practices.
- Supports employee lifecycle activities including recruitment, onboarding, leave administration, employee relations, and offboarding.
- Assists with employee relations matters, investigations, and corrective actions, escalating complex issues as appropriate.
- Maintains employee records and supports compliance with employment laws, company policies, and regulatory requirements.
- Coordinates routine employment\-related requests including verifications, unemployment claims, and reporting activities.
- Supports implementation of HR programs, training initiatives, and process improvements.
- Builds positive working relationships with employees and managers while promoting company values.
- Travels as needed to support operational and business requirements.
- Performs other duties as assigned.
HR Business Partner II
- Serves as the primary HR Business Partner for assigned subsidiaries, contracts, departments, or business units.
- Advises managers on employee relations, performance management, policy interpretation, workforce planning, and organizational effectiveness.
- Leads employee relations matters, investigations, corrective actions, and conflict resolution efforts.
- Partners with leadership on recruiting, talent development, succession planning, and retention strategies.
- Advises leaders regarding employment law compliance, contractual obligations, and organizational risk.
- Supports compensation reviews, organizational changes, contract transitions, and workforce initiatives.
- Analyzes workforce trends and recommends solutions to improve employee engagement and operational effectiveness.
- Participates in HR projects, policy development, and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Provides guidance and support to less experienced HR staff.
- Performs other duties as assigned.
HR Business Partner III
- Serves as a senior HR advisor and strategic partner to executive and operational leadership.
- Develops and implements workforce strategies that support organizational objectives and business growth.
- Leads complex employee relations matters, investigations, restructures, workforce reductions, and high\-risk employment actions.
- Provides strategic guidance on organizational design, succession planning, talent management, and leadership development.
- Serves as a subject matter expert on labor relations, regulatory compliance, and complex employment matters.
- Leads HR efforts associated with contract startups, reorganizations, acquisitions, and major workforce initiatives.
- Identifies workforce risks, trends, and opportunities and develops recommendations for leadership.
- Leads enterprise HR projects and mentors HR team members.
- Performs other duties as assigned.
Supervisory Responsibilities
HR Business Partner I
None.
HR Business Partner II
May provide guidance and mentorship to less experienced HR staff. No direct supervisory responsibilities.
HR Business Partner III
May provide functional leadership, mentorship, and project oversight to HR staff. Direct supervisory responsibilities may be assigned based on business need.
Qualifications
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.
Minimum Qualifications
*HR Business Partner I*
- Associate Degree in business administration or related discipline.
+ Experience may be substituted on a 1:1 basis.
- Three (3\) years of progressively responsible human resource or related experience that demonstrate ability to meet core competency requirements.
- Valid Driver’s License and clean driving record.
HR Business Partner II
- Bachelor’s Degree in business administration or related discipline.
+ Experience may be substituted on a 1:1 basis.
- Four (4\) years of progressively responsible human resource or related experience that demonstrate ability to meet core competency requirements.
- Valid Driver’s License and clean driving record.
HR Business Partner III
- Bachelor’s Degree in business administration or related discipline.
+ Experience may be substituted on a 1:1 basis.
- Seven (7\) years of progressively responsible human resource or related experience that demonstrate ability to meet core competency requirements.
- Valid Driver’s License and clean driving record.
Preferred Qualifications
- HR Certification such Professional in Human Resources (PHR) or Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), or SHRM Certified Professional (SHRM\-CP) or Senior Certified Professional (SHRM\-SCP).
- Experience in Deltek Costpoint Accounting system.
- Experience in UKG system.
- Experience and knowledge of Alaska Native cultures.
Shareholder Preference
Pursuant to applicable law, preference will be given to qualified Ahtna Native Corporation Shareholders, Descendants, and Spouses in all phases of employment.
Core Competencies
HR Business Partner I
The HR Business Partner I demonstrates proficiency in the following competencies:
- Customer Focus – Provides responsive and professional HR support while building positive working relationships with employees and managers.
- Communication – Communicates clearly, professionally, and effectively through verbal, written, and electronic methods.
- Attention to Detail – Completes work accurately, maintains confidentiality, and ensures compliance with established processes and requirements.
- Time Management – Effectively prioritizes work, manages competing responsibilities, and meets established deadlines.
- Learning Agility – Demonstrates a willingness to learn, accept feedback, and continuously develop HR knowledge and skills.
HR Business Partner II
The HR Business Partner II demonstrates proficiency in all HR Business Partner I competencies and the following additional competencies:
- Relationship Management – Develops trusted partnerships with managers and employees through responsive, credible, and solution\-oriented support.
- Employee Relations – Effectively addresses workplace concerns through coaching, conflict resolution, policy interpretation, and corrective action guidance.
- Problem Solving – Evaluates information, identifies root causes, and develops practical solutions that support both business and employee needs.
- Consultation – Provides informed recommendations and guidance to managers on workforce and employment\-related matters.
- Decision Making – Exercises sound judgment and makes timely decisions based on available information, policy, and business considerations.
HR Business Partner III
The HR Business Partner III demonstrates proficiency in all HR Business Partner I and II competencies and the following additional competencies:
- Strategic Agility – Understands organizational objectives and develops workforce strategies that support business performance and long\-term success.
- Business Acumen – Applies knowledge of the business, industry, and operational environment to HR recommendations and decisions.
- Organizational Effectiveness – Identifies organizational challenges and develops solutions that improve workforce performance and business outcomes.
- Executive Influence – Establishes credibility with senior leaders and positively influences decision\-making through strategic partnership and expertise.
- Change Leadership – Leads and supports organizational change initiatives while helping leaders and employees successfully navigate transitions.
Physical Demands
Frequent sitting, using hands/fingers, handling, reaching with hands and arms, talking, hearing, and seeing (up close, at a distance, along the periphery, with depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus), occasional walking or standing, occasional lifting of up to 10 pounds.
*Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.*
Work Environment
The work environment characteristics described in this job description are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential duties and responsibilities of this job. Work is performed in an office environment, may be subject to temperature and noise level changes.
Work Schedule: Monday – Friday 8:00 am p 5:pm or as business dictate
#### Experience
Required* 3 year(s): Level I • Associate Degree in business administration or related o Experience may be substituted on a 1:1 basis. • Three (3\) years of human resource or related experience Level II • Bachelor’s Degree in business administration or related o Experience may be substituted on a 1:1 basis. • Four (4\) years of human resource or related Level III • Bachelor’s Degree in business administration or related o Experience may be substituted on a 1:1 basis. • Seven years of human resource or related
#### Licenses \& Certifications
Required* Driver's License
Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws. For further information, please review the Know Your Rights (https://www.eeoc.gov/poster) notice from the Department of Labor.
Salary Context
This $62K-$76K range is in the lower quartile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 1841 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 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At Ahtna, Incorporated, 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 in Demand for This Role
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 $218,750 based on 3,817 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $200,000. This role's midpoint ($69K) sits 68% below the category median. Disclosed range: $62K to $76K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
Ahtna, Incorporated AI Hiring
Ahtna, Incorporated has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Anchorage, AK, US. Compensation range: $76K - $168K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 14% (508 positions) offer remote work, while 3,180 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,045 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (810 roles, $277,088 median); Los Angeles (397 roles, $215,000 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 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 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 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). 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 (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) 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 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 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 $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. 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 $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. 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 (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 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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