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About This Role
DESCRIPTION
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AI Engineers in AWS AI Engineering help customers build and use AI agents to transform how work gets done. You will design and productionize agentic systems using services like Amazon Bedrock and AgentCore, contribute to open\-source AI accelerators, and help customers adopt AI\-native software development practices.
The role splits roughly 50/50 between direct customer engagements and building leverage through reusable assets, open source, and thought leadership. In customer work, you will partner with software development teams to leverage AI coding tools like Kiro, Claude Code on Bedrock, and Codex on Bedrock. You'll work hands\-on to unblock adoption and ensure solutions are secure, reliable, and cost\-effective. In your building time, you will create reference implementations, contribute to open\-source projects, and develop content that enables the broader community. You will work closely with AWS service teams to close the loop between what customers need and what AWS builds.
This is a global role within the Solutions Architect organization. You will maintain deep relationships with AI service teams and collaborate with specialists across regions to stay current on capabilities and influence roadmaps.
Key job responsibilities
Roles and Responsibilities
- As a key member of the account team, partner with customers to ensure their long\-term success by helping them harness the power of AWS services to accelerate their business.
- Formulate and execute a cloud adoption strategy that delights our customers and builds strong relationships that lead to strategic revenue streams that exceed AWS objectives.
- Become a trusted advisor by gaining deep knowledge of AWS services, design patterns and best practices, and sharing that knowledge with clients, other SAs and the wider AWS builder community.
- Work with other SAs to develop reusable solutions to common business and architectural problems.
- Educate customers by leading workshops and hands\-on classes to demonstrate how to use AWS services.
- Network and build deep relationships with senior technical individuals within customer organizations to enable them to be cloud advocates.
- Author and contribute to AWS customer\-facing publications such as whitepapers, blog posts and open source projects, and speak at public events.
- Help hire, on\-board and train new SAs via mentorship and builder programs.
- Become an expert in driving AI coding tool adoption across software development teams, and have deep expertise across the entire software development lifecycle.
A day in the life
You might start your morning debugging a customer's agent that's hitting context limits, then spend the afternoon reviewing a pull request for an open source project. Later, build something with the latest model and coding agent releases to stay up\-to\-date through hands\-on building. Some days you're on\-site pair\-programming with a customer's engineering team; others you're preparing a talk for an upcoming conference. The work varies, but you'll always be deep with hands\-on building and direct customer impact.
About the team
AI Engineering is a global team within the Solutions Architect organization focused on helping customers build and use AI agents. We operate at the frontier of AI, bridging foundation models and production systems through direct customer engagements, open\-source accelerators, and close collaboration with AWS service teams. We split time between hands\-on customer work and creating assets that scale. The role combines engineering, advisory work, and product influence. We maintain high standards while operating with speed, and we stay grounded in customer outcomes. Built for tinkerers who ship production code and thrive in ambiguity.BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
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- 10\+ years of specific technology domain areas (e.g. software development, cloud computing, systems engineering, infrastructure, security, networking, data \& analytics) experience
- Experience developing technology solutions and evangelising end\-to\-end technology roadmaps that guide IT transformations toward cloud computing
- Experience communicating across technical and non\-technical audiences and at C\-level, including training, workshops, publications
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
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- Knowledge of distributed systems design and implementation or equivalent
- Knowledge of large scale automation and workflow management or equivalent
- Knowledge of database design and implementation or equivalent
- Knowledge of presentations and whiteboarding skills with a high degree of comfort speaking with internal and external executives, IT management, and developers
- Experience architecting, migrating, transforming or modernizing customer requirements to the cloud
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.
Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how\-we\-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.
The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign\-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life \& AD\&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.
USA, NY, New York \- 201,000\.00 \- 272,000\.00 USD annually
USA, WA, Seattle \- 182,800\.00 \- 247,300\.00 USD annually
Salary Context
This $182K-$272K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 2130 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 4,133 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 69% of the market. At Amazon Web Services, 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 $185,000 based on 13,200 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($227K) sits 23% above the category median. Disclosed range: $182K to $272K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,700. Top-quartile compensation starts at $254,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($274,200) and AI Engineering Manager ($268,700). By seniority level: Entry: $97,760; Mid: $165,778; Senior: $227,400; Director: $250,000; VP: $250,000.
Amazon Web Services AI Hiring
Amazon Web Services has 80 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, Research Scientist, AI Agent Developer, Data Scientist. Positions span New York, NY, US, Seattle, WA, US, Bellevue, WA, US. Compensation range: $177K - $299K.
Location Context
AI roles in New York pay a median of $211,000 across 2,760 tracked positions. That's 5% above the national 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 4,133 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 106 entry-level, 1,901 mid-level, 1,663 senior, and 463 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (583 positions). The remaining 3,532 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $200,700. Top-quartile compensation starts at $254,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($274,200 median, 57 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($268,700 median, 42 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 442 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 4,133 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,865), Data Scientist (339), AI Software Engineer (313). 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 (1,901) and senior (1,663) 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 463 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (583 positions), with 3,532 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 $200,700. Top-quartile roles start at $254,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $307,500. 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 $274,200 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 (2,128 postings), Aws (1,324 postings), Azure (1,003 postings), Rag (916 postings), Gcp (817 postings), Pytorch (655 postings), Prompt Engineering (639 postings), Claude (571 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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