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About This Role
DESCRIPTION
Amazon Web Services (AWS) helps organizations of all sizes modernize critical applications, build secure cloud architectures, and use data and AI to create new business capabilities. Our customers range from startups to global enterprises and public-sector organizations across industries such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and telecommunications.
As a Senior Specialist Solutions Architect for Agentic AI and IBM i (AS/400) Modernization, you will help customers understand and transform complex IBM i application estates. You will build trusted relationships with senior business and technical leaders, assess modernization readiness, and define migration and transformation strategies that improve agility, resilience, and business value.
You will design secure, production-ready target architectures that combine cloud infrastructure, modern application and data services, and governed agentic AI. You will use AI-assisted modernization tools to analyze IBM i applications, extract business logic, generate or refactor code, automate testing, and validate functional equivalence with human oversight. You will help customers determine which functions should remain deterministic, which should become composable services, and which business processes can be reimagined through agentic workflows.
You will lead the specialist technical relationship, advising customers on security, cost, performance, reliability, operational readiness, and phased coexistence with existing systems. You will also represent the voice of the customer to AWS product and engineering organizations, collaborate with account teams, AWS Professional Services, and partners, and turn engagement insights into reusable modernization patterns and guidance.
Key job responsibilities
In this role, you will connect deep IBM i (AS/400) expertise with cloud and agentic AI technologies to create practical modernization solutions for customers. You will:
- Serve as a senior technical authority for IBM i modernization and build trusted relationships with customer executives, architects, and engineering teams.
- Lead discovery and architecture workshops to assess IBM i applications, dependencies, data, business rules, and operational requirements.
- Design secure cloud-native and agentic AI target architectures that separate deterministic business logic, composable services, and reasoning-based workflows.
- Use AI-assisted modernization tools to extract requirements and business logic, generate or refactor code, automate testing, and validate functional equivalence with human oversight.
- Advise customers on migration and modernization options, including phased coexistence, data integration, security, resilience, performance, cost, and operational readiness.
- Work with AWS product and engineering organizations to translate customer requirements into actionable feedback and validate new capabilities.
- Collaborate with Business Development, AWS Professional Services, account teams, and partners to guide customers from assessment through validated proof points and production readiness.
- Create and share reference architectures, technical guidance, code samples, white papers, blog posts, workshops, and other reusable field content.
- Educate customers, partners, and technical communities through workshops, user groups, conferences, online content, and public speaking.
This role is part of the AWS Worldwide Specialist Organization and works across sales, services, product, and partner organizations to accelerate successful customer modernization outcomes.
About the team
About AWS
Diverse Experiences
AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.
Why AWS?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.
Inclusive Team Culture
Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness.
Mentorship & Career Growth
We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.
Work/Life Balance
We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 6+ years of IT development or implementation/consulting in the software or Internet industries experience
- 5+ years of working with Enterprise Application Modernization and Migration technologies, including, but not limited to, Mainframe, Serverless, Containers, or Cloud Operations experience
- Experience or certifications in API design, cloud architecture/deployment, service-oriented architecture, mobile development, performance optimization, databases design and related fields
- Experience communicating complex information and solutions to senior stakeholders and influencing decisions
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience leveraging AI (Artificial Intelligence) agents for security review automation, spec-driven development practices, or adversarial red teaming
- Experience modernizing IBM i (AS/400) workloads on AWS or another cloud platform, including hybrid coexistence, data migration, integration, and production-readiness planning.
- Advanced knowledge of IBM i architecture, including ILE concepts, modules and service programs, physical and logical files, display and printer files, job processing, security, and runtime overrides.
- Experience using AI-assisted modernization tools for business-rule extraction, requirements generation, code transformation, automated testing, and functional validation.
- Experience creating reference architectures, technical guidance, demonstrations, workshops, or public technical content.
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, GA, Atlanta - 153,600.00 - 207,800.00 USD annually
USA, NY, New York - 169,000.00 - 228,600.00 USD annually
USA, TX, Austin - 153,600.00 - 207,800.00 USD annually
USA, TX, Dallas - 153,600.00 - 207,800.00 USD annually
USA, VA, Herndon - 153,600.00 - 207,800.00 USD annually
Salary Context
This $153K-$207K range is above 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 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 $211,950 based on 13,048 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $229,300. This role's midpoint ($180K) sits 15% below the category median. Disclosed range: $153K to $207K.
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.
Amazon Web Services AI Hiring
Amazon Web Services has 64 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Product Manager, Research Scientist, AI Software Engineer. Positions span New York, NY, US, San Francisco, CA, US, Cupertino, CA, US. Compensation range: $160K - $299K.
Location Context
AI roles in New York pay a median of $221,000 across 3,078 tracked positions. That's 4% 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 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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