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About This Role
Analytica is seeking a mid-Level AI-ML Engineer to join our growing data and AI team and help design, build, and deploy production-grade AI solutions that make a real-world impact. In this role, you will work hands-on with modern Microsoft Azure services and AI/ML technologies to turn complex data into actionable intelligence. You’ll collaborate closely with data engineers, analysts, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable, secure, and responsible AI solutions that move from experimentation into daily operations.
This is an excellent opportunity for an engineer who enjoys working across the full AI lifecycle using a reusable software development approach across rom data preparation and model development to using software engineering principles to deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement—while growing their expertise in cloud-native AI and MLOps practices.
Analytica has been recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest-growing 250 businesses in the US for 3 years. We work with U.S. government clients in health, civilian, and national security missions to build better technology products that impact our day-to-day lives. The company offers competitive compensation with opportunities for bonuses, employer-paid health care, training and development funds, and 401k match.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build, maintain, and optimize Azure-based data pipelines and workflows using Azure Data Factory, ADLS Gen2, Synapse Analytics, Azure SQL, Python, and SQL.
- Support batch and near–real-time data ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and aggregation to deliver analytics- and reporting-ready datasets.
- Implement data quality checks, schema management, and validation to ensure reliable, trusted, and well-documented data.
- Build secure data pipelines, integrate structured/unstructured data, and support NLP/ML workloads.
- Configure, monitor, and enhance enterprise AI capabilities across Azure and other approved platforms.
- Ensure compliance with Federal architecture standards, EA guidelines, and security controls.
- Produce architecture artifacts, test plans, security documentation, and operational runbooks per sprint requirements.
- Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, troubleshooting, and performance tuning to ensure reliable data operations.
- Work within Agile teams, collaborating closely with senior engineers, analysts, and stakeholders to deliver well-defined data requirements.
Required Experience & Qualifications:
- Us Citizen with the ability to secure public trust clearance
- 3+ years of hands-on experience developing and deploying AI/ML solutions in production environments.
- Strong proficiency in Python, including data analysis and ML libraries (e.g., Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow).
- Solid understanding of machine learning concepts, model selection, training, validation, and evaluation techniques.
- Experience working with Microsoft Azure services for data and AI workloads, such as
- Azure Machine Learning
- Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS Gen2)
- Azure Synapse Analytics (SQL and/or Spark)
- Azure Data Factory
- Working knowledge of MLOps concepts, including CI/CD pipelines, version control, and model lifecycle management.
- Experience collaborating in Agile development environments and using modern DevOps tools (e.g., Azure DevOps, GitHub).
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
Desired / Preferred Experience:
- Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate
- Experience with Copilot Studio or AI agent development, including orchestration and integration with APIs and data sources.
- Familiarity with feature stores, vector databases, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) patterns.
- Exposure to event-driven or streaming architectures (e.g., Azure Event Hubs).
- Knowledge of responsible AI practices, including fairness, explainability, model governance, and security considerations.
- Experience working in regulated or mission-driven environments.
- Azure certifications related to AI, data engineering, or cloud architecture.
Analytica LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all individuals, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. As a federal contractor, we comply with the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) and take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment qualified protected veterans. We ensure that all employment decisions are based on merit, qualifications, and business needs. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. Analytica LLC also provides reasonable accommodations to applicants and employees with disabilities, in accordance with applicable law.
To enhance efficiency, fairness, and accuracy, Analytica may use AI-assisted tools to support certain aspects of our hiring process.
- Application Review: AI tools may help identify skills and experiences relevant to the role.
- Interview Support: AI-powered notetaking tools may be used during interviews to document discussions and summarize key points.
These tools are used to assist our team. All hiring decisions are made by Analytica recruiters and hiring managers.
By submitting an application, you acknowledge that AI-assisted tools may be used to support parts of the application and interview process.
When receiving email communication from Analytica, please ensure that the email domain is analytica.net to verify its authenticity.
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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 9,653 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At Analytica, 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 $212,000 based on 11,857 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,400. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,230. The 90th percentile reaches $319,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($253,100) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $110,408; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $228,700; Director: $272,275; VP: $235,000.
Analytica AI Hiring
Analytica has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, MLOps Engineer. Based in Bethesda, MD, US.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 6% (568 positions) offer remote work, while 9,010 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (2,878 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,413 roles, $264,500 median); Los Angeles (1,340 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 9,653 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 193 entry-level, 4,500 mid-level, 3,455 senior, and 1,505 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (568 positions). The remaining 9,010 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,400. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,230. The 90th percentile reaches $319,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($253,100 median, 57 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 419 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 51 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 9,653 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (7,301), Data Scientist (441), AI Software Engineer (438). 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 (193) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,500) and senior (3,455) 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 1,505 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (568 positions), with 9,010 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 $213,400. Top-quartile roles start at $264,230, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,400. 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 $253,100 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 (1,605 postings), Aws (916 postings), Azure (724 postings), Rag (634 postings), Gcp (522 postings), Pytorch (495 postings), Kubernetes (384 postings), Claude (383 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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