Senior AI & Automation Engineer

$132K - $161K Chicago, IL, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

ClaudeGeminiOpenaiPythonWorkatoWorkato Ipaas

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

WHAT IS BOX?

Box (NYSE:BOX) is the leader in Intelligent Content Management. Our platform enables organizations to fuel collaboration, manage the entire content lifecycle, secure critical content, and transform business workflows with enterprise AI. We help companies thrive in the new AI-first era of business. Founded in 2005, Box simplifies work for leading global organizations, including JLL, Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide. Box is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

By joining Box, you will have the unique opportunity to continue driving our platform forward. Content powers how we work. It's the billions of files and information flowing across teams, departments, and key business processes every single day: contracts, invoices, employee records, financials, product specs, marketing assets, and more. Our mission is to bring intelligence to the world of content management and empower our customers to completely transform workflows across their organizations. With the combination of AI and enterprise content, the opportunity has never been greater to transform how the world works together and at Box you will be on the front lines of this massive shift.

WHY BOX NEEDS YOU

The Senior Engineer, AI and Automation owns and advances Corporate IT's enterprise AI, custom-application, and automation ecosystem. This hands-on role turns ambiguous business needs into secure, scalable, and maintainable production solutions across code, APIs, low-code platforms, identity systems, and SaaS applications.

Working closely with IT, Security, People, Legal, and business teams, you will improve the employee experience, strengthen security and compliance, reduce operational toil, and responsibly scale AI and automation across the company.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

  • You will architect, build, operate, and continuously improve AI-enabled solutions, custom applications, integrations, and automations that serve the enterprise.
  • You will administer approved enterprise AI platforms and define practical use cases, governance, adoption patterns, and enablement for safe and effective use.
  • You will evaluate emerging AI capabilities for business value, security, privacy, data handling, reliability, and compliance.
  • You will maintain and modernize the existing PHP/Laravel application portfolio and build new internal applications and services using best-fit technologies.
  • You will develop modular, observable, secure, and testable automations using tools such as Okta Workflows, Workato, Python, PHP, Go, and APIs.
  • You will automate Corporate IT processes — including user lifecycle and access workflows, compliance evidence, security controls, and service delivery — partnering with Identity, Security, and IT Support to ensure least privilege, auditability, and sound change management.
  • You will establish engineering standards for source control, code review, testing, releases, documentation, monitoring, alerting, secrets management, and incident response.
  • You will participate in our on-call rotation, available at all times while on-call to help respond to and triage any issues that arise.

WHO YOU ARE

We are an AI-first company. This means you approach your work with a growth mindset and find ways to leverage AI to help make faster, smarter decisions that will 10X your impact at Box.

  • You hold a degree in a relevant technical field or have equivalent practical experience, plus 6+ years in software, automation, or IT platform engineering.
  • You have proven ability to independently design, deliver, and operate secure, maintainable solutions in an enterprise production environment.
  • You bring hands-on experience building web applications, APIs, integrations, and automations, with proficiency in at least one modern programming language.
  • You have working knowledge of REST APIs, webhooks, OAuth/OIDC, SaaS integration, identity lifecycle management, access controls, and secure application practices.
  • You demonstrate strong technical judgment, communication, documentation, and stakeholder-management skills in a geographically distributed environment.
  • You have experience administering or supporting enterprise AI platforms such as Gemini Enterprise, Claude, OpenAI, or Microsoft Copilot, including AI governance, safe-use guidance, and evaluation. (Preferred)

Box lives its values, with community and in-person collaboration being a core part of our culture. Boxers are expected to work from their assigned office a minimum of 3 days per week.Your Recruiter will share more about how we work and company culture during the hiring process.

At Box, we believe unique and diverse experiences benefit our culture, our products, our customers, our company, and our world. We aim to recruit a passionate, high-performing workforce that reflects the world we live in.If you are head-over-heels about this role but unsure if you meet all the requirements, we encourage you to apply!

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, and any other protected ground of discrimination under applicable human rights legislation. Box strives to respect the dignity and ‎‎independence of people with disabilities and is committed to giving them the same ‎‎opportunity to succeed as all other employees. Inclusiveness is core to our culture at Box, and we strive to ensure you get the most from your interview experience.

Box makes reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please complete this form. Reasonable accommodations may include scheduling adjustments, document dictation and beyond.

Notice to applicants in Los Angeles: Box, Inc and its related branches will consider for employment, qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the Los Angeles Fair Chair Ordinance. The Fair Chance Ordinance is provided here.

Notice to applicants in San Francisco: Box, Inc and its related branches will consider for employment, qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the San Francisco Fair Chair Ordinance. The Fair Chance Ordinance is provided here.

For details on how we protect your information when you apply, please see our Personnel Privacy Notice. If you are a California-resident, please read our California Applicant & Candidate Privacy Notice here.

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Salary Context

This $132K-$161K range is below the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $175K across 1356 roles with salary data).

View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Company Box
Title Senior AI & Automation Engineer
Location Chicago, IL, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $132K - $161K
Remote No

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 8,943 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 75% of the market. At Box, 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

Claude (4% of roles) Gemini (2% of roles) Openai (3% of roles) Python (16% of roles) Workato Workato Ipaas

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 11,866 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $228,700. This role's midpoint ($147K) sits 31% below the category median. Disclosed range: $132K to $161K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. 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: $272,250; VP: $235,000.

Box AI Hiring

Box has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Chicago, IL, US. Compensation range: $161K - $237K.

Location Context

AI roles in Chicago pay a median of $194,700 across 390 tracked positions. That's 9% below 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 8,943 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 175 entry-level, 4,132 mid-level, 3,268 senior, and 1,368 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (521 positions). The remaining 8,351 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. 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 8,943 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,739), AI Product Manager (403), AI Software Engineer (402). 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 (175) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,132) and senior (3,268) 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 1,368 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (521 positions), with 8,351 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 $213,380. Top-quartile roles start at $264,148, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,310. 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 (1,422 postings), Aws (808 postings), Azure (638 postings), Rag (555 postings), Gcp (457 postings), Pytorch (433 postings), Claude (341 postings), Kubernetes (337 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

Based on 11,866 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $212,000. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
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.
About 6% of the 8,943 AI roles we track offer remote work. Remote availability varies by company and seniority level, with senior and leadership roles more likely to offer location flexibility.
Box is among the companies actively hiring for AI and ML talent. Check our company profiles for detailed breakdowns of open roles, salary ranges, and hiring trends.
Common next steps from AI/ML Engineer positions include ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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