AI Developer

Charlotte, NC, US Mid Level AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

Claude

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

Company Description

CapTech is a national IT management consulting firm that bridges the gap between business and technology. We partner with some of the world's most successful companies to design, develop, and manage technical and digital solutions that delight customers, drive insights, and meet strategic objectives.

At CapTech, you’ll experience a flat organizational structure based upon a culture of mutual respect. Here, your career path isn’t set in stone, and you have unlimited potential for growth and the resources to help you achieve your career goals. If you are creative, technically insightful, driven–and have a passion for the work that we do, then you might be a future CapTecher.

For over five years, we have been in the Top 10 of Consulting Magazine’s Best Firms to Work For, including #2 for IT Firms and #5 for Work/Life Balance. We are also recognized by Vault.com’s Top 50 Consulting Firms and have been on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies for over 10 years

Job Description AI Developer: AI Program Team

About the team:

The AI Program Team has a two-part mission: help clients solve their most pressing problems with AI, and make CapTech itself more innovative. The team works across pre-sales strategy, rapid demos and prototypes, client enablement and hands-on delivery. It has supported more than 80 opportunities across all seven industries CapTech serves.

The role:

You'll be a hands-on builder who turns AI ideas into working demos quickly, shows their business value to CapTech's top clients and leaders, and helps the rest of the firm build better with AI.

What you'll do

  • Build rapid demos and prototypes for client pursuits, from tailored industry proofs of concept to reusable demos, and publish them to Showcase so the firm can use them again.
  • Present and explain your work to executives at CapTech and at clients, connecting what you built to business outcomes.
  • Help build and run the platform: contribute to Showcase and related internal tools, including new features, deployments and security.
  • Lead internal enablement: AI in Action sessions, showcases of feature development and deployment, and coaching colleagues on getting the most from Claude and other agentic coding tools.
  • Keep experimenting: evaluate new models and tools as they appear, and share what works.

Qualifications Who you are

  • A strong software developer who ships working solutions fast.
  • Already fluent in AI development practices and agentic coding tools, or eager to become fluent quickly.
  • Confident and clear in front of executives.
  • Able to design articulate and clear front ends using agentic development.
  • An independent thinker, self-starter and creative problem solver.
  • Comfortable with constant change, and willing to try new things all the time.

Additional Information

We want everyone at CapTech to be able to envision a lasting and rewarding career here, which is why we offer a variety of career paths based on your skills and passions. You decide where and how you want to develop, and we help get you there with customizable career progression and a comprehensive benefits package to support you along the way. Alongside our suite of traditional benefits encompassing generous PTO, health coverage, disability insurance, paid family leave and more, we’ve launched extended benefits to help meet our employees’ needs.

  • CapFlex – Employee-first mentality that supports a hybrid workforce and empowers daily flexibility while servicing our clients
  • Learning & Development – Programs offering certification and tuition support, digital on-demand learning courses, mentorship, and skill development paths
  • Modern Health –A mental health and well-being platform that provides 1:1 care, group support sessions, and self-serve resources to support employees and their families through life’s ups and downs
  • Carrot Fertility –Inclusive fertility and family-forming coverage for all paths to parenthood – including adoption, surrogacy, fertility treatments, pregnancy, and more – and opportunities for employer-sponsored funds to help pay for care
  • Fringe –A company paid stipend program for personalized lifestyle benefits, allowing employees to choose benefits that matter most to them – ranging from vendors like Netflix, Spotify, and GrubHub to services like student loan repayment, travel, fitness, and more
  • Employee Resource Groups – Employee-led committees that embrace and incorporate diversity and inclusion into our day-to-day operations
  • Philanthropic Partnerships – Opportunities to engage in partnerships and pro-bono projects that support our communities.
  • 401(k) Matching – Generous matching and no vesting period to help you continue to build financial wellness

CapTech is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering a culture of equality, inclusion and fairness — each foundational to our core values. We strive to create a diverse environment where each employee is encouraged to bring their unique ideas, backgrounds and experiences to the workplace. For more information about our Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging efforts, click HERE. As part of this commitment, CapTech will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact Laura Massa directly via email [email protected].

At this time, CapTech cannot transfer nor sponsor a work visa for this position. Applicants must be authorized to work directly for any employer in the United States without visa sponsorship.

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Role Details

Title AI Developer
Location Charlotte, NC, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Mid Level
Salary Not disclosed
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 9,079 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At CapTech Consulting, 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 (5% of roles)

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. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200.

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.

CapTech Consulting AI Hiring

CapTech Consulting has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Charlotte, NC, US.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 6% (531 positions) offer remote work, while 8,478 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (3,078 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,646 roles, $261,000 median); Los Angeles (1,486 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 9,079 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

Based on 13,048 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $211,950. 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 9,079 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.
CapTech Consulting 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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