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About This Role
About the Organization
ClimateWorks Foundation is a catalyst for accelerating climate progress, driving bold solutions that benefit people and the planet. We connect funders and implementing organizations worldwide to identify and scale transformative solutions across sectors and geographies, achieving faster, greater impact together. Since 2008, ClimateWorks has granted over $2 billion to more than 850 grantees across 50 countries, working with over 80 funders. We helped grow the field of climate philanthropy to where it stands today, establishing infrastructure, global networks, and momentum for continued growth. Through our Global Programs and Services, we equip philanthropy with global knowledge, networks, and solutions to drive climate progress.
- Scaling solutions: Our collaborative Global Programs — focused on solution areas including carbon dioxide removal, cooling, industry, transportation, and more — produce results that are bending the greenhouse gas emissions curve. From the U.S. to Europe, China, Brazil, and beyond, we collaborate with a diverse community of funders, NGOs, and climate leaders to accelerate just and equitable climate solutions.
- Guiding and supporting funders: Our Global Services provide funders with comprehensive resources to assess, build, evolve, and execute high\-impact climate\-giving strategies. Our Global Intelligence service equips funders and the climate community with climate insights to pinpoint opportunities for impact and philanthropic insights to help identify investment priorities. We facilitate Global Collaborations that enable funders to increase individual and collective impact. Our Global Grantmaking services enable funders to invest in climate solutions around the world.
- Fostering collaboration, exploration, and growth: Our collaborative approach and commitment to learning ensures that we continuously explore innovative ideas and emerging opportunities — all with the aim of scaling philanthropy\-supported initiatives to help end the climate crisis.
As experts in climate science, public policy, economic and social analysis, and strategic philanthropy, ClimateWorks’ staff understands the multi\-faceted challenges and opportunities of climate change. We are researchers, strategists, collaborators, and grantmakers who care passionately about our mission. For more information, please visit www.climateworks.org.
About our teams
Drive Electric is the campaign to accelerate the global transition to 100% clean electric transportation for people and goods, delivering massive benefits to the climate, health, and the economy. The campaign advances smart government policies to drive electric vehicle and infrastructure supply and demand; engages business leaders to ensure adequate investment in EV production and procurement; and supports diverse people\-powered coalitions working to advance a cleaner transportation future. This team sits within the Programs Team at ClimateWorks.
The Marketing and Communications department is working to build and safeguard ClimateWorks’ reputation, translate strategies into clear and compelling narratives, and mobilize funders and implementers worldwide to achieve faster, greater climate impact together. Program Marketing is the team of communications strategists within the Marketing and Communications department that is embedded across ClimateWorks' grantmaking programs — serving as trusted partners to program teams and as the connective tissue between program strategy and the full expertise the department offers. We translate strategy into clear and compelling narratives, amplify the work of grantees and partners, and help ClimateWorks show up with clarity and influence at the moments that count.
The Communications Manager will report jointly to both the Program Marketing and Drive Electric teams. You will join two fun, fast\-paced, and globally collaborative teams that are very passionate about solving the climate crisis.
Job Summary
The Communications Manager, Drive Electric Campaign, drives high\-impact communications strategies to elevate the Campaign’s work, accelerating the transition to 100% zero\-emission transportation everywhere. The Communications Manager will serve as a communications strategist for Drive Electric, ensuring messaging effectiveness, visibility, and deep collaboration with grantees, partners, and philanthropy.
This is a matrixed role. This position will report jointly to the Senior Associate Director of Program Marketing and the Associate Director of Strategic Communications for the Drive Electric Campaign.
Essential Tasks
Messaging, storytelling, and brand positioning:
- Serve as the brand communications lead for Drive Electric, building a deep relationship with the team and shaping their communications efforts, ensuring alignment with ClimateWorks organizational goals and workflows.
- Develop and lead an integrated marketing and communications strategy for the Drive Electric Campaign, including announcements, initiative and publication launches, and brand positioning for public audiences and stakeholder communications.
- Oversee and champion clear, consistent brand messaging that articulates Drive Electric’s goals, strategy, structure, and impact, translating technical information into a compelling and accessible voice.
- Cultivate and lead impact storytelling across communications channels, working with grantees, peer organizations, and internal colleagues to bring the Drive Electric Campaign story to life for a range of audiences and formats — from earned media to owned media content, including the campaign website, social media, board presentations and progress reports.
- Lead in strategizing and supporting thought leadership for Drive Electric staff, including events and speaking engagements, social media, media interviews, and other opportunities.
- Proactively identify and flag reputational and narrative risks, advising the Drive Electric team on sensitive communications decisions and ensuring appropriate review before launches or implementation.
Project management and collaborative leadership:
- Project manage deliverables for all communications engagements and products outlined in the communications plans, including storytelling content, email, reports, announcements, and initiative launches to engage target audiences.
- Manage and work closely with external contractors, including writers, graphic designers, web developers, and other communications specialists
- Collaborate with colleagues across Marketing \& Communications — including on media strategy, event strategy and execution, and donor communications — as well as the Partnerships team and external partners, to coordinate efforts and amplify messaging.
- Develop and strengthen tools, processes, and workflows to manage communications planning and execution across teams, including consistent use of project management systems like Asana to maintain visibility, accountability, and planning discipline.
- Evaluate engagement metrics across digital platforms, campaigns, and media to refine strategies and maximize impact.
Required QualificationsThe successful applicant will have the following minimum qualifications:
- 6\+ years relevant work experience with a 360 communications background, including brand management, messaging and content development, campaign communications, integrated media, and executive/board presentations.
- Excellent writing and editing skills with a proven ability to translate complex concepts into succinct, clear, accessible language for multiple audiences
- Demonstrated success working cross\-functionally, especially navigating and communicating priorities and processes between programs and communications teams
- Strong organizational and project management skills, attention to detail, and demonstrated ability to set priorities and complete tasks in a timely manner
- A commitment to a diverse, inclusive, and equitable work environment
- A passion for working to end the climate crisis in an equitable and just way
- Professional or lived experience engaging communities outside the U.S.; a global outlook and the sensibility to empathize with, and adjust to, different cultures.
- Ability and willingness to travel as needed, between 2\-4 times per year, including international travel opportunities.
Other desired qualifications include:
- Experience working in philanthropy, climate advocacy, or nonprofit sectors. Knowledge of the road transportation sector is a plus.
- A proactive approach to ideation and execution, with experience working under pressure and in a dynamic environment.
- Familiarity with Asana, Google Drive, Salesforce and the Account Engagement email system.
- Passion for environmental and social issues and commitment to the mission and values of ClimateWorks Foundation.
- Caring and generous attitude toward colleagues, grantees, and partners, and a commitment to supporting people to build careers and institutions.
- Commitment to a diverse, inclusive and equitable work environment.
Compensation
ClimateWorks offers an excellent benefits package and a competitive salary that is commensurate with experience (geographic differential applied based on location).
Salary Range (Bay Area / NYC): $105,000 \- $110,000 annually
Salary Range (Other US): $95,000 \- $105,000 annually
\*\*\* ClimateWorks strives to create an equitable culture of transparency and fairness.
Location
ClimateWorks Foundation is based in the San Francisco Financial District. This position is classified as U.S. Flexible and can work remotely within domestic U.S. time zones. This role will be expected to travel to the San Francisco Bay Area semi\-regularly and ideally located no farther than a 10\-hour flight. A geographic differential will be applied to compensation based on local cost of labor.
Commitment to Racial and Social Justice
At ClimateWorks Foundation, we are driven by our vision of creating a thriving planet for all living beings for generations to come. We aim to foster an inclusive workplace that values diverse lived experiences and emphasizes the voices of marginalized people — especially Black, Indigenous, and People of Color — who are most vulnerable to climate impacts, and whose voices, ideas, and leadership are crucial to winning the climate fight.
To ensure that we are making meaningful progress, we have made a set of diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments across all dimensions of our work to further our mission and realize our vision. For more information, please visit: Fostering Racial and Social Justice in Pursuit of our Mission
Equal Employment Opportunity
Equal employment opportunity and having a diverse staff are fundamental principles at ClimateWorks Foundation and as such we are committed to creating a diverse and multi\-cultural work environment. We strongly encourage and seek applications from women, people of color, and bilingual and bicultural individuals, as well as members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race (including traits historically associated with race), ethnicity, religion, color, sex (including childbirth, breast feeding, and related medical conditions), gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, uniform service member and veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, age, protected medical condition, genetic information, disability, or any other protected status in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and local laws.
This policy extends to all aspects of our employment practices including, but not limited to, recruiting, hiring, discipline, termination, promotions, transfers, compensation, benefits, training, leaves of absence, and other terms and conditions of employment.
ClimateWorks Foundation is committed to complying with all laws protecting qualified individuals with disabilities, as well as employees’ religious beliefs and practices. This policy extends to all aspects of our employment practices including, but not limited to, recruiting, hiring, discipline, termination, promotions, transfers, compensation, benefits, training, leaves of absence, and other terms and conditions of employment. ClimateWorks Foundation will provide a reasonable accommodation for any known physical or mental disability of a qualified individual and/or employees’ religious beliefs and practices, as required by law.
If you require an accommodation, please notify Human Resources. Once ClimateWorks Foundation is aware of the need for an accommodation, it will engage in an interactive process to identify possible accommodations.
Application Process
All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. To be considered for this position, interested candidates must submit a resume and cover letter. This position will remain open until filled.
Employment at the ClimateWorks Foundation is at\-will.
Salary Context
This $95K-$110K range is above the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $100K across 15465 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 26,159 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 91% of the market. At ClimateWorks Foundation, 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 $166,983 based on 13,781 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $131,300. This role's midpoint ($102K) sits 39% below the category median. Disclosed range: $95K to $110K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $184,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $244,000. The 90th percentile reaches $309,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($293,500) and AI Architect ($292,900). By seniority level: Entry: $76,880; Mid: $131,300; Senior: $227,400; Director: $244,288; VP: $234,620.
ClimateWorks Foundation AI Hiring
ClimateWorks Foundation has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in US. Compensation range: $110K - $110K.
Location Context
AI roles in Austin pay a median of $212,800 across 317 tracked positions. That's 16% 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 26,159 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 2,416 entry-level, 16,247 mid-level, 5,153 senior, and 2,343 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 7% of the market (1,863 positions). The remaining 24,200 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $184,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $244,000. The 90th percentile reaches $309,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($293,500 median, 28 roles); AI Architect ($292,900 median, 108 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 19 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 26,159 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (23,752), AI Software Engineer (598), AI Product Manager (594). 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 (2,416) are outnumbered by mid-level (16,247) and senior (5,153) 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 2,343 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 7% of all AI roles (1,863 positions), with 24,200 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 $184,000. Top-quartile roles start at $244,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $309,400. 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 Engineering Manager roles lead at $293,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $122,200. 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: Rag (16,749 postings), Aws (8,932 postings), Rust (7,660 postings), Python (3,815 postings), Azure (2,678 postings), Gcp (2,247 postings), Prompt Engineering (1,469 postings), Openai (1,269 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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