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About the Role
We are looking for a highly versatile Photographer \& AI Imaging Specialist to join an in\-house creative team in Los Angeles.
This role sits at the intersection of traditional photography, social\-first content and emerging AI image creation. We are looking for a photographer with a strong visual point of view and an instinctive understanding of contemporary beauty culture and how younger audiences discover, consume and engage with imagery.
You should be as comfortable creating beautifully lit studio photography as you are shooting something immediate and culturally relevant for social. The work will span location, beauty, on\-body, product, tabletop and still life, ranging from polished brand imagery to fast\-turnaround content designed for today's social platforms.
Alongside traditional photography, you will use generative AI as an extension of your image\-making practice: incorporating original photography into AI workflows, developing variations and new executions from existing assets, and creating original imagery from scratch.
What You’ll DoPhotography* Concept, light and shoot in studio and on location
- Shoot beauty, on\-body, product, tabletop, still life and lifestyle content
- Create polished brand photography as well as agile, social\-first imagery
- Understand the visual language of contemporary beauty, fashion and digital culture
- Bring an editorial eye and strong point of view to everyday content creation
- Confidently light products, skin and talent in a professional studio environment
- Move easily between considered studio setups and spontaneous, lightweight content capture
- Translate creative direction and cultural references into compelling imagery
- Collaborate closely with Creative Directors, Art Directors, Designers, Producers and Marketing teams
AI \& Emerging Image Creation* Integrate original photography into generative AI workflows
- Extend, adapt and reimagine existing photography using AI
- Develop multiple visual variations while maintaining product and brand consistency
- Generate original imagery and creative concepts using AI tools
- Combine photographed, generated and retouched elements into believable, beautifully finished imagery
- Experiment with new approaches to image creation and help establish best practices for AI\-assisted creative production
- Stay curious about emerging image\-making technologies and how they can be applied creatively rather than simply technically
Retouching \& Post\-Production* Retouch and finish imagery to a high professional standard
- Handle color correction, compositing, cleanup and image manipulation
- Maintain accuracy of products, packaging, color, texture and skin
- Work fluidly between traditional and AI\-assisted post\-production techniques
- Deliver finished assets across social, digital, e\-commerce and broader brand channels
Requirements
What We’re Looking For* An exceptional photography portfolio with a strong contemporary visual sensibility
- Professional experience shooting both people and products
- Strong beauty photography skills, particularly lighting and photographing skin
- Excellent studio lighting and technical photography skills
- Experience shooting on location and working quickly in changing environments
- A strong understanding of social\-first image making and current visual culture
- Excellent retouching and compositing skills
- Proficiency in Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and professional imaging workflows
- Hands\-on experience with generative AI image tools and AI\-assisted creative workflows
- Ability to build upon existing photography using AI as well as generate imagery from an initial concept
- Excellent eye for composition, color, texture, lighting and photographic realism
- Ability to move comfortably between elevated brand imagery and more spontaneous, culturally relevant content
- Curious, experimental and genuinely interested in where photography and image creation are heading
- Collaborative, adaptable and comfortable working in a fast\-paced creative environment
The Person
You are a photographer first, with the technical skills to walk into a studio and confidently light and shoot talent or product. But you also understand that the way imagery is being created and consumed is changing rapidly.
You follow contemporary beauty, fashion, social and visual culture. You understand what feels current without simply following trends, and you know the difference between an image that is technically accomplished and one that people actually want to look at.
AI is another tool in your creative practice. You are interested in what happens when strong photographic craft, cultural instinct and new technology come together.
Benefits
The anticipated salary range for this role is $95,000 \- $125,000 annually. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience, and skills relative to the defined job requirements.
This is a hybrid role requiring flexibility to work in\-office and remotely. Evening or weekend work may occasionally be required during major projects.
We offer a competitive benefits package including major medical, dental and vision insurance, FSA, HSA, and employee discounts.
Industrial Color is a division of CoCreativ, a family of integrated creative production companies. Industrial Color partners with top brands, agencies, and creative professionals providing a full range of essential production services. For over 30 years, we've led the industry through a culture of innovation, bringing state\-of\-the\-art digital production and post\-production solutions to our clients.
Our headquarters is based in Tribeca, NY, with offices in Los Angeles and studios in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Our clients include: L'Oreal, Publicis, Procter \& Gamble, Tommy Hilfiger, Absolut Vodka, Nike, Estee Lauder, Amazon...
Salary Context
This $95K-$125K range is in the lower quartile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $175K across 2162 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 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At CoCreativ, 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 in Demand for This Role
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 $214,900 based on 6,420 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $194,400. This role's midpoint ($110K) sits 49% below the category median. Disclosed range: $95K to $125K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($287,500) and Research Engineer ($272,100). By seniority level: Entry: $110,000; Mid: $194,400; Senior: $227,400; Director: $274,554; VP: $241,000.
CoCreativ AI Hiring
CoCreativ has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Los Angeles, CA, US. Compensation range: $125K - $125K.
Location Context
AI roles in Los Angeles pay a median of $214,112 across 708 tracked positions.
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 4,317 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 138 entry-level, 2,071 mid-level, 1,655 senior, and 453 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (635 positions). The remaining 3,657 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($287,500 median, 34 roles); Research Engineer ($272,100 median, 227 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($244,000 median, 23 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 4,317 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (3,004), Data Scientist (345), AI Software Engineer (309). 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 (138) are outnumbered by mid-level (2,071) and senior (1,655) 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 453 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (635 positions), with 3,657 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 $215,000. Top-quartile roles start at $266,300, and the 90th percentile reaches $320,790. 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 $287,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $145,000. 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 (2,249 postings), Aws (1,224 postings), Azure (938 postings), Rag (915 postings), Gcp (660 postings), Pytorch (640 postings), Prompt Engineering (624 postings), Kubernetes (559 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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