Interested in this AI/ML Engineer role at Colleague AI?
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About This Role
Location: Greater Seattle Area
Pay: $120,000\.00 \- $150,000\.00 per year
Full\-Time \| Permanent
About Colleague AI
Colleague AI is an innovative AI\-powered education platform, where AI assistants act as knowledgeable colleagues for educators and friendly buddies for learners. We fully integrate the best AI models and tools into our product design and development workflow to deliver cutting\-edge solutions. Our mission is simple: use the best AI to build AI for educators and students—enhancing teaching, learning, and school management through research\-backed and AI\-driven technology.
As we continue scaling nationwide and internationally, we are looking for a Member of Technical Staff who is passionate about AI, education, and fast\-paced development, and who thrives in an AI\-Native engineering culture.
Your Role
As a Member of Technical Staff at Colleague AI, you will play a critical role in designing, developing, and deploying AI\-powered educational solutions. You will work in an agile, high\-velocity environment where we ship major product features in days, not weeks. Our tech team leverages AI\-enhanced workflows—including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot—to build faster and smarter.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and maintain scalable, AI\-enhanced web applications using modern frameworks and cloud technologies.
- Build and optimize AI\-driven features for personalized learning, automation, and school management.
- Design and implement backend services, APIs, and third\-party integrations to enhance platform capabilities with harness engineering best practices.
- Ensure system performance, security, and scalability in production environments.
- Collaborate with educators, designers, and engineers to refine product features based on user feedback.
- Use AI\-enhanced coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) to boost productivity and maintain high code quality.
- Participate in rapid development cycles, testing, and debugging to ensure fast and reliable feature deployment.
- Stay ahead of AI and education technology trends, actively incorporating state\-of\-the\-art models into our product.
QualificationsRequired:
- 4\+ years of experience in software development.
- Proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, Python, or similar backend languages.
- Experience with React, Vue, or Angular for front\-end development.
- Strong database skills with SQL/NoSQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MongoDB).
- Experience with cloud services (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
- Understanding of AI/ML concepts and experience integrating AI\-driven features.
- Strong problem\-solving skills and ability to write clean, efficient, and scalable code.
Preferred:
- Startup or fast\-paced environment experience—we ship features in days, not weeks.
- Ability to proficiently use AI\-enhanced coding tools like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Copilot.
- Familiarity with LLMs, NLP, and generative AI models.
- Experience in EdTech, AI product development, or SaaS.
- Knowledge of education data privacy regulations (e.g., FERPA, COPPA).
Why Join Us?
- Work in a high\-impact, AI\-first engineering culture with a fast shipping environment.
- Help shape the future of AI\-driven education technology.
- Competitive salary, benefits, and stock options.
- Flexible hybrid work environment (Seattle\-based preferred).
- AI\-augmented development workflow—cutting\-edge tools to make coding faster and smarter.
- Opportunities for growth, leadership, and professional development.
Join us in revolutionizing education with AI!
Apply Now: Send your resume and a brief introduction to [email protected]
Job Type: Full\-time
Pay: $120,000\.00 \- $1,600,000\.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Work Location: In person
Salary Context
This $120K-$1600K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $181K across 1996 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 3,824 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 71% of the market. At Colleague AI, 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 $178,940 based on 11,900 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($860K) sits 381% above the category median. Disclosed range: $120K to $1600K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($293,500) and AI Safety ($274,200). By seniority level: Entry: $97,380; Mid: $160,000; Senior: $227,400; Director: $243,000; VP: $250,000.
Colleague AI AI Hiring
Colleague AI has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Kirkland, WA, US. Compensation range: $1600K - $1600K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 16% (613 positions) offer remote work, while 3,187 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (2,448 roles, $210,000 median); San Francisco (1,990 roles, $253,000 median); Los Angeles (1,686 roles, $189,000 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 3,824 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 119 entry-level, 1,813 mid-level, 1,472 senior, and 420 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 16% of the market (613 positions). The remaining 3,187 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $200,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($293,500 median, 31 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 51 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 401 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 3,824 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,702), Data Scientist (281), AI Software Engineer (258). 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 (119) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,813) and senior (1,472) 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 420 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 16% of all AI roles (613 positions), with 3,187 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 $200,000. Top-quartile roles start at $253,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $307,500. 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 $142,800. 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 (1,968 postings), Aws (1,203 postings), Azure (882 postings), Rag (877 postings), Gcp (735 postings), Prompt Engineering (587 postings), Pytorch (586 postings), Claude (554 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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