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About This Role
Overview/ Job Responsibilities:
Job Summary
We are seeking a skilled MLOps Engineer to join our team and ensure the seamless deployment, monitoring, and optimization of AI models in production.
The MLOps Engineer will design, implement, and maintain end\-to\-end machine learning pipelines, focusing on automating model deployment, monitoring model health, detecting data drift, and managing AI\-related logging. This role will involve building scalable infrastructure and dashboards for real\-time and historical insights, ensuring models are secure, performant, and aligned with business needs.Key Responsibilities* Model Deployment: Deploy and manage machine learning models in production using tools like MLflow, Kubeflow, or AWS SageMaker, ensuring scalability and low latency.
- Monitoring and Observability: Build and maintain dashboards using Grafana, Prometheus, or Kibana to track real\-time model health (e.g., accuracy, latency) and historical trends.
- Data Drift Detection: Implement drift detection pipelines using tools like Evidently AI or Alibi Detect to identify shifts in data distributions and trigger alerts or retraining.
- Logging and Tracing: Set up centralized logging with ELK Stack or OpenTelemetry to capture AI inference events, errors, and audit trails for debugging and compliance.
- Pipeline Automation: Develop CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions or Jenkins to automate model updates, testing, and deployment.
- Security and Compliance: Apply secure\-by\-design principles to protect data pipelines and models, using encryption, access controls, and compliance with regulations like GDPR or NIST AI RMF.
- Collaboration: Work with data scientists, AI Integration Engineers, and DevOps teams to align model performance with business requirements and infrastructure capabilities.
- Optimization: Optimize models for production (e.g., via quantization or pruning) and ensure efficient resource usage on cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
- Documentation: Maintain clear documentation of pipelines, dashboards, and monitoring processes for cross\-team transparency.
Minimum Qualifications:
Qualifications* Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field.
- Must be eligible to obtain a Department of Homeland Security EOD clearance ( Requirements 1\. US Citizenship, 2\. Favorable Background Investigation)
- Experience:
- + 5\+ years in MLOps, DevOps, or software engineering with a focus on AI/ML systems.
+ Proven experience deploying models in production using MLflow, Kubeflow, or cloud platforms (AWS SageMaker, Azure ML).
+ Hands\-on experience with observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog for real\-time monitoring.
- Technical Skills:
- + Proficiency in Python and SQL; familiarity with JavaScript or Go is a plus.
+ Expertise in containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, Jenkins).
+ Knowledge of time\-series databases (e.g., InfluxDB, TimescaleDB) and logging frameworks (e.g., ELK Stack, OpenTelemetry).
+ Experience with drift detection tools (e.g., Evidently AI, Alibi Detect) and visualization libraries (e.g., Plotly, Seaborn).
- AI\-Specific Skills:
- + Understanding of model performance metrics (e.g., precision, recall, AUC) and drift detection methods (e.g., KS test, PSI).
+ Familiarity with AI vulnerabilities (e.g., data poisoning, adversarial attacks) and mitigation tools like Adversarial Robustness Toolbox (ART).
- Soft Skills:
- + Strong problem\-solving and debugging skills for resolving pipeline and monitoring issues.
+ Excellent collaboration and communication skills to work with cross\-functional teams.
+ Attention to detail for ensuring accurate and secure dashboard reporting.
- Must be eligible to obtain a Department of Homeland Security EOD clearance ( Requirements 1\. US Citizenship, 2\. Favorable Background Investigation)
Desired Qualifications:
Preferred Qualifications* Experience with LLM monitoring tools like LangSmith or Helicone for generative AI applications.
- Knowledge of compliance frameworks (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) for secure data handling.
- Contributions to open\-source MLOps projects or familiarity with X platform discussions on \#MLOps or \#AIOps.
About Us:
Formed through the strategic union of Sev1Tech and ERT, Entarian is a premier provider of mission\-critical engineering and technology solutions. Founded on a legacy of excellence dating back to 1993, Entarian is a product of an evolved and fully diversified engineering and federal technology leader. From deep space to defense and civilian missions, Entarian delivers secure, mission\-aligned digital solutions that drive national resilience and operational effectiveness. We don't just support modernization; we define it. Join the Mission and Start your Career Journey: Apply Directly via our Careers Portal Connect, Referrals \& Inquiries? Email the team: [email protected] *Entarian is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, or disability status.*
Role Details
About This Role
MLOps Engineers build the infrastructure that keeps ML models running in production. They own CI/CD pipelines for model deployment, monitoring for data drift and model degradation, and the tooling that lets data scientists ship faster. If ML Engineers build the models, MLOps Engineers build the roads those models travel on.
The job is fundamentally about reliability and velocity. Data scientists want to iterate fast. Product teams want stable predictions. Your job is to make both happen simultaneously. That means building deployment pipelines that catch regressions before they hit production, monitoring systems that alert on data drift before it degrades model performance, and self-service tooling that lets data scientists deploy without filing a ticket.
Across the 3,824 AI roles we're tracking, MLOps Engineer positions make up 1% of the market. At Entarian, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week involves: debugging a model deployment that's serving stale predictions, building a new monitoring dashboard for a feature team, writing Terraform for GPU-enabled inference clusters, reviewing pull requests for the ML platform's CI/CD pipeline, and meeting with data scientists to understand their pain points. You're the bridge between ML and infrastructure.
MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.
Skills Required
Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud infrastructure are baseline. Most roles want experience with ML-specific tooling: MLflow, Kubeflow, Weights & Biases, or similar. Strong DevOps fundamentals matter more than ML theory. You need to understand model serving (TorchServe, Triton, vLLM), monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana), and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi).
GPU infrastructure knowledge is increasingly valuable as LLM inference becomes a major cost center. Understanding GPU scheduling, multi-node training setups, and inference optimization (quantization, batching, caching) puts you in the top tier. Experience with model registries and feature stores rounds out the profile.
Good MLOps postings specify their ML stack, infrastructure scale, and the problems they're solving (deployment velocity, cost optimization, monitoring gaps). Red flag: companies that want MLOps but don't have any models in production yet. You'll end up doing general DevOps instead.
Compensation Benchmarks
MLOps Engineer roles pay a median of $217,200 based on 76 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $160,000.
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.
Entarian AI Hiring
Entarian has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, MLOps Engineer. Based in Arlington, VA, US.
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 MLOps Engineer roles include DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, Data Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Platform Lead, Infrastructure Architect, Engineering Manager.
DevOps engineers with ML curiosity have the shortest path. You already understand deployment, monitoring, and infrastructure. Add ML-specific knowledge (model serving, data pipelines, experiment tracking) and you're competitive. The career ceiling is high: ML Platform Lead roles at top companies pay well because the infrastructure complexity is enormous.
What to Expect in Interviews
Interviews emphasize infrastructure and reliability. Expect questions about CI/CD for ML models, monitoring for data drift, and how you'd design a model serving platform that handles 10K requests per second. Coding rounds focus on Python and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Helm). Be ready to discuss tradeoffs between different model serving frameworks and how you'd handle rollback when a new model degrades performance.
When evaluating opportunities: Good MLOps postings specify their ML stack, infrastructure scale, and the problems they're solving (deployment velocity, cost optimization, monitoring gaps). Red flag: companies that want MLOps but don't have any models in production yet. You'll end up doing general DevOps instead.
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).
MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.
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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