Lead AI Engineer

$145K - $180K New York, NY, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

DockerPythonRagTypescript

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

Join a global engineering team reimagining insurance technology through intelligent automation. You will design and deploy production-grade Agentic AI systems powered by LLMs, RAG, and document intelligence, transforming how brokers and underwriters operate and enabling smarter, faster business decisions at scale.

EPAM is where tech talent thrives—building groundbreaking solutions, advancing your skills through world-class learning platforms, and working alongside a global community of problem-solvers to make the future real.

Req.#1090479031

Responsibilities

  • Design, develop, and deploy production-grade Agentic AI solutions that automate complex insurance workflows, reducing turnaround times and increasing operational productivity
  • Build AI-powered applications leveraging LLMs, RAG, document processing, information extraction, classification, and agent-based architectures at enterprise scale
  • Own the end-to-end AI product lifecycle, from ideation and rapid prototyping through to deployment, monitoring, and continuous performance improvement
  • Develop robust AI evaluation frameworks encompassing testing, monitoring, performance measurement, and hallucination detection to ensure production-level reliability
  • Collaborate directly with brokers, underwriters, and operations teams to identify high-impact AI adoption opportunities and translate business challenges into scalable solutions
  • Mentor engineers, champion modern AI development best practices, and research emerging technologies to continuously advance the intelligence of the platform

Requirements

  • 5 to 8+ years of experience in Software Engineering, AI/ML, or related domains, with a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
  • Strong proficiency in Python with proven experience building and delivering AI-powered products end to end, from concept through to production deployment
  • Hands-on experience with Large Language Models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, information extraction, document understanding, classification models, and agentic AI workflow design
  • Solid foundation in cloud platforms, containerization using Docker, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, observability, and secure data handling within production-grade environments
  • Experience with API design, system design, full-stack application development, and working knowledge of TypeScript or Node.js as a complementary skill
  • Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate complex AI concepts and trade-offs to non-technical business stakeholders

We offer

  • Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance (Subsidized)
  • Health Savings Account
  • Flexible Spending Accounts (Healthcare, Dependent Care, Commuter)
  • Short-Term and Long-Term Disability (Company Provided)
  • Life and AD&D Insurance (Company Provided)
  • Employee Assistance Program
  • Unlimited access to LinkedIn learning solutions
  • Matched 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
  • Paid Time Off
  • Legal Plan and Identity Theft Protection
  • Accident Insurance
  • Employee Discounts
  • Pet Insurance
  • Employee Stock Purchase Program

EPAM is a leading global provider of digital platform engineering and development services. We are committed to having a positive impact on our clients, our employees, and our communities. We embrace a dynamic and inclusive culture. Here you will collaborate with multi-national teams, contribute to a myriad of innovative projects that deliver the most creative and cutting-edge solutions, and have an opportunity to continuously learn and grow. No matter where you are located, you will join a dedicated, creative, and diverse community that will help you discover your fullest potential.

Engineer the Future with a Career at EPAM

This posting includes a good faith range of the salary EPAM would reasonably expect to pay the selected candidate. The range provided reflects base salary only. Individual compensation offers within the range are based on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: geographic location, experience, credentials, education, training; the demand for the role; and overall business and labor market considerations. Most candidates are hired at a salary within the range disclosed. Salary range: $145,000 - $180,000. In addition, the details highlighted in this job posting above are a general description of all other expected benefits and compensation for the position.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis.

EPAM will not provide new H-1B visa sponsorship for this position. Candidates with existing transferable H-1B status may be considered.

Salary Context

This $145K-$180K range is below the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $175K across 1356 roles with salary data).

View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Company EPAM Systems
Title Lead AI Engineer
Location New York, NY, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $145K - $180K
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 8,943 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 75% of the market. At EPAM Systems, 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

Docker (3% of roles) Python (16% of roles) Rag (6% of roles) Typescript (2% 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 $212,000 based on 11,866 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $228,700. This role's midpoint ($162K) sits 23% below the category median. Disclosed range: $145K to $180K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($253,100) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $110,408; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $228,700; Director: $272,250; VP: $235,000.

EPAM Systems AI Hiring

EPAM Systems has 14 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Product Manager, AI/ML Engineer, AI Consultant, AI Architect. Positions span Remote, US, New York, NY, US, Houston, TX, US. Compensation range: $90K - $260K.

Location Context

AI roles in New York pay a median of $221,000 across 2,878 tracked positions. That's 4% 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 8,943 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 175 entry-level, 4,132 mid-level, 3,268 senior, and 1,368 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (521 positions). The remaining 8,351 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($253,100 median, 57 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 419 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 51 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 8,943 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,739), AI Product Manager (403), AI Software Engineer (402). 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 (175) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,132) and senior (3,268) 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 1,368 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (521 positions), with 8,351 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 $213,380. Top-quartile roles start at $264,148, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,310. 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 $253,100 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 (1,422 postings), Aws (808 postings), Azure (638 postings), Rag (555 postings), Gcp (457 postings), Pytorch (433 postings), Claude (341 postings), Kubernetes (337 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 11,866 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $212,000. 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 8,943 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.
EPAM Systems 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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