MLOps Lead

$140K - $205K New York, NY, US Senior MLOps Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

AwsMlflow

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

It's fun to work in a company where people truly BELIEVE in what they are doing!

*We're committed to bringing passion and customer focus to the business.*

Senior MLOps Engineer

Fractal is a strategic AI partner to Fortune 500 companies with a vision to power every human decision in the enterprise. Fractal is building a world where individual choices, freedom, and diversity are the greatest assets. An ecosystem where human imagination is at the heart of every decision. Where no possibility is written off, only challenged to get better. We believe that a true Fractalite is the one who empowers imagination with intelligence. Fractal has been featured as a Great Place to Work by The Economic Times in partnership with the Great Place to Work® Institute and recognized as a ‘Cool Vendor’ and a ‘Vendor to Watch’ by Gartner.

Please visit Fractal \| Intelligence for Imagination for more information about Fractal

Location: Remote (East Coast time zone)

Note: This position is not eligible for Immigration Sponsorship at this time.

ROLE SUMMARY:

Building the machine learning production System (or MLOps) is the biggest challenge most large companies currently have in making the transition to becoming an AI\-driven organization. This position is an opportunity for an experienced, server\-side developer to build expertise in this exciting new frontier. You will be part of a team deploying state\-of\-the\-art AI solutions for Fractal clients.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Based out of US, Leader for MLOPs will be the key leader in the AI@Scale practice. The person will be responsible to architect and execute technology projects across client AI and Engineering engagements. S/He will be accountable for building a trusted relationship, at middle and senior management across lines.

Technical Leadership:

  • As the MLOps leader, S/he will support client projects, lead solution design, and contribute to the overall MLOps engineering using on\-premise (open\-source) or cloud\-based (AWS) architectures
  • Act as a subject matter expert in machine\-learning model deployment and MLOps pipelines – strong understanding of Machine\-learning model building lifecycle, deployment, monitoring and production
  • Research and evangelize the use of GenAI, data\-science and engineering solutions for strategic decision\-making
  • Articulate business value and benefits of the technological solution to senior business and technology partners
  • Research, design and implement leading\-edge MLOps architecture patterns to solve hard problems for the clients
  • Bring GenAI, data\-science \& engineering thinking to win large AI led digital transformation deals

Execution Focus:

  • Lead client delivery engagements. Develop detailed business case, product roadmaps and financial justifications to quantify the business value of technological programs
  • Implement AI and engineering processes and governance methods to manage the risk of delivery
  • Help clients to define and design AI based solution architectures

Thought Leadership:

  • Lead and energize the teams and clients by providing thought leadership in enterprise\-grade machine\-learning operations and modern cloud adoption patterns
  • Develop product roadmaps and help clients prioritize based on business objectives and impact

QUALIFICATIONS:

Fractal seeks to hire a seasoned Technologist who will help in discovering and implementing state\-of\-the\-art solutions for their AI and Machine Learning projects to enable rapid experimentation, increase accuracy of the models, ensure high quality of their products and achieve customer delight.

The ideal candidate should possess the following key requirements:

  • 15\+ years of experience building engineering and data\-science businesses across various technologies
  • Deep technical skills along with strong client and market orientation
  • Experience or expertise in building and deploying machine\-learning pipelines
  • Experience or expertise in cloud\-based and hybrid deployments
  • Experience in Model repository (either of): MLFlow, Kubeflow Model Registry
  • Experience working across all phases of model development lifecycle to build MLOPs components
  • Experience with cloud\-based technologies (AWS)
  • Experience building production grade LLM based solutions
  • Should be a visionary, should have experience in building large production systems
  • Prior experience engaging with CXO’s of client companies
  • Client Service Orientation, Ability to work with client leadership to develop solutions, build trust and deploy appropriate scalable solutions
  • Exhibits High learning orientation. Stay abreast of and share industry/technology trends relevant to the AI Machine learning discipline

EDUCATION:

B.E/B.Tech/M.Tech in Computer Science or related technical degree OR Equivalent

PAY:

The wage range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. The disclosed range estimate has not been adjusted for the applicable geographic differential associated with the location at which the position may be filled. At Fractal, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is: $140,000 \- $205,000\. In addition, for the current performance period, you may be eligible for a discretionary bonus.

BENEFITS:

As a full\-time employee of the company or as an hourly employee working more than 30 hours per week, you will be eligible to participate in the health, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability plan in accordance with the plan documents, which may be amended from time to time. You will be eligible for benefits on the first day of employment with the Company. In addition, you are eligible to participate in the Company 401(k) Plan after 30 days of employment, in accordance with the applicable plan terms. The Company provides 11 paid holidays and 12 weeks of Parental Leave. We also follow a “free time” PTO policy, allowing you the flexibility to take time needed for either sick time or vacation.

*Fractal provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.*

If you like wild growth and working with happy, enthusiastic over\-achievers, you'll enjoy your career with us!

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Salary Context

This $140K-$205K range is below the median for MLOps Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $177K across 20 roles with salary data).

View full MLOps Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Title MLOps Lead
Location New York, NY, US
Category MLOps Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $140K - $205K
Remote No

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 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, MLOps Engineer positions make up 1% of the market. At Fractal Analytics, 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

Aws (30% of roles) Mlflow (4% of roles)

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 $220,000 based on 47 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000. This role's midpoint ($172K) sits 22% below the category median. Disclosed range: $140K to $205K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.

Fractal Analytics AI Hiring

Fractal Analytics has 4 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Data Scientist, MLOps Engineer, AI/ML Engineer. Positions span CA, US, New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $140K - $205K.

Location Context

AI roles in New York pay a median of $220,000 across 1,045 tracked positions.

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 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 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 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). 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 (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) 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 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 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 $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. 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 $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. 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 (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 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 47 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for MLOps Engineer positions is $220,000. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
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).
About 14% of the 3,708 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.
Fractal Analytics 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 MLOps Engineer positions include ML Platform Lead, Infrastructure Architect, Engineering Manager. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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