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About This Role
Why Join GEICO?
At GEICO, we offer a rewarding career where your ambitions are met with endless possibilities.
Every day we honor our iconic brand by offering quality coverage to millions of customers and being there when they need us most. We thrive on relentless innovation to exceed our customers' expectations while making a real impact on local communities nationwide.
Founded in 1936, GEICO is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies and one of the largest auto insurers in the United States. When you join our company, we want you to feel valued, supported, and proud to work here. That's why we offer the GEICO Pledge: Great Company, Great Culture, Great Rewards, and Great Careers.
Director – Runtime Intelligence \& Personalization
Overview
We are seeking a strategic and execution\-oriented Director to lead our Runtime Intelligence \& Personalization function. This leader will own the vision, strategy, and delivery of intelligent runtime systems that power context\-aware, personalized experiences across products and platforms.
This role sits at the intersection of AI/ML, platform engineering, and product strategy, responsible for building scalable systems that leverage context, memory, and retrieval to deliver differentiated, real\-time intelligence.
Key Responsibilities
Strategy \& Vision
- Define and execute the roadmap for runtime intelligence capabilities, including context building, memory systems, and RAG\-based architectures
- Translate business and customer needs into scalable, AI\-powered personalization strategies
- Partner with executive stakeholders to align runtime intelligence investments with enterprise priorities
- Act as a thought leader in shaping next\-generation personalization and AI\-driven experiences
Platform \& Capability Ownership
- Lead development of core runtime capabilities:
- Context orchestration and state management
- Memory systems (short\-term and long\-term)
- Retrieval systems (RAG, knowledge integration)
- Personalization frameworks
- Drive design and implementation of high\-scale, low\-latency systems
- Ensure systems are secure, observable, and reliable in production environments
Observability \& Optimization
- Establish observability standards across runtime intelligence systems (latency, quality, accuracy, cost)
- Define KPIs and metrics to evaluate system performance and business impact
- Lead continuous optimization of runtime performance, cost, and response quality
- Implement feedback loops for model and system improvement
Execution \& Delivery
- Oversee end\-to\-end delivery of runtime intelligence platforms, ensuring scalability and reliability
- Drive cross\-functional execution across engineering, data science, and product teams
- Manage prioritization, trade\-offs, and execution in a complex, fast\-paced environment
Leadership \& Team Development
- Build, lead, and scale high\-performing teams across engineering, ML, and platform functions
- Develop talent strategy, including hiring, coaching, and organizational design
- Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement
- Lead through senior managers and technical leaders to deliver outcomes at scale
Cross\-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with Product, Design, Data, and Infrastructure teams to deliver integrated solutions
- Influence senior stakeholders and drive alignment across competing priorities
- Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to executive and non\-technical audiences
Qualifications
Required
- 10–15\+ years of experience in engineering, platform, or AI/ML roles, with significant leadership experience
- Proven track record building and scaling distributed systems, AI platforms, or personalization systems
- Deep expertise in areas such as:
- Retrieval\-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Context and memory architectures
- Real\-time inference systems
- Strong business acumen with the ability to translate strategy into execution
- Demonstrated success leading large, complex, cross\-functional initiatives
Preferred
- Experience with LLMs, generative AI, and agent\-based systems
- Background in observability, experimentation frameworks, or system optimization
- Experience operating in high\-scale, customer\-facing environments
Core Competencies
- Strategic Thinking \& Vision
- AI/ML \& Platform Leadership
- Operational Excellence \& Execution
- Cross\-Functional Influence
- Talent Development \& Leadership
- Data\-Driven Decision Making
Annual Salary
$150,000\.00 \- $300,000\.00
The above annual salary range is a general guideline. Multiple factors are taken into consideration to arrive at the final hourly rate/ annual salary to be offered to the selected candidate. Factors include, but are not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the role, the selected candidate’s work experience, education and training, the work location as well as market and business considerations.
At this time, GEICO will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization for this position. The GEICO Pledge:
Great Company: Protecting customers through life’s twists and turns with innovation and integrity.
Great Careers:Personalized development programs, mentorship, and certification assistance.
Great Culture:Inclusive and collaborative culture rooted in shared success.
Great Rewards:Competitive pay, benefits, and flexibility to support your well\-being and future.
The equal employment opportunity policy of the GEICO Companies provides for a fair and equal employment opportunity for all associates and job applicants regardless of race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, age, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, familial status, disability or genetic information, in compliance with applicable federal, state and local law. GEICO hires and promotes individuals solely on the basis of their qualifications for the job to be filled.
GEICO reasonably accommodates qualified individuals with disabilities to enable them to receive equal employment opportunity and/or perform the essential functions of the job, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship to the Company. This applies to all applicants and associates. GEICO also provides a work environment in which each associate is able to be productive and work to the best of their ability. We do not condone or tolerate an atmosphere of intimidation or harassment. We expect and require the cooperation of all associates in maintaining an atmosphere free from discrimination and harassment with mutual respect by and for all associates and applicants.
Salary Context
This $150K-$300K 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 GEICO, 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. Director-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $243,000. This role's midpoint ($225K) sits 26% above the category median. Disclosed range: $150K to $300K.
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.
GEICO AI Hiring
GEICO has 21 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Agent Developer, AI/ML Engineer, AI Software Engineer, Research Scientist. Positions span New York, NY, US, Palo Alto, CA, US, Bethesda, MD, US. Compensation range: $215K - $350K.
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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