Ecosystem Engineering Lead, AI and AI Platforms, Google Cloud

$233K - $324K New York, NY, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

Gcp

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

In accordance with Washington state law, we are highlighting our comprehensive benefits package, which is available to all eligible US based employees. Benefits for this role include:

  • Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
  • Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match
  • Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment
  • Sick Time: 40 hours/year (increased to 69 hours/year for Seattle) including 5 discretionary sick days per instance
  • Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
  • Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
  • Holidays: 13 paid days per year

Applicants in San Francisco: Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

The application window will be open until at least November 06, 2026. This opportunity will remain online based on business needs which may be before or after the specified date.

Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: Sunnyvale, CA, USA; Kirkland, WA, USA; Atlanta, GA, USA; Austin, TX, USA; Boulder, CO, USA; Chicago, IL, USA; Addison, TX, USA; New York, NY, USA; Reston, VA, USA; Seattle, WA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA.

Minimum qualifications:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 10 years of experience serving in the capacity of a technical Solution Architect in a cloud computing environment in customer/partner facing roles.
  • 5 years of experience with Large Language Models (LLMs), Agentic frameworks, Agentic workflows, Open Source, Big Data, Machine Learning, and numerical programming frameworks.
  • 5 years of experience with AI products, technologies, and infrastructure.
  • Experience in a role bridging technical implementation with business strategy (e.g., Partner Architect, Technical PM, or Principal Consultant).

Preferred qualifications:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.

Experience architecting and developing software or infrastructure for scalable, distributed systems with ML technologies.

  • Experience building AI and ML solutions, operation frameworks like Kubeflow, and leveraging specific ML architectures.
  • Understanding of AI Models, Large Language Models, AI agents, AI Agentic workflows, AI specialized infrastructure, and responsible AI practices.
  • Ability to lead cross-functional teams and deliver end to end solutions to customers/partners.
  • Ability to quickly learn, understand, and work with new emerging technologies, methodologies and solutions, including leading a team of Ecosystem Engineers.

About the job

The Google Cloud Platform team helps customers transform and build what's next for their business — all with technology built in the cloud. Our products are developed for security, reliability and scalability, running the full stack from infrastructure to applications to devices and hardware. Our teams are dedicated to helping our customers — developers, small and large businesses, educational institutions and government agencies — see the benefits of our technology come to life. As part of an entrepreneurial team in this rapidly growing business, you will play a key role in understanding the needs of our customers and help shape the future of businesses of all sizes use technology to connect with customers, employees and partners.

As Ecosystem Engineering lead, you'll join and lead a dedicated team focused on AI and Agentic AI Platforms. You'll serve as a Generative AI subject matter expert, collaborating with Partners, Product Development, and Technical Sales to deliver Google Cloud AI products.

Your role involves helping prospective customers and partners grasp the power of Google AI. You'll explain technical features, assist in designing architectures, build AI-powered applications, and troubleshoot challenges. You'll also guide partners in leveraging Google Cloud’s Generative AI services, including Large Language Models, Agent Platforms, Tooling and specialized Machine Learning (ML) hardware developed by Google, called Tensor Processing Unit.

Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $233000 - $324000 (USD) + 25% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.Responsibilities

  • Serve as a trusted technical advisor to partner executive leadership, including CTOs and Chief Product Officers, aligning multiyear AI roadmaps and exploring advanced technical possibilities.
  • Lead AI and agentic activities with strategic partners, including executive briefings, ideation, identification of priority use cases, conversion, and comprehensive value realization with Google AI and Agentic platforms.
  • Identify and qualify business opportunities with partners, comprehend key technical objections, and lead multidisciplinary teams to deliver proof of concepts, custom solution demos, and Generative AI joint innovation.
  • Partner with product management, engineering, solution management, and Customer Engineering teams to enable partner success, helping developers, creators, and enterprises build products using Google Generative Language APIs.
  • Recommend integration strategies, enterprise architectures, platforms, and application infrastructure required to successfully implement and deploy complete, robust solutions using best practices on Google Cloud.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. See also Google's EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing our Accommodations for Applicants form.

Salary Context

This $233K-$324K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $178K across 2239 roles with salary data).

View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Company Google
Title Ecosystem Engineering Lead, AI and AI Platforms, Google Cloud
Location New York, NY, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $233K - $324K
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 11,520 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At Google, 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

Gcp (6% 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 $212,040 based on 13,780 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000. This role's midpoint ($278K) sits 31% above the category median. Disclosed range: $233K to $324K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,480. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,000. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($266,050) and AI Engineering Manager ($253,461). By seniority level: Entry: $112,320; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,250; VP: $235,830.

Google AI Hiring

Google has 245 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Agent Developer, Research Engineer, AI Software Engineer. Positions span New York, NY, US, Kirkland, WA, US, Sunnyvale, CA, US. Compensation range: $150K - $427K.

Location Context

AI roles in New York pay a median of $221,000 across 3,257 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 11,520 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 140 entry-level, 5,630 mid-level, 4,176 senior, and 1,574 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (708 positions). The remaining 10,737 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $213,480. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,000. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($266,050 median, 70 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($253,461 median, 58 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 476 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 11,520 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (8,769), AI Software Engineer (586), AI Product Manager (511). 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 (140) are outnumbered by mid-level (5,630) and senior (4,176) 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 1,574 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (708 positions), with 10,737 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 $213,480. Top-quartile roles start at $264,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $318,400. 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 $266,050 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 (2,267 postings), Aws (1,178 postings), Azure (972 postings), Rag (924 postings), Gcp (715 postings), Pytorch (586 postings), Claude (572 postings), Kubernetes (559 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 13,780 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $212,040. 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 11,520 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.
Google 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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