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About This Role
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.
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
Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: Mountain View, CA, USA; New York, NY, USA; Seattle, WA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA.
Minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5 years of experience with software development using Python or similar coding languages.
- Experience taking production-grade AI-driven solutions from conception to launch for customers.
- Experience managing technical discovery sessions with customers.
- Experience building pipelines for structured and unstructured data using both vector databases and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)-like architectures to power enterprise AI solutions.
Preferred qualifications:
- Master’s degree or PhD in AI, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
- Experience implementing multi-agent systems using frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, CrewAI, ADK) and patterns (e.g., ReAct, self-reflection, hierarchical delegation).
- Knowledge of LLM-native metrics (e.g., tokens/sec, cost-per-request) and techniques for optimizing state management and granular tracing.
About the job
As a Technical Solutions Consultant, you will be responsible for the technical relationship of our largest advertising clients and/or product partners. You will lead cross-functional teams in Engineering, Sales and Product Management to leverage emerging technologies for our external clients/partners. From concept design and testing to data analysis and support, you will oversee the technical execution and business operations of Google's online advertising platforms and/or product partnerships.
You will be able to balance business and partner needs with technical constraints, develop innovative, cutting edge solutions and act as a partner and consultant to those you are working with. You will also be able to build tools and automate products, oversee the technical execution and business operations of Google's partnerships, as well as develop product strategy and prioritize projects and resources.
The Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) for Google Maps Platform (GMP) is a specialized engineering role that sits at the intersection of product development and customer implementation. Unlike traditional engineers who focus primarily on internal product cycles, FDEs work "at the front lines," embedding themselves within the technical ecosystems of our most complex and high-impact partners. Your mission is to ensure that Google's geospatial technology solves real-world business problems at scale.
By embedding with accounts, you will serve a dual purpose: providing "white glove" deployment of complex Geospatial AI systems and acting as a critical feedback loop, transforming real-world field insights into Google Maps Platforms future product roadmap. The Geo team is focused on building the most accurate, comprehensive, and useful maps for our users, through products like Maps, Earth, Street View, Google Maps Platform, and more. Every month, more than a billion people rely on Maps services to explore the world and navigate their daily lives.
The Geo team also enables developers to use the power of Google Maps platforms to enhance their apps and websites. As they plot a course for the future of mapping, they are solving complex computer science problems, designing beautiful and intuitive product experiences, and improving our understanding of the real world.Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.
US: $152000 - $221000 (USD) + 15% bonus target + equity + benefits
Learn more about benefits at Google.Responsibilities
- Serve as a developer for complex AI applications, transitioning from rapid prototypes to production-grade agentic workflows (e.g., multi-agent systems, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers) that drive measurable return on investment.
- Architect and code the connective tissue between Google’s AI products and customer's live infrastructure, including APIs, legacy data silos, and security perimeters as part of an expert team.
- Build high-performance evaluation pipelines and observability frameworks to ensure agentic systems meet rigorous requirements for accuracy, safety, and latency.
- Identify repeatable field patterns and friction points in Google’s AI stack, converting them into reusable modules or formal product feature requests for engineering teams.
- Co-build with customer engineering teams to instill Google-grade development best practices, ensuring long-term project success and high end-user adoption.
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 $152K-$221K range is above 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
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 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
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. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200. This role's midpoint ($186K) sits 12% below the category median. Disclosed range: $152K to $221K.
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.
Google AI Hiring
Google has 146 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Software Engineer, AI Product Manager, Data Scientist. Positions span Sunnyvale, CA, Sunnyvale, CA, US, New York, NY. Compensation range: $166K - $427K.
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
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