Lead, GTM Enterprise AI Transformation, Google Cloud

$183K - $265K Chicago, IL, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

GcpPrompt EngineeringPython

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

The application window will be open until at least June 16, 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: Atlanta, GA, USA; Boulder, CO, USA; Chicago, IL, USA; Addison, TX, USA; Miami, FL, USA.### Minimum qualifications:

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
  • 7 years of experience in GTM strategy, product management, or management consulting.
  • Experience using Generative AI tools (e.g., Large Language Model (LLMs), prompt engineering).
  • Experience managing budgets, OpEx, or operational audits.
  • Experience driving adoption for technical products and managing stakeholder ecosystems.

### Preferred qualifications:

  • Proficiency with SQL to independently query adoption metrics and model business impact.
  • Demonstrated track record of independently building, configuring, or scripting functional prototypes or tools (e.g., using low\-code/no\-code platforms, Python scripts, API integrations, or AI prompting frameworks) to automate tasks or solve workflow inefficiencies.
  • Understanding of centralized governance models and experience operationalizing programs across decentralized teams.

About the job

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The Google Cloud Consulting Professional Services team guides customers through the moments that matter most in their cloud journey to help businesses grow. We help customers transform and evolve their business through the use of Google’s global network, web\-scale data centers, and software infrastructure. As part of an innovative team in this rapidly growing business, you will help shape the future of businesses of all sizes and use technology to connect with customers, employees, and partners.

As the Lead, GTM AI Strategy and Ecosystem, you will act as a primary operator within the GTM AI Delivery Office, serving as the connective tissue between technical innovation, operational efficiency, and field adoption.

Your mandate extends beyond enablement as you are an AI\-fluent builder and strategist who will identify inefficiencies in the business, design agentic solutions to solve them, and manage the operational excellence required to scale them. You will prototype solutions, audit operational spend (OpEx) to find automation opportunities, and ensure the AI ecosystem operates as a unified machine rather than fragmented point solutions.

You are part Product Manager, Strategy Lead, and Prototyper, capable of translating a messy business problem into a clean AI workflow.Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise\-grade solutions that leverage Google’s 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.

The US base salary range for this full\-time position is $183,000\-$265,000 \+ bonus \+ equity \+ benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job\-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process.

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Learn more about benefits at Google.Responsibilities

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  • Operationalize the central "Hub" functions of the AI strategy by maintaining a centralized Solution Catalog to prevent duplication ("reinventing the wheel") across GTM teams and ensure all agents leverage shared secure infrastructure.
  • Act as a strategic consultant for GTM operations, proactively diagnosing areas of friction and assessing them through an AI\-native lens.
  • Implement the framework for vetting new AI opportunities, ensuring every proposed agent has a defensible business case, clear Return on Investment (ROI), and aligns with the wider GTM strategy before engineering resources are committed.
  • Co\-ordinate and prioritize the team’s delivery roadmap by balancing field\-driven "bottom\-up" ideas with "top\-down" strategic priorities to build the right tools at the right time.
  • Evaluate where agentic capabilities can resolve deep\-rooted inefficiencies versus where process changes are required.

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 $183K-$265K 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

Company Google
Title Lead, GTM Enterprise AI Transformation, Google Cloud
Location Chicago, IL, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $183K - $265K
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 3,824 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 71% 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 (19% of roles) Prompt Engineering (15% of roles) Python (51% 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 $178,940 based on 11,900 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($224K) sits 25% above the category median. Disclosed range: $183K to $265K.

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.

Google AI Hiring

Google has 132 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Software Engineer, AI/ML Engineer, AI Product Manager, Research Engineer. Positions span Sunnyvale, CA, US, San Jose, CA, US, New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $151K - $365K.

Location Context

AI roles in Chicago pay a median of $202,000 across 283 tracked positions.

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

Based on 11,900 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $178,940. 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 16% of the 3,824 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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