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### Minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in a technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 8 years of experience in program management.
- Experience in machine learning or artificial intelligence.
### Preferred qualifications:
- Proven experience as a Senior Technical Program Manager managing cross functional projects from conception to deployment in ambiguous environments.
- Experience in machine learning and AI project lifecycle, with expertise in AI capabilities, LLMs, or agentic systems.
- Experience collaborating with engineering, research, design, and product teams to drive concepts to launch and boost AI adoption and integration.
- Ability to build relationships, ensure strategic alignment with executive leadership, and articulate goals and roadblocks to stakeholders.
- Demonstrated resilience in navigating technical challenges, mitigating risks, and adapting to continuously evolving requirements while ensuring smooth project execution.
About the job
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A problem isn’t truly solved until it’s solved for all. That’s why Googlers build products that help create opportunities for everyone, whether down the street or across the globe. As a Technical Program Manager at Google, you’ll use your technical expertise to lead complex, multi\-disciplinary projects from start to finish. You’ll work with stakeholders to plan requirements, identify risks, manage project schedules, and communicate clearly with cross\-functional partners across the company. You're equally comfortable explaining your team's analyses and recommendations to executives as you are discussing the technical tradeoffs in product development with engineers.
AI Innovation and Research (AIR) accelerates AI innovation by building foundational technology for seamless, intelligent experiences across Platforms and Devices. Through our Aura program, we deliver core AI capabilities for on\-device and ambient technologies. Our key focus areas include developing an intelligent Health Companion and a unified, proactive health ecosystem, powering Playground, an AI\-first platform democratizing game creation, and scaling production\-ready AIR technologies across Platforms and Devices through foundational infrastructure and APIs.
As a Technical Program Manager (TPM) in AIR, You will grow in ambiguous, fast\-moving environments and communicate effectively with executives, and be deeply involved in your areas of responsibility. This means making tangible, direct contributions to your efforts, which can range from operational to highly technical, depending on the circumstances. You must be willing to be thoroughly engaged in the entire effort, from beginning to end.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Our Devices \& Services team combines the best of Google AI, Software, and Hardware to create radically helpful experiences for users. We research, design, and develop new technologies and hardware to make our user's interaction with computing faster, seamless, and more powerful. Whether finding new ways to capture and sense the world around us, advancing form factors, or improving interaction methods, the Devices \& Services team is making people's lives better through technology.
Individual pay is determined by factors including job\-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.
US: $192000 \- $278000 (USD) \+ 20% bonus target \+ equity \+ benefits
Learn more about benefits at Google.Responsibilities
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- Lead the end\-to\-end execution of complex, multi\-quarter technical roadmaps for AI/ML features, defining project scope and high\-impact deliverables that align with Platforms and Devices strategies from initial conception to launch.
- Partner closely with Engineering and Product leads to shape technical direction, serving as a critical communication bridge to synthesize complex project progress, priorities, and challenges for leadership.
- Identify, analyze, and mitigate potential risks to keep fast\-moving projects on schedule, advocating for best practices in program execution and resource coordination across geographically dispersed teams.
- Create strong, trusted relationships with global engineering managers, product teams, and research partners, fostering a culture of collaboration and mutual accountability to achieve successful outcomes.
- Advocate AI\-first and agentic collaboration by continuously identifying improvement areas, driving and deploying solutions that boost velocity for both program management and the overall team.
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 $192K-$278K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $175K across 2162 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 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% 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 in Demand for This Role
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 $214,900 based on 6,420 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($235K) sits 9% above the category median. Disclosed range: $192K to $278K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($287,500) and Research Engineer ($272,100). By seniority level: Entry: $110,000; Mid: $194,400; Senior: $227,400; Director: $274,554; VP: $241,000.
Google AI Hiring
Google has 134 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Software Engineer, AI/ML Engineer, AI Agent Developer, Research Scientist. Positions span Sunnyvale, CA, US, New York, NY, US, Mountain View, CA, US. Compensation range: $144K - $365K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 15% (635 positions) offer remote work, while 3,657 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,650 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (1,335 roles, $265,000 median); Los Angeles (708 roles, $214,112 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 4,317 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 138 entry-level, 2,071 mid-level, 1,655 senior, and 453 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (635 positions). The remaining 3,657 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($287,500 median, 34 roles); Research Engineer ($272,100 median, 227 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($244,000 median, 23 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 4,317 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (3,004), Data Scientist (345), AI Software Engineer (309). 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 (138) are outnumbered by mid-level (2,071) and senior (1,655) 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 453 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (635 positions), with 3,657 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 $215,000. Top-quartile roles start at $266,300, and the 90th percentile reaches $320,790. 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 $287,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $145,000. 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 (2,249 postings), Aws (1,224 postings), Azure (938 postings), Rag (915 postings), Gcp (660 postings), Pytorch (640 postings), Prompt Engineering (624 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
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