Interested in this AI/ML Engineer role at ICF?
Apply Now →Skills & Technologies
About This Role
Description
Applied AI Engineer — Global Health & AI
ICF's Global Health and Development (GHD) line of business, part of the Health, People, and Human Services (HPHS) Group, is seeking an Applied AI Engineer to build frontier-model systems for various global health and survey programs. This role will support the development of AI-enabled tools that draft survey reports, let researchers and policymakers analyze data in natural language, translate questionnaires into low-resource languages, and support interviewers and data quality in the field. No tool is adopted unless it matches or beats the expert-led process it replaces. You will build the prompting, agent, and pipeline layer across the program. You will also build the evaluation harnesses that show whether each tool actually works, judged against ground truth produced by some of the most experienced survey methodologists in the world.
This position can be remote within the United States, with occasional travel.
It is contingent upon award of program funding.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and build LLM pipelines and agents for survey workflows, including: + an AI-assisted data-to-report pipeline + natural-language analysis of survey data + multilingual questionnaire translation + field support tools for interviewers and supervisors
- Build evaluation harnesses as first-class deliverables. Work with the Technical Lead and survey experts to define acceptance criteria before the work is judged. Build test sets from expert-produced ground truth and run the non-inferiority comparisons that decide whether a tool moves forward.
- Route work across models based on reasoning complexity, volume, cost, latency, and data-residency requirements.
- Manage inference cost by tracking token usage, context limits, prompt caching, and batch processing, and account for these operating costs in model-selection decisions.
- Connect models to data services and to the applications built by full stack developers.
- Use agentic coding tools to produce software from clear specifications, then review, test, and own the resulting code.
- Monitor production systems, conduct disciplined error analysis, and report positive and negative results.
- Document methods and results for public release, including negative results. Help transfer tools to partner-country institutions so they can run them on their own.
Minimum Required Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent years experience)
- Minimum 4 years of professional software development experience, including building LLM-powered systems that real users relied on in production
- U.S. citizenship is required by federal government contract
Additional Required Skills and Experience
- Proficiency in Python or another modern programming language (e.g., JavaScript/TypeScript, Go) for back-end and AI application development
- Hands-on experience building with frontier-model APIs (from any provider, or through any cloud platform), including tool use and retrieval-augmented generation
- Demonstrated experience designing LLM evaluations, including test-set construction, automated and human grading, regression testing, and ship/no-ship decisions.
- Working knowledge of LLM cost, latency, and model-selection trade-offs
- Experience building and deploying on a major cloud platform (e.g., AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud)
- Demonstrated experience using agentic coding tools, such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Antigravity, or GitHub Copilot agent mode, to specify, review, test, and take ownership of production code.
- Experience with agent frameworks and AI evaluation tooling.
Preferred Skills
- Experience with tasks where ground truth came from subject matter experts (for example, statisticians, clinicians, scientists, or methodologists)
- Experience with grounded generation over structured or tabular data, or with LLM-assisted statistical analysis
- Experience with multilingual or low-resource-language NLP, translation, or speech
- Experience deploying open-weight models
- Experience with sensitive or regulated data, such as health data or human-subjects research
- Familiarity with model governance, monitoring, and responsible AI practice
- Experience in global health, international development, or low- and middle-income country settings
- Public work such as open-source contributions, published evaluations, or technical writing about systems you built undefined
Professional Skills
- Explains AI trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including funders, survey experts, and partner-government staff
- Collaborates effectively across disciplines, cultures, time zones, and organizational levels while treating domain experts as the source of truth
- Communicates uncertainty, limitations, and negative results candidly.Self-motivated
- Finds ways to add value without a lot of direct supervision
#Indeed
#LI-CCI
#GHDAI
Bot and Third-Party Applications
Please note that this application must be submitted directly by the applicant for consideration. Failure to do so may result in the application being excluded for consideration. Applicants needing an accommodation for disability or religious purposes in connection with the application process should contact [email protected] for assistance.
Working at ICF
ICF is a global advisory and technology services provider, but we’re not your typical consultants. We combine unmatched expertise with cutting-edge technology to help clients solve their most complex challenges, navigate change, and shape the future. We can only solve the world's toughest challenges by building a workplace that allows everyone to thrive. We are an equal opportunity employer. Together, our employees are empowered to share their expertise and collaborate with others to achieve personal and professional goals. For more information, please read our EEO policy.
We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Reasonable Accommodations are available, including, but not limited to, for disabled veterans, individuals with disabilities, and individuals with sincerely held religious beliefs, in all phases of the application and employment process. To request an accommodation, please email [email protected] and we will be happy to assist. All information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodations.
Read more about workplace discrimination rights or our benefit offerings which are included in the Transparency in (Benefits) Coverage Act.
Candidate AI Usage Policy At ICF, we are committed to ensuring a fair interview process for all candidates based on their own skills and knowledge. As part of this commitment, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate or assist with responses during interviews (whether in-person or virtual) is not permitted. This policy is in place to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the interview process.
However, we understand that some candidates may require accommodation that involves the use of AI. If such an accommodation is needed, candidates are instructed to contact us in advance at [email protected]. We are dedicated to providing the necessary support to ensure that all candidates have an equal opportunity to succeed.
Pay Range - There are multiple factors that are considered in determining final pay for a position, including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications and competencies that align to the specified role, geographic location, education and certifications as well as contract provisions regarding labor categories that are specific to the position.
The pay range for this position based on full-time employment is:
$98,614.00 - $167,644.00 Nationwide Remote Office (US99)
Salary Context
This $98K-$167K range is in the lower quartile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $178K across 1623 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 9,079 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At ICF, 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 $211,950 based on 13,048 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200. This role's midpoint ($133K) sits 37% below the category median. Disclosed range: $98K to $167K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($256,000) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $111,000; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $229,300; Director: $272,300; VP: $235,830.
ICF AI Hiring
ICF has 7 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across MLOps Engineer, AI Product Manager, Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer. Positions span Reston, VA, US, Montgomery, AL, Rockville, MD, US. Compensation range: $125K - $184K.
Remote Work Context
Remote AI roles pay a median of $188,000 across 2,316 positions. About 6% of all AI roles offer remote work.
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 9,079 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 106 entry-level, 4,384 mid-level, 3,343 senior, and 1,246 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (531 positions). The remaining 8,478 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($256,000 median, 66 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 457 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 55 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 9,079 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,862), AI Product Manager (453), AI Software Engineer (451). 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 (106) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,384) and senior (3,343) 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 1,246 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (531 positions), with 8,478 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 $213,000. Top-quartile roles start at $263,911, 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 $256,000 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 (1,649 postings), Aws (898 postings), Azure (723 postings), Rag (671 postings), Gcp (536 postings), Pytorch (434 postings), Claude (410 postings), Kubernetes (406 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
Get Weekly AI Career Intelligence
Salary data, skills demand, and market signals from 16,000+ AI job postings. Every Monday.