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About This Role
Job Description
-------------------
#### Requisition ID
94174
#### Department
Tech Data AI Ventures
#### Job Function
Tech Data AI Ventures
#### Location
New York,New York,United States
#### Role Location Designation
Hybrid \- 3 days per week
Location Designation: Hybrid \- 3 days per week
The AI / ML Security Operations Engineer is a hands\-on senior engineering role embedded within the Application Security organization, responsible for securing New York Life's machine learning and AI pipelines as they evolve from isolated experimentation into production, agentic, and automated decisioning systems. This role sits at the intersection of ML engineering, platform engineering, and security, and is accountable for establishing the controls, guardrails, and reference patterns that scale as AI adoption accelerates across the enterprise.
The engineer will be responsible for securing the full ML lifecycle, from data ingestion and feature pipelines through model training, registry, deployment, and execution, with a primary focus on Google Cloud Vertex AI as the enterprise ML platform. Day\-to\-day work includes building guardrails for agentic and tool\-invoking AI use cases, protecting ML supply chain integrity, integrating ML security controls into existing AppSec CI/CD and SSDLC processes, contributing security requirements to ML platform and identity decisions owned by partner teams, and partnering directly with data scientists, ML engineers, and platform owners to operationalize secure\-by\-default patterns.
This is a senior individual contributor role with strong cross\-functional influence expectations. The right candidate has done this work hands\-on in a regulated environment and can also define enterprise standards, mentor peers, and engage credibly with risk, audit, and model risk management stakeholders.
What You'll Do:
The engineer will be responsible for securing the full ML lifecycle, from data ingestion and feature pipelines through model training, registry, deployment, and execution, with a primary focus on Google Cloud Vertex AI as the enterprise ML platform. Day\-to\-day work includes building guardrails for agentic and tool\-invoking AI use cases, protecting ML supply chain integrity, integrating ML security controls into existing AppSec CI/CD and SSDLC processes, contributing security requirements to ML platform and identity decisions owned by partner teams, and partnering directly with data scientists, ML engineers, and platform owners to operationalize secure\-by\-default patterns.
This is a senior individual contributor role with strong cross\-functional influence expectations. The right candidate has done this work hands\-on in a regulated environment and can also define enterprise standards, mentor peers, and engage credibly with risk, audit, and model risk management stakeholders.
What You'll Bring:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience, with 5\+ years in application security, cloud security, or security engineering
- Hands\-on production experience securing at least one major ML platform. Vertex AI strongly preferred, with SageMaker or Azure ML acceptable as transferable experience that will be cross\-validated against GCP
- Strong working knowledge of the end\-to\-end ML lifecycle and MLOps workflows: data ingestion, feature pipelines, training jobs, model registry, deployment patterns, and online/offline serving
- Practical understanding of how ML environments should be separated across dev, training, staging, and production, and the ability to partner with platform teams to ensure those boundaries hold from a security standpoint
- Working knowledge of non\-human identities, service accounts, workload identity federation, and automated CI/CD or pipeline\-driven workflows, with the ability to evaluate whether identity patterns proposed by partner teams meet security requirements
- Fluency with AI/ML\-specific threat scenarios including data poisoning, model theft, training data exfiltration, inference abuse, prompt injection, indirect prompt injection, unsafe tool invocation, and agentic misuse, and the ability to translate them into concrete controls
- Hands\-on experience integrating security controls into CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure\-as\-code environments (Terraform, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Cloud Build, or equivalent)
- Working understanding of cloud IAM principles and least\-privilege design, sufficient to review and provide security input on identity patterns owned by platform and cloud teams
- Application security fundamentals: authentication/authorization patterns, supply chain security (SLSA, SBOMs, signed artifacts), secure API design, and secrets management
- Proficiency in Python for automation, security tooling, and detection logic. Candidates should be able to walk through code they have personally written, not just reviewed
- Ability to operate as both a hands\-on engineer and a pattern\-setter, comfortable building the first instance of a control and then turning it into a reusable enterprise standard
Preferred Qualifications
- Direct experience securing agentic AI systems, orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, Vertex AI Agent Builder, ADK, CrewAI), or autonomous tool\-invoking workflows in production
- Working familiarity with AI security frameworks such as MITRE ATLAS, OWASP LLM Top 10, OWASP ML Top 10, NIST AI RMF, Google Secure AI Framework (SAIF), or Databricks AI Security Framework
- Experience designing governance models for ML platforms in financial services, healthcare, or another regulated industry, including how controls map to model risk management (SR 11\-7\) and applicable audit requirements
- Background working alongside data scientists and ML engineers on production model deployments, not just reviewing their work from a security distance
- Exposure to model risk management, model validation, or model controls partnerships with second\-line risk functions
- Experience with policy\-as\-code and guardrail enforcement at scale (OPA / Rego, Cloud Custodian, Conftest, Sentinel, or equivalent)
- Familiarity with detection engineering for ML workloads, including log sources from Vertex AI, model serving endpoints, agent execution traces, and how to write meaningful detections against them
- Hands\-on exposure to LLM gateways, content safety and guardrail products (Lakera, Protect AI, NeMo Guardrails, Llama Guard, Vertex AI Safety Filters), or self\-built equivalents
Pay Transparency
Salary Range: $147,500\-$211,000
Overtime eligible: Exempt
Discretionary bonus eligible: Yes
Sales bonus eligible: No
Actual base salary will be determined based on several factors but not limited to individual’s experience, skills, qualifications, and job location. Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. In addition to base salary, employees may also be eligible to participate in an incentive program.
Company Overview
At New York Life, our 180\-year legacy of purpose and integrity fuels our future. As we evolve into a more technology\-, data\-, and AI\-enabled organization, we remain grounded in the values that drive lasting impact.
Our diverse business portfolio creates opportunities to make a difference across industries and communities—inviting bold thinking, collaborative problem\-solving, and purpose\-driven innovation. Here, you’ll find the rare balance of long\-standing stability and forward momentum, supported by an inclusive team that honors tradition while embracing progress.
As a Fortune 100 mutual company, we offer a place to grow your skills, contribute to meaningful work, and deliver solutions that matter. Your ideas drive what’s next, and your growth powers it.
Our Benefits
We provide a full package of benefits for employees – and have unique offerings for a modern workforce, including leave programs, adoption assistance, and student loan repayment programs. Based on feedback from our employees, we continue to refine and add benefits to our offering, so that you can flourish both inside and outside of work.Click hereto discover more about our comprehensive benefit options or visit our NYL Benefits Site.
Our Commitment to Inclusion
At New York Life, fostering an inclusive workplace is fundamental to who we are and how we serve our communities. We have a longstanding commitment to creating an environment where individuals can contribute their best and succeed together. This foundation is rooted in our core values of humanity and integrity, ensuring that every employee feels valued and supported. By embracing a broad range of perspectives and experiences, we achieve greater success and fulfill our promise of providing financial security and peace of mind to families across all communities. Click here to learn more about New York Life’s leadership in this space.
Recognized as one of *Fortune’s* World’s Most Admired Companies, New York Life is committed to improving local communities through a culture of employee giving and volunteerism, supported by the Foundation. We're proud that due to our mutuality, we operate in the best interests of our policy owners. To learn more about career opportunities at New York Life, please visit the Careers page of www.NewYorkLife.com.
Visit our LinkedIn to see how our employees and agents are leading the industry and impacting communities.
Visit our Newsroom to learn more about how our company is constantly evolving to meet our clients' and employees’ needs.
Job Requisition ID: 94174
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Salary Context
This $147K-$211K range is below the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 2130 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 4,133 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 69% of the market. At New York Life, 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 $185,000 based on 13,200 positions with disclosed compensation. Disclosed range: $147K to $211K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,700. Top-quartile compensation starts at $254,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($274,200) and AI Engineering Manager ($268,700). By seniority level: Entry: $97,760; Mid: $165,778; Senior: $227,400; Director: $250,000; VP: $250,000.
New York Life AI Hiring
New York Life has 4 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $211K - $300K.
Location Context
AI roles in New York pay a median of $211,000 across 2,760 tracked positions. That's 5% 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 4,133 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 106 entry-level, 1,901 mid-level, 1,663 senior, and 463 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (583 positions). The remaining 3,532 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $200,700. Top-quartile compensation starts at $254,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($274,200 median, 57 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($268,700 median, 42 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 442 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 4,133 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,865), Data Scientist (339), AI Software Engineer (313). 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 (1,901) and senior (1,663) 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 463 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (583 positions), with 3,532 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 $200,700. Top-quartile roles start at $254,000, 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 Safety roles lead at $274,200 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 (2,128 postings), Aws (1,324 postings), Azure (1,003 postings), Rag (916 postings), Gcp (817 postings), Pytorch (655 postings), Prompt Engineering (639 postings), Claude (571 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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