Technical Lead, GenAI - Autonomous Vehicles

$224K - $356K Santa Clara, CA, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

AwsAzureDockerGcpKubernetesLangchainPythonPytorch

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

We are seeking a highly technical and strategic Senior Technical Lead to join our team, with a focus on engaging developer ecosystems across emerging technology domains such as Generative AI, Autonomous Vehicles, and Simulation Platforms. In this pivotal role, you will work directly with software solution providers, developers, and industry professionals to foster the adoption of NVIDIA’s advanced AI and computing platforms—including Omniverse, Cosmos, and GenAI frameworks. The ideal candidate brings a blend of deep technical expertise and commercial go-to-market experience, combined with a passion for developer advocacy and a talent for communicating how NVIDIA technology can solve complex, real-world challenges.

What You'll Be Doing:

  • Serve as a technical advisor and problem solver with partner engineering teams, collaborating on architecture, code, and integration for Omniverse and AI enabled-solutions.
  • Develop and maintain deep technical expertise in NVIDIA Cosmos and Omniverse Platforms and related technologies (APIs, USD, NIMs, Blueprints) through prototyping, technical integration and creation of reference architectures.
  • Advise on technical enablement resources such as sample code, guides, demonstration pipelines, and tools to highlight the application of technologies in solving real-world problems.
  • Engage with partner software organizations, from engineering teams to technical leaders, and decision-makers to understand their goals, solve technical challenges, and promote best practices for successful integrations.
  • Represent and advocate for the partner technical needs and feedback to NVIDIA’s internal product and engineering teams, supplying actionable insights from field deployments to influence product roadmaps.
  • Support product launches, technical go-to-market activities by providing technical validation, demonstrating integrated solutions, and ensuring excellence in customer- and partner-facing materials.
  • Guide partners and startups through onboarding and integration with NVIDIA’s programs, fostering co-innovation and the development of next-generation solutions.

What We Need to See:

  • Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, or equivalent experience.
  • 12+ years of experience of hands-on experience in a technical AI role, with a strong emphasis on AV End-to-End models and GenAI model development.
  • Experience writing production code in Python or C++, and proficiency with Linux.
  • Hands-on experience with DevOps tools such as GitLab, Docker, and Kubernetes.
  • Strong understanding of AV systems (Sensors, dynamics, perception, prediction, planning, control).
  • Experience with DL and RL algorithms and frameworks such as PyTorch.
  • Skilled at collaborating across engineering, product, sales, and marketing teams, with strong interpersonal abilities to simplify complex technical concepts for diverse audiences.
  • Experience leading technical collaborations with engineering and product teams—including architectural design, code reviews, technical mentorship, and delivery of technical talks or workshops.
  • Self-starter with a vision for growth, real passion for continuous learning and sharing findings across the team.

Ways to Stand Out from the Crowd:

  • Experience with AV sensors, data curation pipelines, world models, simulations workflows and tools.
  • Experience with Agentic AI frameworks, tools, and protocols like LangChain, LangGraph, MCP or equivalent experience.
  • Understand computational characteristics of Multimodal LLMs, VLMs, DiT, etc.
  • Experience in deploying LLM models at scale on mainstream cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) with a proven track record to profile and optimize inference latency and throughput, memory and I/O utilization.
  • Successful history of building and scaling developer communities and delivering impactful technical enablement programs.

With competitive salaries and a generous benefits package, we are widely considered to be one of the world’s most desirable employers! We have some of the most forward-thinking and hardworking people in the world working for us and, due to outstanding growth, our best-in-class engineering teams are rapidly growing. If you're a creative and autonomous person with a real passion for technology, we want to hear from you.

#AutonomousVehicles

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 224,000 USD - 356,500 USD. You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until September 27, 2026. This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.

Salary Context

This $224K-$356K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $176K across 1540 roles with salary data).

View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Company NVIDIA
Title Technical Lead, GenAI - Autonomous Vehicles
Location Santa Clara, CA, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $224K - $356K
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 9,653 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At NVIDIA, 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

Aws (9% of roles) Azure (8% of roles) Docker (3% of roles) Gcp (5% of roles) Kubernetes (4% of roles) Langchain (3% of roles) Python (17% of roles) Pytorch (5% 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 $212,000 based on 11,857 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $228,700. This role's midpoint ($290K) sits 37% above the category median. Disclosed range: $224K to $356K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,400. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,230. The 90th percentile reaches $319,400. 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: $272,275; VP: $235,000.

NVIDIA AI Hiring

NVIDIA has 52 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Software Engineer, Research Scientist, AI Product Manager. Positions span Santa Clara, CA, US, Austin, TX, US, Santa Clara, CA. Compensation range: $147K - $448K.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 6% (568 positions) offer remote work, while 9,010 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (2,878 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,413 roles, $264,500 median); Los Angeles (1,340 roles, $210,000 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 9,653 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 193 entry-level, 4,500 mid-level, 3,455 senior, and 1,505 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (568 positions). The remaining 9,010 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $213,400. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,230. The 90th percentile reaches $319,400. 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 9,653 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (7,301), Data Scientist (441), AI Software Engineer (438). 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 (193) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,500) and senior (3,455) 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 1,505 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (568 positions), with 9,010 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 $213,400. Top-quartile roles start at $264,230, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,400. 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 $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 (1,605 postings), Aws (916 postings), Azure (724 postings), Rag (634 postings), Gcp (522 postings), Pytorch (495 postings), Kubernetes (384 postings), Claude (383 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 11,857 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $212,000. 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 6% of the 9,653 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.
NVIDIA 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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