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About This Role
Orion Innovation is a premier, award\-winning, global business and technology services firm. Orion delivers game\-changing business transformation and product development rooted in digital strategy, experience design, and engineering, with a unique combination of agility, scale, and maturity. We work with a wide range of clients across many industries including financial services, professional services, telecommunications and media, consumer products, automotive, industrial automation, professional sports and entertainment, life sciences, ecommerce, and education.
Job Summary:
The Cloud / AI Developer designs, develops, and maintains Java\-based, cloud\-native applications on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) that support image\-based business workflows. This role builds secure, scalable services for capturing, processing, storing, and distributing images for use both within the organization and with external partners. The position collaborates closely with DevOps, QA, Product Management, and security stakeholders to deliver reliable solutions that meet performance, security, and compliance expectations.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design, develop, and maintain Java\-based applications for cloud environments, using modern engineering practices and cloud\-native patterns.
- Implement cloud\-native solutions on GCP to support image capture, ingestion, processing, storage, retrieval, and distribution workflows.
- Create and maintain RESTful APIs for seamless integration with internal services and external partners, including versioning, documentation, and backward compatibility considerations.
- Build and maintain image processing pipelines, including validation, transformation, metadata extraction, indexing, and lifecycle management (retention, archival, deletion).
- Implement AI\-enabled capabilities for image\-driven use cases such as classification, OCR/data extraction, redaction, quality checks, or similarity search using managed services and/or deployed models.
- Identify, troubleshoot, and resolve technical issues and defects in cloud applications, including root\-cause analysis and preventative fixes.
- Ensure applications meet security standards and applicable compliance requirements through secure coding practices, IAM/authorization controls, encryption, auditing, and policy\-aligned data handling.
- Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure\-as\-code for repeatable deployments and environment consistency in partnership with DevOps.
- Implement observability practices including logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, and operational documentation/runbooks.
- Work closely with cross\-functional teams including DevOps, QA, and Product Management to plan, deliver, test, and support high\-quality software solutions.
- Participate in architecture/design reviews, code reviews, and technical documentation; contribute to shared standards and best practices.
Required Skills:
- Strong professional experience developing backend services and APIs in Java (for example, Spring/Spring Boot or similar frameworks).
- Hands\-on experience designing, deploying, and operating applications on GCP, using serverless and/or container\-based approaches.
- Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs, including authentication/authorization patterns and integration with other services.
- Experience with image\-centric workflows such as capture/ingestion, object storage, transformation, and metadata management.
- Experience integrating AI capabilities into applications (for example, computer vision/OCR, extraction, redaction, or search) and familiarity with basic evaluation/monitoring concepts.
- Knowledge of secure engineering practices, including IAM, least privilege, service accounts, secrets management, encryption in transit/at rest, and audit logging.
- Familiarity with CI/CD and infrastructure\-as\-code (for example, Terraform or equivalent) and Git\-based development workflows.
- Strong troubleshooting skills for cloud applications, including defect triage, performance tuning, and production support with observability tools.
- Strong collaboration and communication skills across engineering, QA, DevOps, product, and security stakeholders.
Additional Required Skills/Experience:
- A minimum of Eight (8\) years' relevant experience.
- A degree from an accredited College/University in the applicable field of services is required. If the individual's degree is not in the applicable field then four additional years of related experience is required.
- Typically performs all functional duties independently.
Note: Special credentials (licenses and/or certifications) may be required at the Task Order level on a case\-specific basis."
Orion is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, citizenship status, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
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Orion Systems Integrators, LLC and its subsidiaries and its affiliates (collectively, "Orion," "we" or "us") are committed to protecting your privacy. This Candidate Privacy Policy (orioninc.com) ("Notice") explains:
- What information we collect during our application and recruitment process and why we collect it;
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Your use of Orion services is governed by any applicable terms in this notice and our general Privacy Policy.
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 Orion Innovation, 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 $214,900 based on 6,420 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $194,400.
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.
Orion Innovation AI Hiring
Orion Innovation has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Iselin, NJ, US.
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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