Principal MLOps Engineer

$142K - $196K Pittsburgh, PA, US Senior MLOps Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

AwsAzureGcpKubernetesPython

About This Role

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Thank you for your interest in joining Solventum. Solventum is a new healthcare company with a long legacy of solving big challenges that improve lives and help healthcare professionals perform at their best. At Solventum, people are at the heart of every innovation we pursue. Guided by empathy, insight, and clinical intelligence, we collaborate with the best minds in healthcare to address our customers’ toughest challenges. While we continue updating the Solventum Careers Page and applicant materials, some documents may still reflect legacy branding. Please note that all listed roles are Solventum positions, and our Privacy Policy: https://www.solventum.com/en\-us/home/legal/website\-privacy\-statement/applicant\-privacy/ applies to any personal information you submit. As it was with 3M, at Solventum all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.Job Description:

PrincipalMLOpsEngineer

3M Health Care is now Solventum

At Solventum, we enable better, smarter, safer healthcare to improve lives. As a new company with a long legacy of creating breakthrough solutions for our customers’ toughest challenges, we pioneer game\-changing innovations at the intersection of health, material and data science that change patients' lives for the better while enabling healthcare professionals to perform at their best. Because people, and their wellbeing, are at the heart of every scientific advancement we pursue.

We partner closely with the brightest minds in healthcare to ensure that every solution we create melds the latest technology with compassion and empathy. Because at Solventum, we never stop solving you.

The ImpactYou’llMake in this Role

As a PrincipalMLOpsEngineer, you will lead the operational architecture, deployment strategy, and reliability engineering for integrating AI into high\-stakes Healthcare Information Systems (HIS). You will define the enterprise operational standards, govern the release processes, and build the resilient infrastructure required to maintain models in mission\-critical clinical environments. You are the definitive authority on production discipline, compliance support, and incident resolution for the AI organization.

Key Responsibilities

1\. Enterprise Release Architecture \& Governance

  • Release Strategy: Architect and govern the comprehensive release process, defining enterprise checklists, automated approval gates, release notes, and deployment readiness standards.
  • Deployment Execution: Establish the deployment execution standards for promoting AI across all environments and ensure customer deployments adhere to strict internal production discipline.
  • Model Registry: Architect and oversee the enterprise model registry, ensuring seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines and full version control traceability.

2\. System Reliability \& Incident Management

  • Monitoring Standards: Define and enforce monitoring standards, establishing critical SLAs/SLOs, service health metrics, and comprehensive dashboards across the AI ecosystem.
  • Quality \& Drift Control: Architect automated checks for input/output data quality and model drift, ensuring proactive detection of system degradation.
  • Incident Framework: Establish and lead the production incident process, including rigorous triage workflows, severity escalation paths, postmortems, rollback mechanisms, and recovery infrastructure.

3\. Compliance \& Technical Leadership

  • Security \& Traceability: Partner with Platform teams to provide essential ATO (Authority to Operate) and compliance support, ensuring complete deployment traceability and strict operational controls.
  • Operational Visibility: Oversee comprehensive operational reporting, providing leadership with status updates across production systems, pre\-prod testing, customer rollouts, and incident metrics.
  • Operational Excellence: Foster a culture of production discipline, guiding junior engineers in maintaining operational runbooks and reliable deployment pipelines.

Your Skills and Expertise

To set you up for success in this role from day one, Solventum requires (at a minimum) the following qualifications:

  • Bachelor's Degree or Higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field.
  • 10\+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 6 years dedicated to deploying and maintaining large\-scale ML systems in production (not just research or POCs).
  • MLOps\& Cloud: Expert\-level experience with Cloud Providers (AWS/GCP/Azure) and orchestration tools (Kubernetes, Kubeflow, or Airflow).
  • Engineering \& Programming: Expert\-level Python and Java/Go (or similar). Deep proficiency in backend frameworks, microservices, and system design patterns.
  • Observability \& Telemetry: Expert knowledge of monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog) and establishing enterprise SLAs/SLOs for AI services.
  • Release Engineering: Proven track record of designing automated deployment pipelines, managing complex rollback procedures, and enforcing model registry governance at scale.

Additionalqualifications that could help you succeed even further in this role include:

  • Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field is preferred.
  • Security \& Compliance: Deep understanding of cybersecurity best practices and ATO processes within regulated industries (Healthcare, Finance, or Defense).
  • Distributed Systems: Proven ability to design systems that handle massive concurrency and distributed data processing.

Work location:

  • Remote

Travel:

May include up to 10% domestic

Must be legally authorized to work in a country of employment without sponsorship for employment visa status (e.g., H1B status).

Supporting Your Well\-being

Solventum offers many programs to help you live your best life – both physically and financially. To ensure competitive pay and benefits, Solventum regularly benchmarks with other companies that are comparable in size and scope.

Onboarding Requirement: To improve the onboarding experience, you will have an opportunity to meet with your manager and other new employees as part of the Solventum new employee orientation. As a result, new employees hired for this position will be required to travel to a designated company location for on\-site onboarding during their initial days of employment. Travel arrangements and related expenses will be coordinated and paid for by the company in accordance with its travel policy. Applies to new hires with a start date of October 1st 2025 or later.

Applicable to US Applicants Only:The expected compensation range for this position is $142,800 \- $196,350, which includes base pay plus variable incentive pay, if eligible. This range represents a good faith estimate for this position. The specific compensation offered to a candidate may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, the candidate’s relevant knowledge, training, skills, work location, and/or experience. In addition, this position may be eligible for a range of benefits (e.g., Medical, Dental \& Vision, Health Savings Accounts, Health Care \& Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts, Disability Benefits, Life Insurance, Voluntary Benefits, Paid Absences and Retirement Benefits, etc.). Additional information is available at: https://www.solventum.com/en\-us/home/our\-company/careers/\#Total\-Rewards

Responsibilities of this position include that corporate policies, procedures and security standards are complied with while performing assigned duties.

Solventum is committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity and professionalism in our recruitment process. Applicants must remain alert to fraudulent job postings and recruitment schemes that falsely claim to represent Solventum and seek to exploit job seekers.

Please note that all email communications from Solventum regarding job opportunities with the company will be from an email with a domain of @solventum.com. Be wary of unsolicited emails or messages regarding Solventum job opportunities from emails with other email domains.

Please note, Solventum does not expect candidates in this position to perform work in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County.

Solventum is an equal opportunity employer. Solventum will not discriminate against any applicant for employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.Please note: your application may not be considered if you do not provide your education and work history, either by: 1\) uploading a resume, or 2\) entering the information into the application fields directly.

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Salary Context

This $142K-$196K range is below the median for MLOps Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $209K across 26 roles with salary data).

View full MLOps Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Company Solventum
Title Principal MLOps Engineer
Location Pittsburgh, PA, US
Category MLOps Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $142K - $196K
Remote No

About This Role

MLOps Engineers build the infrastructure that keeps ML models running in production. They own CI/CD pipelines for model deployment, monitoring for data drift and model degradation, and the tooling that lets data scientists ship faster. If ML Engineers build the models, MLOps Engineers build the roads those models travel on.

The job is fundamentally about reliability and velocity. Data scientists want to iterate fast. Product teams want stable predictions. Your job is to make both happen simultaneously. That means building deployment pipelines that catch regressions before they hit production, monitoring systems that alert on data drift before it degrades model performance, and self-service tooling that lets data scientists deploy without filing a ticket.

Across the 3,824 AI roles we're tracking, MLOps Engineer positions make up 1% of the market. At Solventum, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.

MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.

What the Work Looks Like

A typical week involves: debugging a model deployment that's serving stale predictions, building a new monitoring dashboard for a feature team, writing Terraform for GPU-enabled inference clusters, reviewing pull requests for the ML platform's CI/CD pipeline, and meeting with data scientists to understand their pain points. You're the bridge between ML and infrastructure.

MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.

Skills Required

Aws (31% of roles) Azure (23% of roles) Gcp (19% of roles) Kubernetes (12% of roles) Python (51% of roles)

Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud infrastructure are baseline. Most roles want experience with ML-specific tooling: MLflow, Kubeflow, Weights & Biases, or similar. Strong DevOps fundamentals matter more than ML theory. You need to understand model serving (TorchServe, Triton, vLLM), monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana), and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi).

GPU infrastructure knowledge is increasingly valuable as LLM inference becomes a major cost center. Understanding GPU scheduling, multi-node training setups, and inference optimization (quantization, batching, caching) puts you in the top tier. Experience with model registries and feature stores rounds out the profile.

Good MLOps postings specify their ML stack, infrastructure scale, and the problems they're solving (deployment velocity, cost optimization, monitoring gaps). Red flag: companies that want MLOps but don't have any models in production yet. You'll end up doing general DevOps instead.

Compensation Benchmarks

MLOps Engineer roles pay a median of $217,200 based on 76 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($169K) sits 22% below the category median. Disclosed range: $142K to $196K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($293,500) and AI Safety ($274,200). By seniority level: Entry: $97,380; Mid: $160,000; Senior: $227,400; Director: $243,000; VP: $250,000.

Solventum AI Hiring

Solventum has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across MLOps Engineer, Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer. Positions span Pittsburgh, PA, US, PA, US, Remote, US. Compensation range: $147K - $196K.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 16% (613 positions) offer remote work, while 3,187 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (2,448 roles, $210,000 median); San Francisco (1,990 roles, $253,000 median); Los Angeles (1,686 roles, $189,000 median).

Career Path

Common paths into MLOps Engineer roles include DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, Data Engineer.

From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Platform Lead, Infrastructure Architect, Engineering Manager.

DevOps engineers with ML curiosity have the shortest path. You already understand deployment, monitoring, and infrastructure. Add ML-specific knowledge (model serving, data pipelines, experiment tracking) and you're competitive. The career ceiling is high: ML Platform Lead roles at top companies pay well because the infrastructure complexity is enormous.

What to Expect in Interviews

Interviews emphasize infrastructure and reliability. Expect questions about CI/CD for ML models, monitoring for data drift, and how you'd design a model serving platform that handles 10K requests per second. Coding rounds focus on Python and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Helm). Be ready to discuss tradeoffs between different model serving frameworks and how you'd handle rollback when a new model degrades performance.

When evaluating opportunities: Good MLOps postings specify their ML stack, infrastructure scale, and the problems they're solving (deployment velocity, cost optimization, monitoring gaps). Red flag: companies that want MLOps but don't have any models in production yet. You'll end up doing general DevOps instead.

AI Hiring Overview

The AI job market has 3,824 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 119 entry-level, 1,813 mid-level, 1,472 senior, and 420 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 16% of the market (613 positions). The remaining 3,187 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $200,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($293,500 median, 31 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 51 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 401 roles).

MLOps demand tracks closely with production ML adoption. As more companies move models from notebooks to production, the need for MLOps grows. The role is well-established at large tech companies and growing fast at mid-stage startups that are hitting the 'our models work in notebooks but break in production' phase.

The AI Job Market Today

The AI job market spans 3,824 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,702), Data Scientist (281), AI Software Engineer (258). 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 (119) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,813) and senior (1,472) 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 420 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 16% of all AI roles (613 positions), with 3,187 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 $200,000. Top-quartile roles start at $253,000, 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 Engineering Manager roles lead at $293,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $142,800. 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 (1,968 postings), Aws (1,203 postings), Azure (882 postings), Rag (877 postings), Gcp (735 postings), Prompt Engineering (587 postings), Pytorch (586 postings), Claude (554 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 76 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for MLOps Engineer positions is $217,200. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud infrastructure are baseline. Most roles want experience with ML-specific tooling: MLflow, Kubeflow, Weights & Biases, or similar. Strong DevOps fundamentals matter more than ML theory. You need to understand model serving (TorchServe, Triton, vLLM), monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana), and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi).
About 16% of the 3,824 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.
Solventum 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 MLOps Engineer positions include ML Platform Lead, Infrastructure Architect, Engineering Manager. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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