Senior AI Engineer

Middleton, WI, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

Interested in this AI/ML Engineer role at Springs Window Fashions?

Apply Now →

Skills & Technologies

AzureOpenaiPower BiRagTableau

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

Description:

The Best Experience Company

Our tagline is “The Best Experience Company.” More than just a set of words, it represents the essence of who we are at Springs Window Fashions. As North America’s premier window covering company, we’re committed to creating the Best Experience for our associates, consumers and end users, business partners, and communities. We want you to join our team of passionate self\-starters who believe the world is full of Best Experience opportunities. So, if you’re excited about the thought of a Best Experience career with a team focused on creating Best Experiences for all, we want to hear from you! Position Summary

The Sr AI Engineer serves as a technical leader responsible for enterprise\-scale AI architecture, solution governance, and advanced AI engineering practices. This role drives strategic AI adoption and mentors engineering teams across the organization. This role will partner closely with Information Technology, business stakeholders, operations, customer service, product development, and analytics teams to deliver scalable AI capabilities that improve efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and enable data\-driven decision making.

The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering fundamentals with practical expertise in machine learning, generative AI, data engineering, automation, and cloud technologies. This individual must be comfortable operating in a fast\-paced, transformation\-oriented environment and capable of translating business problems into production\-ready AI solutions. Key Responsibilities* Design, build, deploy, and maintain enterprise AI and machine learning solutions.

  • Develop and operationalize generative AI applications leveraging large language models (LLMs), retrieval\-augmented generation (RAG), copilots, and intelligent automation.
  • Partner with business leaders to identify high\-value AI use cases aligned to strategic priorities.
  • Build scalable AI pipelines, APIs, and integrations with enterprise platforms and business applications.
  • Collaborate with data engineering teams to ensure high\-quality, governed, and accessible data for AI initiatives.
  • Develop AI\-enabled analytics and predictive models supporting manufacturing, supply chain, customer service, sales, and operations.
  • Implement AI governance, model monitoring, security, and responsible AI practices.
  • Optimize model performance, scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency.
  • Evaluate emerging AI technologies and recommend enterprise adoption strategies.
  • Support AI experimentation, rapid prototyping, and innovation initiatives across the organization.
  • Create technical documentation, operational procedures, and knowledge transfer materials.
  • Mentor technical teams and promote AI engineering best practices.

Requirements:

Required* Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field.

  • Advanced degree in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or Data Science preferred.
  • 8–10\+ years overall technology experience
  • 5\+ years focused in AI/ML engineering
  • Proven experience deploying enterprise\-scale AI systems
  • Experience leading technical teams or major initiatives
  • Strong experience with AI architecture and distributed systems
  • Experience operationalizing generative AI at scale
  • Executive communication capability

Preferred* Experience with Microsoft Copilot, Azure OpenAI, or enterprise generative AI platforms.

  • Manufacturing, supply chain, consumer products, or retail industry experience.
  • Experience with MLOps, vector databases, orchestration frameworks, and AI observability platforms.
  • Familiarity with data visualization and analytics platforms such as Power BI or Tableau.
  • Experience leading enterprise AI transformation initiatives.
  • AI governance frameworks
  • FinOps for AI workloads
  • Multi\-cloud AI strategy
  • Experience building internal AI platforms or copilots

How We Work to Deliver a Best Experience: Our Culture* Our Core Value: We do the right thing, always

  • Our Seven Cultural Behaviors

+ Empowerment \- We trust our people.

+ Ownership \- We take 100% responsibility for our roles actions, and results.

+ Leadership \- We all lead by example and talk direct with respect (DWR).

+ One Team \- We are One Springs Team.

+ Customer First \- We consider our customers' needs before every decision.

+ Continuous Innovation \- We are constantly learning, innovating, and improving.

+ Speed \- We define priorities and operate with a sense of urgency and agility.

Role Details

Title Senior AI Engineer
Location Middleton, WI, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary Not disclosed
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 3,823 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 69% of the market. At Springs Window Fashions, 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

Azure (24% of roles) Openai (10% of roles) Power Bi (5% of roles) Rag (22% of roles) Tableau (4% 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 $181,170 based on 12,692 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,100. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,500. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($275,000) and AI Safety ($274,200). By seniority level: Entry: $97,880; Mid: $165,000; Senior: $227,400; Director: $247,800; VP: $250,000.

Springs Window Fashions AI Hiring

Springs Window Fashions has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Middleton, WI, US.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 15% (590 positions) offer remote work, while 3,217 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (2,643 roles, $211,000 median); San Francisco (2,168 roles, $253,000 median); Los Angeles (1,792 roles, $191,580 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 3,823 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 112 entry-level, 1,798 mid-level, 1,516 senior, and 397 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (590 positions). The remaining 3,217 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $200,100. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,500. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($275,000 median, 41 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 55 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 434 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 3,823 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,629), Data Scientist (322), AI Software Engineer (279). 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 (112) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,798) and senior (1,516) 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 397 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (590 positions), with 3,217 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 $200,100. Top-quartile roles start at $253,500, 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 $275,000 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 (1,979 postings), Aws (1,190 postings), Azure (899 postings), Rag (839 postings), Gcp (726 postings), Pytorch (595 postings), Prompt Engineering (595 postings), Claude (540 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 12,692 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $181,170. 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 15% of the 3,823 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.
Springs Window Fashions 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.

Get Weekly AI Career Intelligence

Salary data, skills demand, and market signals from 16,000+ AI job postings. Every Monday.