Interested in this AI/ML Engineer role at Stanley Black & Decker?
Apply Now →Skills & Technologies
About This Role
Engineering AI Solution Architect — Hybrid
Towson, MD, United States
Come build something that matters.
It takes great people to achieve greatness. People with a sense of purpose and integrity. People with a relentless pursuit of excellence. People who care about making things better For Those Who Make The World™. Sound like you? Join our top\-notch team of approximately 43,500 diverse and high\-performing professionals globally who are making their mark on some of the world’s most beloved brands, including DEWALT®, BLACK\+DECKER®, CRAFTSMAN®, STANLEY®, CUB CADET®, and HUSTLER®.
The Role
Stanley Black \& Decker (NYSE: SWK) is seeking a Principal Engineering AI Solution Architect. In this pivotal role, you will serve as a strategic individual contributor, responsible for shaping the vision, development, and implementation of AI initiatives across the engineering organization. This position demands thought leadership in AI, with a focus on leveraging advanced technologies to drive transformative change within our engineering teams.
As a Engineering AI Solution Architect , you’ll be part of our Tools \& Outdoor team working as a hybrid employee. You’ll get to:
The Job:
- A rchitect AI\-driven solutions for complex engineering problems, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.
- Collaborate with cross\-functional teams (engineering, product management, data science, and IT) to define solution requirements and technical specifications.
- Coordinate and overse e the end\-to\-end implementation of AI projects, from ideation and prototyping to deployment and monitoring.
- Evaluate and select appropriate AI technologies, frameworks, and tools based on project needs.
- Guide and mentor engineering teams on AI/ML model integration, data pipelines, and cloud deployment strategies.
- Develop and maintain AI roadmaps for engineering.
- Ensure compliance with data privacy, security, and regulatory requirements in all AI solutions.
- Stay updated with the latest AI trends, research, and technologies to drive innovation within the organization.
- Participate in client meetings, presentations, and technical workshops as a subject matter expert.
The Person:
You love to learn and grow and be acknowledged for your valuable contributions. You’re not intimidated by innovation. Wouldn’t it be great if you could do your job and do a world of good? In fact, you embrace it. You also have:
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science , Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.
- 10 \+ years of experience with integrated HW\-SW product development, with 5 \+ years focused on AI/ML projects with engineering design applications .
- Proven track record a pplying AI/ML methods to drive transformational change in engineering .
- Proven track record of designing and deploying AI/ML solutions in production environments.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Strong understanding of machine learning algorithms, data engineering, and MLOps practices.
Skills
- Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Java, or C\+\+.
- Expertise in AI/ML frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch , Scikit\-learn).
- Excellent problem\-solving and analytical skills.
- Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non\-technical stakeholders.
- Experience with data modeling, ETL pipelines, and API design.
- Knowledge of DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines.
- Ability to work independently and as part of a collaborative team.
Preferred Qualifications
- Certifications in cloud architecture or AI/ML (e.g., AWS Certified Machine Learning, Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer).
- Experience in industries such as manufacturing, automotive, or healthcare.
- Familiarity with edge computing and IoT integration.
The Details:
You’ll receive a competitive salary and a great benefits plan, including:
- Medical, dental, life, vision, disability, 401(k), Employee Stock Purchase Plan, paid time off, and tuition reimbursement in addition to programs \& benefits in support of your well\-being.
- Discounts on Stanley Black \& Decker tools and other partner programs.
And More:
We want our company to be a place you’ll want to be – and stay. Being part of our team means you’ll get to:
- *Grow:* Be part of our global company with 20\+ brands to grow and develop your skills along multiple career paths.
- *Learn:* Have access to a wealth of learning resources, including our digital learning portal.
- *Belong:* Experience an awesome place to work, where we have mutual respect and a great appreciation for a wide range of perspectives and experiences.
- *Give Back:* Help us continue to make positive changes locally and globally through volunteerism, giving back, and sustainable business practices.
What’s more, you’ll get that pride that comes from empowering makers, doers, protectors, and everyday heroes all over the world. We’re more than the \#1 tools company. More than a driving force in outdoor power equipment. More than a global leader in industrial. We’re visionaries and innovators. As successful as we’ve been in the past, we have so much further to go. That’s where you come in. Join us!
\#LI\-Hybrid
\#LI\-MB1
\&\#xa;The Salary range for this position is $110,600\.00 \- $178,000\.00\&\#xa;
- This is the lowest to highest annual full\-time salary range we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. The salary offered within the range may vary depending on multiple factors including job level, geographic location, job\-related knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience and in compliance with local wage requirements. Please note that salary is only one component of total rewards at Stanley Black \& Decker.
- The salary range listed in this job posting reflects the range for the primary location specified. The salary range may vary for other locations.
- The successful candidate may be eligible for annual merit increases.
- Medical, dental, life, vision, disability,401(k), Employee Stock Purchase Plan, paid time off, and tuition reimbursement in addition to programs \& benefits in support of your well\-being.
- Discounts on Stanley Black \& Decker tool sand other partner programs.
*We Don’t Just Build The World, We Build Innovative Technology Too.*
Joining the Stanley Black \& Decker team means working in an innovative, tech\-driven and highly collaborative team environment supported by over 43,500 professionals in 60 countries across the globe. Here, you’ll get the unique chance to impact some of the world’s most iconic brands including STANLEY TOOLS, DEWALT, CRAFTSMAN, MAC TOOLS and Black \+ Decker. Your ideas and solutions have the potential to reach millions of customers as we work together to write the next chapter in our history. Come build with us and take your career to new heights.
Who We Are
We’re the World’s largest tool company. We’re industry visionaries. We’re solving problems and advancing the manufacturing trade through innovative technology and our Industry 4\.0 Initiative. We are committed to ensuring our state\-of\-the\-art “smart factory” products and services provide greater quality to our customers \& greater environmental and social value to our planet. We are unique in that we have a rich and storied history dating back to 1843, but that hasn't stopped us from evolving into a vibrant, diverse, global growth company.
What You’ll Also Get
Career Opportunity: Career paths aren’t linear here. Being part of our global company with 60\+ brands gives you the chance to grow and develop your skills along multiple career paths.
Benefits \& Perks
You’ll get a competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits plan that includes medical, dental, life, vision, wellness program, disability, retirement benefits, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, Paid Time Off, including paid vacation, holidays \& personal days, and tuition reimbursement. And, of course, discounts on Stanley Black \& Decker tools and products and well as discount programs for many other vendors and partners.
Learning \& Development:
Our lifelong learning philosophy means you’ll have access to a wealth of state\-of\-the\-art learning resources, including our Lean Academy and online university (where you can get certificates and specializations from renowned colleges and universities).
Diverse \& Inclusive Culture:
We pride ourselves on being an awesome place to work. We respect and embrace differences because that’s how the best work gets done. You’ll find we like to have fun here, too.
Purpose\-Driven Company:
You’ll help us continue to make positive changes in the local communities where we work and live as well as in the broader world through volunteerism, giving back and sustainable business practices.
EEO Statement:
All qualified applicants to Stanley Black \& Decker are considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran’s status or any other protected characteristic.
If you require reasonable accommodation to complete an application or access our website, please contact us at (860\) 827\-3923 or at [email protected] . Due to volume, we cannot respond to unrelated inquiries about the status of a completed application or resetting an account password.
Know Your Rights: Workplace discrimination is illegal (eeoc.gov)
Salary Context
This $110K-$178K range is below the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 1937 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 3,823 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 69% of the market. At Stanley Black & Decker, 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 $181,170 based on 12,692 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($144K) sits 20% below the category median. Disclosed range: $110K to $178K.
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.
Stanley Black & Decker AI Hiring
Stanley Black & Decker has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Towson, MD, US. Compensation range: $178K - $178K.
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
Get Weekly AI Career Intelligence
Salary data, skills demand, and market signals from 16,000+ AI job postings. Every Monday.