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About This Role
*If you are a current State of Maine employee, please submit your application through the internal application process using the Find Jobs report in PRISM. Seasonal employees who do not have PRISM access should apply through the State’s career page and indicate on the application that they have previously worked for the State.*
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Office of Information Technology
Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence
Opening Date: July 31, 2026
Closing Date:August 14, 2026
Grade / Admin Unit: 32 / Confidential
Job Class Code:CH32
Salary: $85,685\.60 \- $121,080\.96\*/Annually (\*includes a 10% recruitment and retention stipend)
Position Number: 016303081
Location: Augusta
Telework: Available
*Currently, this position is not eligible for visa sponsorship or STEM OPT extensions.*
You are a talented leader who understands working with a technical team and are driven toward success. You focus on providing value for your customers; you know that what you build today must work tomorrow. You enjoy clearing hurdles as you strive for excellence. If this describes you, we want you on our TEAM!!
OVERVIEW:
The Department of Administrative and Financial Services (DAFS) Office of Information Technology (OIT) also known as MaineIT provides information technology support to over 13,000 employees. MaineIT oversees large scale enterprise applications that support the critical and diverse business needs of the State of Maine and its agencies. MaineIT is seeking a highly talented individual who leverages their expertise in leading IT Managers to success.
We are seeking an individual who will represent our C.A.R.E. values in all that they do. At MaineIT we:
- Practice C ustomer\-focus , ensuring that our customers are heard, and their needs are met
- Hold ourselves to a high level of A ccountability by being transparent with our stakeholders
- Maintain an effective level of R esponsiveness by providing timely updates in a proactive manner
- Strive to provide E mpathy driven, people\-focused services by applying emotional intelligence skills and behaviors
ABOUT THE JOB DETAILS:
The primary focus of the Public Service Coordinator (PSC) series is to provide consultative, professional advice and expertise about significant issues to agency and executive management. The PSC is often referred to as the subject matter expert. The PSC regularly exercises independent judgment on important matters affecting the agency’s operations, such as, legal, human resources, finance, technological resources, policy development, advocacy, an agency’s relationship with other agencies, the Governor’s Office, the Legislature and its constituents. A PSC may supervise staff or provide leadership for selected activities, but the primary focus is to provide consultative expertise. The Deputy Director, Artificial Intelligence, will provide Artificial Intelligence services to the entire Executive Branch. Work is performed under limited administrative direction.
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS \& ABILITIES:
- Knowledge of Artificial Intelligence (LLMs, Prompt Engineering, Risks, Retrieval Augmented Generation, Model Context Protocol, Agentic, etc.)
- Experience in Project Management
- Experience in Organization\-Building from scratch
- Experience in Organization \& Operational Model Development from Scratch
- Experience in Fiscal Management \& Budgeting from scratch
- Horizontal Relationship Building across the Executive Branch
- Knowledge of Cybersecurity in the Government Sector
- Knowledge of Privacy in the Government Sector
- Demonstrated experience managing and leading cross\-functional IT teams
- Experience with vendor and contract management, including Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and in ensuring policy and contract compliance
- Expertise in IT strategy development and aligning technology initiatives with business goals
- Demonstrated knowledge and experience with low\-code platforms
- Experience in data governance, including data quality, data privacy, and compliance regulations
- Excellent communication skills, both oral and written, across a wide spectrum of audiences
- Strategic thinker with the ability to implement long\-term IT plans and digital strategies that align with organizational goals
- Strong decision\-making skills, especially under pressure, with the ability to prioritize conflicting demands
WHAT WILL YOU DO?
- Technical Administration: Provide technical guidance across multiple AI projects.
- Policy and Process Administration: Administers the MaineIT AI Policy, and makes continuous improvement.
- Staffing and Personnel Resource Administration: Aligns hiring and staffing decisions to ensure the right person with the right skills is in the right place at the right time.
- Business Relationship Management: Works closely with agency partners to build a valued, consultative relationship..
- Fiscal Administration: Responsible for IT budgets in collaboration with their Agency partners, monitoring and advising their Agency partners on any budgetary concerns.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
Seven (7\) years of progressively responsible experience in application system analysis and/or programming and a minimum of one (1\) year in a working supervisory role. A master’s degree in computer science may be substituted for one (1\) year of programming experience.
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:
Please submit a cover letter along with a current resume and three (3\) professional references .
In order for us to properly determine if you meet the minimum qualifications for any posting, you must be sure your resume includes the month and year for any relevant experience listed. Your resume should include the duties and responsibilities associated with each position. Any experience that was not full\-time employment should be identified as such.
CONTACT INFORMATION: For more information or questions specific to the position, please contact [email protected]
*The selected candidate will be required to pass the required background checks (fingerprinting may be required) as a condition of employment.*
BENEFITS OF WORKING FOR THE STATE OF MAINE:
No matter where you work across Maine state government, you find employees who embody our state motto—"Dirigo" or "I lead"—as they provide essential services to Mainers every day. We believe in supporting our workforce's health and wellbeing with a valuable total compensation package, including:
- Work\-Life Balance – Rest is essential. Take time for yourself using 13 paid holidays, 12 days of sick leave, and 3\+ weeks of vacation leave annually. Vacation leave accrual increases with years of service, and overtime\-exempt employees receive personal leave.
- Health Insurance Coverage– The State of Maine pays85%\-100% of employee\-only premiums ($11,857\.68\-$13,950\.24 annual value), depending on salary. Use this chart to find the premium costs for you and your family, including the percentage of dependent coverage paid by the State.
- Health Insurance Premium Credit– Participation decreases employee\-only premiums by 5%. Visit the Office of Employee Health and Wellness for more information about program requirements .
- Dental Insurance– The State of Maine pays 100% of employee\-only dental premiums ($365\.28 annual value).
- Retirement Plan– The State of Maine contributes 18\.86% of pay to the Maine Public Employees Retirement System (MainePERS), on behalf of the employee.
- Gym Membership Reimbursement – Improve overall health with regular exercise and receive up to $40 per month to offset this expense.
- Health and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts – Set aside money pre\-tax to help pay for out\-of\-pocket health care expenses and/or daycare expenses.
- Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness– The State of Maine is a qualified employer for this federal program. For more information, visit the Federal Student Aid office .
- Living Resources Program – Navigate challenging work and life situations with our employee assistance program.
- Parental leave is one of the most important benefits for any working parent. All employees who are welcoming a child—including fathers and adoptive parents—receive forty\-two (42\) consecutive calendar days of fully paid parental leave . Additional, unpaid leave may also be available, under the Family and Medical Leave Act .
- Voluntary Deferred Compensation– Save additional pre\-tax funds for retirement in a MaineSaves 457(b) account through payroll deductions.
State employees are eligible for an extensive and highly competitive benefits package , covering many aspects of wellness. Learn about additional wellness benefits for State employees from the Office of Employee Health and Wellness .
Note: Benefits may vary somewhat according to specific collective bargaining agreements and are prorated for anything less than full\-time.
*There's a job and then there's purposeful, transformative work. Our aim is to create a workplace where you can learn, grow, and continuously refine your skills. Applicants demonstrate job requirements in differing ways, and we appreciate that many skills and backgrounds can make people successful in this role.*
*As an Equal Opportunity employer, Maine State Government embraces a culture of respect and awareness. We are committed to creating a strong sense of belonging for all team members, and our process ensures an inclusive environment to applicants of all backgrounds including diverse race, color, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, physical or mental disability, religion, age, ancestry, national origin, familial status or genetics.*
*If you’re looking for a great next step, and want to feel good about what you do, we’d love to hear from you. Please note reasonable accommodations are provided to qualified individuals with disabilities upon request.*
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Salary Context
This $85K-$121K range is in the lower quartile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $175K across 2162 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 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At State of Maine, 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. Director-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $274,554. This role's midpoint ($103K) sits 52% below the category median. Disclosed range: $85K to $121K.
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.
State of Maine AI Hiring
State of Maine has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Augusta, ME, US. Compensation range: $121K - $121K.
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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