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About This Role
At T-Mobile, we invest in YOU! Our Total Rewards Package ensures that employees get the same big love we give our customers. All team members receive a competitive base salary and compensation package - this is Total Rewards. Employees enjoy multiple wealth-building opportunities through our annual stock grant, employee stock purchase plan, 401(k), and access to free, year-round money coaches. That’s how we’re UNSTOPPABLE for our employees!
This is not a remote position. T-Mobile is a hybrid work environment requiring work in the office three (3) days per week. The successful candidate will be located in either Seattle, Washington or Frisco, Texas areas.
Job Overview
The Principal Engineer, Commercial AI Forward Deployment is T-Mobile's senior IC AI delivery leader on the FDE team. This role owns the end-to-end delivery of net-new agentic AI solutions within an assigned business domain from initial scoping through production optimization. Working within requirements defined by TPMs and BU stakeholders, the Principal FDE independently owns the domain relationship, sets the technical agenda for the FDE team in the domain, and mentors FDEs working alongside them. Leading without formal authority, this role builds trust with BU operations leaders and translates business requirements into agentic AI solutions in days, not quarters. Performance is evaluated exclusively on validated ROI targets for each domain assignment, not on activity, tickets, or deployments shipped. This role reports to the Sr Manager or Sr Director, Agentic Automation & FDE.Job Responsibilities:
- Domain Ownership & BU Relationship: Full lifecycle ownership of net-new agentic AI delivery within the assigned domain from initial scoping through production optimization. Partner with TPMs and BU stakeholders to define requirements, map real workflows, and assess data and integration readiness. Build and maintain trust with BU operations leaders, managers, and end users. Present domain ROI outcomes and delivery roadmap to BU leadership quarterly.
- Agentic System Delivery & Iteration: Design and deliver net-new agentic AI solutions in live production environments. Architect and implement system integrations, RAG pipelines, prompt orchestration, and multi-agent workflows tailored to BU-specific needs. Run controlled A/B experiments in production cohorts to measure and document validated ROI impact. Instrument deployed systems with real-time logging and feedback collection for continuous improvement.
- System Integration & Data Engineering: Build and own integration layers connecting AI solutions to BU tools and data sources (CRM, billing, inventory, contract repositories). Normalize BU-specific datasets for AI system consumption. Identify and close data quality gaps that limit solution accuracy or reliability. Feed domain-specific insights back into the practice through structured engineering handoffs.
- FDE Practice Leadership: Mentor and technically guide FDEs co-deployed in the domain or adjacent domains. Contribute to FDE practice standards including engagement methodology, diagnostic frameworks, responsible AI review processes, and data security guidelines. File bi-weekly reports documenting failure modes, edge cases, and performance gaps. Participate in rotation planning and knowledge transfer for incoming FDEs.
- Strategic AI Delivery & Responsible AI: Serve as the technical accountability point for AI safety, data privacy, and responsible AI compliance within the domain. Ensure all delivered solutions meet T-Mobile's data governance and security standards, including CPNI and PII requirements. Partner with TPMs and practice leadership to translate domain delivery learnings into practice improvements. Represent FDE validated ROI outcomes in cross-functional senior leadership forums.
Required Education:
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, or related technical field. Master's Degree preferred; relevant equivalent experience accepted.
Required Work Experience:
- 7-10 years Production engineering experience including 3+ years delivering LLM-based agentic systems: prompt engineering, RAG architecture, agent orchestration, system integrations. Track record of delivering AI solutions that measurably improved a business outcome metric in production. Demonstrated ability to work within TPM-driven requirements processes and translate business needs into technical delivery.
Preferrefd Work Experience:
- More than 10 years Prior experience in a solutions engineering, forward deployment, or embedded technical role at a high-growth AI or cloud company. Experience navigating complex stakeholder environments from frontline operators through C-suite. Background in enterprise technology adoption or change management.
Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
- Python Engineering: 7+ years production Python (required), plus proficiency in at least one of Go, TypeScript, or Java. Architects complex agentic systems and reviews and guides others' technical designs.
- LLM System Architecture: Demonstrated hands-on expertise designing and deploying LLM-based production systems: prompt engineering, RAG architecture, agent orchestration, performance benchmarking, and hallucination mitigation at scale.
- Data Engineering & System Integration: Proficiency in complex SQL, ETL/ELT pipeline design, and architecture of system integrations connecting AI solutions to enterprise data sources at scale.
- Cloud-Native Deployment & MLOps: Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, infrastructure on AWS (primary) or Azure/GCP; vector database experience; MLOps: model versioning, A/B testing, monitoring, and observability.
- Stakeholder Leadership: Proven ability to lead technical delivery in ambiguous environments without formal authority. Adapts communication to frontline operators, middle management, and C-suite. Comfortable operating across enterprise business domains.
Responsible AI & Data Governance: Designs and implements guardrails, security controls, and responsible AI review processes for all agentic solutions. Ensures compliance with T-Mobile's data privacy standards including CPNI and PII requirements. Serves as technical accountability point for AI safety and compliance within the domain. *
#LI-Corporate
- At least 18 years of age
- Legally authorized to work in the United States
Travel:
Travel Required (Yes/No): Yes
DOT Regulated:
DOT Regulated Position (Yes/No): No
Safety Sensitive Position (Yes/No): No
Total Target Cash Earnings Opportunity: $197,400 - $356,040 National Base Pay Range: $164,500 - $296,700 The Total Target Cash Earnings Opportunity represents the expected total cash compensation for this role at target performance, combining base salary and annual incentive opportunity. Actual earnings may be higher or lower depending on individual performance and overall company results.
The base pay range reflects the compensation component of this opportunity. The candidate’s actual pay will be based on various factors, such as work location, qualifications, and experience, so the actual starting pay will vary within this range. To find the pay range for this role based on hiring location, click here. At T-Mobile, employees in regular, non-temporary roles are eligible for an annual bonus or periodic sales incentive or bonus, based on their role. Corporate employees are eligible for a year-end bonus based on individual and/or company performance and which is set at a percentage of the employee’s eligible earnings in the prior year. Certain positions in Customer Care are eligible for monthly bonuses based on individual and/or team performance. The incentive component included in the Total Target Cash Earnings Opportunity reflects target performance. Actual earnings included in the Total Target Cash Earnings Opportunity reflect target performance; actual payouts may vary.
At T-Mobile, our benefits exemplify the spirit of One Team, Together! A big part of how we care for one another is working to ensure our benefits evolve to meet the needs of our team members. Full and part-time employees have access to the same benefits when eligible. We cover all of the bases, offering medical, dental and vision insurance, a flexible spending account, 401(k), employee stock grants, employee stock purchase plan, paid time off and up to 12 paid holidays - which total about 4 weeks for new full-time employees and about 2.5 weeks for new part-time employees annually - paid parental and family leave, family building benefits, back-up care, enhanced family support, childcare subsidy, tuition assistance, college coaching, short- and long-term disability, voluntary AD&D coverage, voluntary accident coverage, voluntary life insurance, voluntary disability insurance, and voluntary long-term care insurance. We don't stop there - eligible employees can also receive mobile service & home internet discounts, pet insurance, and access to commuter and transit programs! To learn about T-Mobile’s amazing benefits, check out www.t-mobilebenefits.com*.*
Never stop growing! ###
As part of the T-Mobile team, you know the Un-carrier doesn’t have a corporate ladder–it’s more like a jungle gym of possibilities! We love helping our employees grow in their careers, because it’s that shared drive to aim high that drives our business and our culture forward. By applying for this career opportunity, you’re living our values while investing in your career growth–and we applaud it. You’re unstoppable! ###
T-Mobile USA, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All decisions concerning the employment relationship will be made without regard to age, race, ethnicity, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, national origin, religious affiliation, marital status, citizenship status, veteran status, the presence of any physical or mental disability, or any other status or characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. Discrimination, retaliation or harassment based upon any of these factors is wholly inconsistent with how we do business and will not be tolerated. ###
Talent comes in all forms at the Un-carrier. If you are an individual with a disability and need reasonable accommodation at any point in the application or interview process, please let us know by emailing [email protected] or calling 1-844-873-9500. Please note, this contact channel is not a means to apply for or inquire about a position and we are unable to respond to non-accommodation related requests.
Salary Context
This $164K-$356K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $178K across 1623 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 9,079 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At T-Mobile, 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 $211,950 based on 13,048 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $229,300. This role's midpoint ($260K) sits 23% above the category median. Disclosed range: $164K to $356K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($256,000) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $111,000; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $229,300; Director: $272,300; VP: $235,830.
T-Mobile AI Hiring
T-Mobile has 9 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Product Manager. Positions span Frisco, TX, US, Frisco, TX, New York, NY. Compensation range: $195K - $356K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 6% (531 positions) offer remote work, while 8,478 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (3,078 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,646 roles, $261,000 median); Los Angeles (1,486 roles, $210,000 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 9,079 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 106 entry-level, 4,384 mid-level, 3,343 senior, and 1,246 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (531 positions). The remaining 8,478 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($256,000 median, 66 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 457 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 55 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 9,079 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,862), AI Product Manager (453), AI Software Engineer (451). 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 (106) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,384) and senior (3,343) 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 1,246 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (531 positions), with 8,478 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 $213,000. Top-quartile roles start at $263,911, and the 90th percentile reaches $318,400. 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 $256,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $141,440. 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 (1,649 postings), Aws (898 postings), Azure (723 postings), Rag (671 postings), Gcp (536 postings), Pytorch (434 postings), Claude (410 postings), Kubernetes (406 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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