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About This Role
Job Details
---------------
Location:
Charlotte, NC
Category:
Data \& Analytics
Employment Type:
Full time, Remote
Job Ref:
R2625794\-166
Sr Data Engineer \- GE07BE
We’re determined to make a difference and are proud to be an insurance company that goes well beyond coverages and policies. Working here means having every opportunity to achieve your goals – and to help others accomplish theirs, too. Join our team as we help shape the future.
The Hartford is seeking Senior AI Machine Learning Engineer to build Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) services for the Global Specialty Applied AI team.
The Hartford is developing industry‑leading AI and machine learning capabilities to improve the various facets of the Global Specialty underwriting experience. On the Global Specialty Applied AI team, we utilize the latest AI products and frameworks to accelerate the processes that our partners touch day to day and advance the speed and intelligence with which we make our decisions. As a Senior Machine Learning AI Engineer, you will play a critical role in designing, building, and operationalizing production‑grade AI solutions—partnering closely with product, engineering, and platform leaders to deliver measurable impact.
Our core values
- We build AI solutions, not models. We are thoughtful in supporting the end\-to\-end business problem, with an eye to systems design.
- We are trusted and transparent. We collaborate tightly with our partners and are mindful of their capacity to absorb change.
- We provide assets that are safe to buy. Our products are delivered with a full monitoring solution to ensure our products continue to deliver as expected.
- We will earn the right to influence. With humble confidence, we listen carefully to learn from our customers and become partners in problem solving.
- We are practical and evolutional. We first deliver a minimally viable product and over time expand its sophistication based on feedback.
Responsibilities
- Research, experiment with, and implement suitable Generative and ML algorithms, tools and technologies.
- Participate in identifying and assessing opportunities i.e. value of new data sources and analytical techniques and technology, to ensure ongoing competitive advantage.
- Review work with leadership and partners on an ongoing basis to calibrate deliverables against expectations.
- Accountable for deployment design, development and maintenance of both traditional ML and AI models.
- Work with junior engineers and peers to provide mentorship and thought leadership. Be comfortable presenting new concepts to technical audiences.
- Collaborate with partners Enterprise Data, Applied AI, Business, Cloud Enablement Team, and Enterprise Architecture teams
- Delivery of critical milestones for model deployment in the AWS and GCP clouds.
- Adopt and promote MLOps best practices to the Data Science community.
Minimum Requirements
- Must be authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future.
- Master’s degree in related field or 5\+ years of equivalent experience in a research or DevOps function.
- Development experience developing solutions within AWS, GCP or both.
- Experience developing repeatable architectural patterns; ability to identify redundancies and eliminate them with these patterns.
- Experience building and deploying API services within the Cloud.
- Experience building CICD pipeline using Jenkins or equivalent
- Experience with IAC (Infrastructure as Code) including Cloud Formation, Terraform, or equivalents
- Experience in Unix, git, and strong object oriented development experience using Python
- Experience in end to end model development lifecycle, from ideation through post production monitoring.
- Experience with workflow automation platforms (Apache Airflow, Autosys, similar)
- Basic understanding of Data Science model development life cycle
- Familiarity with emerging data centric technologies such generative AI, Agentic workflows, and embedding LLM’s into automated processes
This role will have a Hybrid work schedule, with the expectation of working in an office (Columbus, OH, Chicago, IL, Hartford, CT or Charlotte, NC) 3 days a week (Tuesday through Thursday).
Candidates must be authorized to work in the US without company sponsorship. The company will not support the STEM OPT I\-983 Training Plan endorsement for this position.
Compensation
The listed annualized base pay range is primarily based on analysis of similar positions in the external market. Actual base pay could vary and may be above or below the listed range based on factors including but not limited to performance, proficiency and demonstration of competencies required for the role. The base pay is just one component of The Hartford’s total compensation package for employees. Other rewards may include short\-term or annual bonuses, long\-term incentives, and on\-the\-spot recognition. The annualized base pay range for this role is:
$117,200 \- $175,800
Equal Opportunity Employer/Sex/Race/Color/Veterans/Disability/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity or Expression/Religion/Age
Salary Context
This $117K-$175K 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 The Hartford, 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 ($146K) sits 19% below the category median. Disclosed range: $117K to $175K.
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.
The Hartford AI Hiring
The Hartford has 5 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, Data Engineer. Positions span Columbus, OH, US, Charlotte, NC, US, Hartford, CT, US. Compensation range: $151K - $234K.
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
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