Lead AI/ML Engineer

$100K - $180K Englewood, CO, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

Drift AiEmbeddingsPythonPytorchTensorflow

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

Lead AI/ML Engineer

We are a fast-growing international IT company based in Greenwood Village, CO that specializes in analytics and AI solutions for financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, government and oil and gas. We are looking for a highly motivated Lead AI/ML Engineer to guide technical direction and build reliable AI solutions in a small, rapidly growing company. This is a hands-on role combining engineering, technical leadership and mentoring.

No Visa Sponsorship is available for this position. No paid relocation.

This is an in-person position in Denver Metro, Colorado -Not a remote opportunity.

Job Description

  • Lead the design, development and delivery of AI/ML solutions, from problem definition and experimentation through production deployment.
  • Work with product teams and customers to translate business needs into technical plans, measurable success criteria and delivery priorities.
  • Build data preparation, feature engineering, training and inference pipelines with database and software engineers.
  • Select and evaluate models using appropriate baselines and validation methods; assess accuracy, reliability, latency and cost.
  • Establish model versioning, automated testing, deployment and monitoring practices, including drift detection and retraining.
  • Mentor engineers, lead design and code reviews, and set standards for maintainable code and reproducible experiments.
  • Partner with QA and DevOps to troubleshoot production issues and protect customer data throughout the model lifecycle.

This position is an in-office, full-time role. Our office is in the Denver Technological Center area, and provides excellent in-building facilities including garage parking, a gym, and proximity to a Light Rail station.

Required Skills

Strong Python and SQL skills, with experience using frameworks such as scikit-learn, PyTorch or TensorFlow.

Practical understanding of statistics, supervised and unsupervised learning, feature engineering and model evaluation.

Experience deploying and maintaining ML models in production, including APIs, data pipelines and performance monitoring.

Ability to identify data quality issues, prevent data leakage and evaluate models against business requirements.

Experience with Git, Linux/UNIX, automated tests, CI/CD and reproducible development workflows.

Ability to lead technical decisions, review code, mentor engineers and communicate tradeoffs to technical and business teams.

Desirable Skills

Experience with large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings and systematic evaluation of generated outputs.

Experience with anomaly detection, time-series forecasting or analytics for financial and industrial applications.

Familiarity with PostgreSQL or Oracle, containers, cloud platforms and tools for experiment tracking and model deployment.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

5+ years of relevant software or ML engineering experience, including delivery of production ML systems and experience leading technical projects or mentoring engineers.

Comprehensive Compensation and Benefits Package

  • Health, Dental, Vision, Life, STD & LTD
  • 120 hours Accrued PTO in first year
  • 401k Employer Match 100% vested
  • Flexible schedule

Pay: $100,000.00 - $180,000.00 per year

Benefits:

  • Flexible schedule

Work Location: In person

Salary Context

This $100K-$180K range is below the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $175K across 1356 roles with salary data).

View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Company ToolCASE LLC
Title Lead AI/ML Engineer
Location Englewood, CO, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $100K - $180K
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 8,943 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 75% of the market. At ToolCASE LLC, 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

Drift Ai (1% of roles) Embeddings (2% of roles) Python (16% of roles) Pytorch (5% of roles) Tensorflow (3% 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 $212,000 based on 11,866 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $228,700. This role's midpoint ($140K) sits 34% below the category median. Disclosed range: $100K to $180K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($253,100) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $110,408; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $228,700; Director: $272,250; VP: $235,000.

ToolCASE LLC AI Hiring

ToolCASE LLC has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Englewood, CO, US. Compensation range: $180K - $180K.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 6% (521 positions) offer remote work, while 8,351 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (2,878 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,416 roles, $263,811 median); Los Angeles (1,340 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 8,943 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 175 entry-level, 4,132 mid-level, 3,268 senior, and 1,368 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (521 positions). The remaining 8,351 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($253,100 median, 57 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 419 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 51 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 8,943 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,739), AI Product Manager (403), AI Software Engineer (402). 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 (175) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,132) and senior (3,268) 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 1,368 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (521 positions), with 8,351 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 $213,380. Top-quartile roles start at $264,148, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,310. 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 $253,100 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 (1,422 postings), Aws (808 postings), Azure (638 postings), Rag (555 postings), Gcp (457 postings), Pytorch (433 postings), Claude (341 postings), Kubernetes (337 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 11,866 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $212,000. 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 6% of the 8,943 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.
ToolCASE LLC 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.

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