Interested in this AI/ML Engineer role at USAA?
Apply Now →Skills & Technologies
About This Role
Job ID
R0119703
Date posted
08/08/2026
Why USAA?
At USAA, our mission is to empower our members to achieve financial security through highly competitive products, exceptional service and trusted advice. We seek to be the \#1 choice for the military community and their families.
Embrace a fulfilling career at USAA, where our core values – honesty, integrity, loyalty and service – define how we treat each other and our members. Be part of what truly makes us special and impactful.
We are proud to support active\-duty military spouses. USAA roles may offer remote or hybrid flexibility for active\-duty military spouses consistent with applicable policy and business needs.
The Opportunity
The Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Engineer will be part of a dedicated AI engineering team that focuses on developing and implementing AI/ML solutions for all lines of business within USAA. This role provides excellent opportunities to learn and contribute to a variety of exciting areas including sentiment analysis and agentic AI applications to enable USAA to provide best in class service to our members with cutting edge technology. Responsibilities include data preprocessing, model training, building APIs, and building data pipelines.
We offer a flexible work environment that requires an individual to be in the office 4 days per week. This position can be based in one of the following locations: San Antonio, TX, or Plano, TX. Relocation assistance is not available for this position.
What you'll do:
- Contributes to the development, testing, implementation, and integration of processes with business applications that utilize machine learning model predictions and classifications to inform or drive business activities.
- Leverage understanding of models and collaborate with Data Scientists to refactor the code into IT maintainable solutions that follows best practices and meets appropriate coding standards.
- Adheres to and applies ML development standards and coding best practices.
- Works with cross\-functional team to contribute to machine learning projects throughout the machine learning lifecycle to include analysis, solution design, data pipeline engineering, testing, deployment, scheduling, production support, API development, and application integration in support of GenAI applications, ML frameworks/libraires, and ML models.
- Assists with designing and writing test scripts to verify data integrity and application of functionality. Reviews functionality of existing test scripts for understanding.
- Develops familiarity of machine learning engineering best practices by participating in trainings, reviewing documentation, and reading code from existing solutions.
- Configure, manage, and set up AI/ML infrastructure components in cloud/on\-prem environments for projects and the AI/ML community stakeholders. This includes AWS, GCP, graph databases.
- Ensures risks associated with business activities are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled in accordance with risk and compliance policies and procedures.
What you have:
- Bachelor's degree; OR 4 years of relevant education and/or experience; and
- 2\+ years of machine learning engineering, data engineering, or software development experience implementing data solutions.
- Programming skills using Python, SQL, etc.
- Working understanding of data engineering concepts.
- Working experience implementing machine learning solutions.
- Familiarity with Data Science principles and methodologies.
- Familiarity with statistical and predictive modeling approaches and machine learning concepts.
- Working experience using industry standard machine learning related libraries such as pandas, numPy, sci\-kit learn, etc.
- Effective communication skills with the ability to work effectively in a team\-oriented setting.
- Working knowledge of cloud platform fundamentals and familiarity with at least one platform e.g., AWS or GCP.
What sets you apart:
- Experience developing APIs
- Programming skills using FastAPI, OpenShift, Snowflake (or any similar platform), Java, etc.
- Financial services, insurance, banking, or other highly regulated industry experience.
- US military experience through military service or a military spouse/domestic partner
Compensation range: The salary range for this position is: $103,450 \- $197,730\.
USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this role. Please do not apply for this role if at any time (now or in the future) you will need immigration support (i.e., H\-1B, TN, STEM OPT Training Plans, etc.).
Compensation: USAA has an effective process for assessing market data and establishing ranges to ensure we remain competitive. You are paid within the salary range based on your experience and market data of the position. The actual salary for this role may vary by location.
Employees may be eligible for pay incentives based on overall corporate and individual performance and at the discretion of the USAA Board of Directors.
The above description reflects the details considered necessary to describe the principal functions of the job and should not be construed as a detailed description of all the work requirements that may be performed in the job.
Benefits: At USAA our employees enjoy best\-in\-class benefits to support their physical, financial, and emotional wellness. These benefits include comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans, 401(k), pension, life insurance, parental benefits, adoption assistance, paid time off program with paid holidays plus 16 paid volunteer hours, and various wellness programs. Additionally, our career path planning and continuing education assists employees with their professional goals.
For more details on our outstanding benefits, visit our benefits page on USAAjobs.com.
*Applications for this position are accepted on an ongoing basis, this posting will remain open until the position is filled. Thus, interested candidates are encouraged to apply the same day they view this posting.*
*USAA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.*
Salary Context
This $103K-$197K range is below the median 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 USAA, 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. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $194,400. This role's midpoint ($150K) sits 30% below the category median. Disclosed range: $103K to $197K.
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.
USAA AI Hiring
USAA has 7 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer. Based in San Antonio, TX, US. Compensation range: $197K - $273K.
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
Get Weekly AI Career Intelligence
Salary data, skills demand, and market signals from 16,000+ AI job postings. Every Monday.