AI Infrastructure Engineer - Principal FDE

$60K - $135K Fort Mill, SC, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

AnthropicAwsAzureBedrockPrompt EngineeringPython

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

Job Title: AI Infrastructure Engineer \- Principal FDE

City: FORT MILL

State/Province: South Carolina

Posting Start Date: 8/7/26

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading technology services and consulting company focused on building innovative solutions that address clients’ most complex digital transformation needs. Leveraging our holistic portfolio of capabilities in consulting, design, engineering, and operations, we help clients realize their boldest ambitions and build future\-ready, sustainable businesses. With over 230,000 employees and business partners across 65 countries, we deliver on the promise of helping our customers, colleagues, and communities thrive in an ever\-changing world. For additional information, visit us at www.wipro.com.

About the Role:

Wipro is building a Forward Deployed AI Engineering team to support an AI\-first infrastructure organization. The goal is to embed AI engineers directly across infrastructure teams, build a centralized AI engineering pool that can rapidly solve business problems, and automate manual infrastructure processes wherever possible.

Early AI initiatives on the account have already delivered a 60% reduction in migration effort, a 50% reduction in modernization effort, and an automated vulnerability discovery and remediation pipeline. These engineers are expected to act as transformation catalysts — not traditional developers — using AI as the first approach to solving problems and inspiring the existing engineering teams around them.

Target infrastructure domains

Cloud

Network

Compute

Storage

Database Platforms

Infrastructure Security

Automation

Purpose

Work directly with infrastructure teams to identify opportunities, build AI\-powered solutions, automate manual processes, and accelerate engineering productivity.

Key Responsibilities

Embed within infrastructure teams and work closely with business and infrastructure leaders.

Identify automation opportunities independently, without waiting for instructions.

Build AI\-assisted solutions using Cursor and GitHub Copilot.

Develop infrastructure automation and build AI workflows and AI agents.

Modernize infrastructure platforms and improve cloud migration efficiency.

Build vulnerability remediation automation.

Demonstrate proof\-of\-concepts rapidly and deliver measurable productivity improvements.

Mentor existing engineering teams and promote AI adoption across the organization.

Required Skills \& Experience

Programming \& scripting: Hands on strong Python development, scripting, and APIs.

Infrastructure \& cloud: infrastructure engineering, cloud platforms (AWS preferred), Infrastructure as Code (IaC), DevOps, and automation.

AI\-assisted engineering: GitHub Copilot, Cursor AI, prompt engineering, LLM\-based software development, and AI\-assisted coding.

Ways of working: strong problem solving, a self\-starter mindset, and excellent communication.

Preferred Skills

Agentic AI workflows and AI orchestration

Infrastructure modernization and platform engineering

Security automation and vulnerability management

FinOps and observability

Cloud migration

Principal FDE (future / escalation profile)

Not part of this hiring wave, but the likely escalation profile as the engagement scales.

  • End\-to\-end enterprise AI architecture
  • Provider trade\-offs — Anthropic vs. Bedrock vs. Vertex vs. Azure
  • AI governance and build\-vs\-buy decisions
  • ROI / KPI ownership
  • Executive presence with CTO / CDO / CFO stakeholders

Mandatory Skills: AI ML Ops Infrastructure .

Experience: 5\-8 Years .

The expected compensation for this role ranges from $60,000 to $135,000 .

Final compensation will depend on various factors, including your geographical location, minimum wage obligations, skills, and relevant experience. Based on the position, the role is also eligible for Wipro's standard benefits including a full range of medical and dental benefits options, disability insurance, paid time off (inclusive of sick leave), other paid and unpaid leave options.

Applicants are advised that employment in some roles may be conditioned on successful completion of a post\-offer drug screening, subject to applicable state law.

Wipro provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. Applications from veterans and people with disabilities are explicitly welcome.

Reinvent your world. We are building a modern Wipro. We are an end\-to\-end digital transformation partner with the boldest ambitions. To realize them, we need people inspired by reinvention. Of yourself, your career, and your skills. We want to see the constant evolution of our business and our industry. It has always been in our DNA \- as the world around us changes, so do we. Join a business powered by purpose and a place that empowers you to design your own reinvention.

Salary Context

This $60K-$135K 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

Company Wipro
Title AI Infrastructure Engineer - Principal FDE
Location Fort Mill, SC, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $60K - $135K
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 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At Wipro, 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

Anthropic (6% of roles) Aws (28% of roles) Azure (22% of roles) Bedrock (6% of roles) Prompt Engineering (14% of roles) Python (52% 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 $214,900 based on 6,420 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400. This role's midpoint ($97K) sits 55% below the category median. Disclosed range: $60K to $135K.

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.

Wipro AI Hiring

Wipro has 12 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, Data Scientist, MLOps Engineer, AI Architect. Positions span Dallas, TX, US, Richfield, MN, US, Austin, TX, US. Compensation range: $78K - $375K.

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

Based on 6,420 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $214,900. 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 15% of the 4,317 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.
Wipro 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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