Senior Machine Learning Engineer

$190K - $250K New York, NY, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

AwsAzureDockerGcpKubernetesPythonPytorchSagemakerTensorflowVertex Ai

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

About Us:

DailyPay is transforming the way people get paid. As a worktech company and the industry’s leading on demand pay solution, DailyPay uses an award\-winning technology platform to help America’s top employers build stronger relationships with their employees. This voluntary employee benefit enables workers everywhere to feel more motivated to work harder and stay longer on the job while supporting their financial well\-being outside of the workplace.

DailyPay is headquartered in New York City, with operations throughout the United States as well as in Belfast. For more information, visit DailyPay's Press Center.

The Role:

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We are seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to join our AI \& ML team in New York City. You will play a key role in maturing and scaling our machine learning infrastructure, ensuring the reliability, performance, and scalability of ML models in production. This role requires deep hands\-on experience with MLOps principles, cloud infrastructure, and a track record of delivering robust ML systems in a fast\-moving environment.

You will work closely with data scientists, engineers, and product stakeholders to deliver high\-quality ML solutions that directly impact DailyPay's core products. You are expected to operate with significant autonomy: defining work, identifying dependencies, and raising the bar for the team around you.

How You Will Make an Impact:

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  • Platform Ownership: Help architect and build DailyPay's unified ML platform \- a unified system for model development, deployment, and monitoring that serves as the backbone for every AI and ML capability at the company.
  • MLOps Architecture \& Delivery: Design and implement scalable ML pipelines covering model training, deployment, monitoring, and retraining. Own the delivery of end\-to\-end MLOps solutions with minimal oversight.
  • Cloud Infrastructure: Manage and optimize AWS infrastructure for machine learning workloads, balancing cost\-effectiveness, security, and availability.
  • CI/CD Pipeline Development: Build and maintain robust CI/CD pipelines for continuous integration and deployment of ML models and related infrastructure.
  • Monitoring \& Observability: Design monitoring and alerting systems for ML infrastructure and models using tools like Datadog. Proactively identify and resolve issues before they impact production.
  • Technical Leadership: Lead design discussions, contribute to architectural decisions, and establish team norms for how ML systems are built, tested, and maintained. Help identify and remove blockers.
  • Mentorship: Mentor junior engineers. Share domain knowledge and help build genuine technical depth on the team.
  • Security \& Compliance: Approach all engineering work with a security lens. Actively look for vulnerabilities in code and during peer reviews. Ensure ML pipelines handle sensitive data in accordance with company policy.

What You Bring to the Team:

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  • 5\+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, MLOps, or data engineering
  • Strong cloud platform proficiency: AWS preferred (SageMaker, Lambda, S3, EC2, IAM, ECS), or equivalent GCP (Vertex AI, Cloud Functions, GCS, Compute Engine, Cloud Run) or Azure (Azure ML, Functions, Blob Storage, VMs, AKS) experience
  • Proficiency in Python and experience with ML frameworks (scikit\-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch)
  • Solid CI/CD experience: GitHub Actions or equivalent; designing and operating deployment pipelines
  • Experience with infrastructure\-as\-code (Terraform or CloudFormation)
  • Knowledge of event streaming platforms (Apache Kafka or equivalent)
  • Experience with monitoring and observability tooling (Datadog, Prometheus, or Grafana)
  • Strong SQL skills and experience with data pipeline tooling (dbt, Glue, Snowflake)
  • Excellent communication skills; comfortable working across data science, engineering, and product teams

Nice to Haves:

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  • Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
  • Familiarity with microservices architecture and RESTful API design
  • Experience in fintech or regulated industries
  • Contributions to open\-source ML or MLOps projects

High\-performing cultures aren't built in silos, they thrive on partnership. At DailyPay, we Commit Together to an inclusive, professional environment where multifaceted perspectives are our greatest competitive advantage. We recognize that our team members don’t live “single\-issue lives,” and we lean into the wide\-ranging backgrounds and life stages that sharpen our collective decision\-making.

In our high\-trust environment, we empower you to Challenge Norms. We’ve created a space where it is safe to ask difficult questions, disrupt the status quo, and share bold perspectives without fear of professional fallout. We believe that by checking our own assumptions and staying curious about the experiences of others, we arrive at better, more innovative results.

We provide the space for you to do your best work through peer advocacy and transparent career development. If you are looking for a culture that values intellectual honesty, celebrates the unique lived experiences of its people, and thrives on collective success, you’ll find it here.

If you require reasonable accommodation for any aspect of the recruitment process, please send a request to peopleops@dailypay.com. All requests for accommodation will be addressed as confidentially as practicable.

DailyPay is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion or creed, alienage or citizenship status, political affiliation, marital or partnership status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, veteran status, gender, gender identity, pregnancy, childbirth (or related medical conditions), sex, sexual orientation, sexual and other reproductive health decisions, genetic disorder, genetic predisposition, carrier status, military status, familial status, or domestic violence victim status and any other basis protected under federal, state, or local laws.

Compensation Range: $190K \- $250K

Salary Context

This $190K-$250K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 1841 roles with salary data).

View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →

Role Details

Company DailyPay Inc
Title Senior Machine Learning Engineer
Location New York, NY, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $190K - $250K
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 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At DailyPay Inc, 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

Aws (30% of roles) Azure (24% of roles) Docker (10% of roles) Gcp (17% of roles) Kubernetes (12% of roles) Python (51% of roles) Pytorch (15% of roles) Sagemaker (5% of roles) Tensorflow (11% of roles) Vertex Ai (5% 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 $218,750 based on 3,817 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000. Disclosed range: $190K to $250K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.

DailyPay Inc AI Hiring

DailyPay Inc has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $250K - $250K.

Location Context

AI roles in New York pay a median of $220,000 across 1,045 tracked positions.

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 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 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 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). 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 (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) 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 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 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 $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. 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 $300,000 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 (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 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 3,817 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $218,750. 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 14% of the 3,708 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.
DailyPay Inc 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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