Senior Technology Leadership Professional; AI & Operations Engineering

$106K - $147K Frisco, TX, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

Prompt Engineering

About This Role

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We are seeking a highly skilled and hands\-on Senior Technology Leadership Professional to join our AI \& Operations Engineering (AIOps Engineering) team. This role is ideal for a technical leader who thrives at the intersection of software engineering, AI, operational intelligence, data analytics, and production support.

You will be responsible for designing, developing, and supporting AI\-powered operational solutions while leading the resolution of complex production issues across enterprise applications and platforms. This is not a traditional management role—successful candidates must be comfortable being hands\-on with architecture, coding, troubleshooting, system integrations, and incident remediation.Key Responsibilities

  • Design, develop, and implement AI, GenAI, analytics, and operational intelligence solutions.
  • Perform hands\-on coding, debugging, testing, and deployment across multiple technology stacks.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve critical and non\-critical production issues affecting enterprise applications and platforms.
  • Conduct root cause analysis and implement permanent corrective actions to improve reliability.
  • Build and maintain integrations, APIs, data pipelines, dashboards, and operational tools.
  • Collaborate with development, product, reliability, and automation teams to deliver scalable solutions.
  • Develop operational intelligence capabilities, predictive insights, and decision\-support solutions.
  • Drive continuous improvement through automation, AI adoption, and engineering best practices.
  • Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across initiatives.

Required Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree
  • 5 or more years of technical experience
  • 2 or more years experience with Automation and AI technologies
  • Excellent communication skills with the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively across varying levels of personnel
  • Experience with unit testing and mocking
  • Must be passionate about contributing to an organization focused on continuously improving consumer experiences
  • 2\+ years designing and implementing AI/ML solutions

Demonstrated expertise in:

  • Machine Learning (ML)
  • Generative AI (GenAI)
  • Large Language Models (LLMs)
  • AI agents and workflow automation
  • Prompt engineering
  • Data pipelines and model evaluation

Preferred Qualifications

  • PMP Certified
  • Six Sigma Certified
  • MBA or other Advanced Degree
  • Demonstrated ability running large scale projects
  • Experience with technology solutions assessments and/or strategy planning oversight

Use your skills to make an impact

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Why Humana?

You'll experience the following perks as a full\-time Humana employee:

Humana offers a variety of benefits to promote the best health and well\-being of our employees and their families. We design competitive and flexible packages to give our employees a sense of financial security—both today and in the future, including:

  • Health benefits effective day 1
  • Paid time off, holidays, volunteer time and jury duty pay
  • Recognition pay
  • 401(k) retirement savings plan with employer match
  • Tuition assistance
  • Scholarships for eligible dependents
  • Parental and caregiver leave
  • Employee charity matching program
  • Network Resource Groups (NRGs)
  • Career development opportunities

Interview Format:

As part of our hiring process for this opportunity, we will be using an interviewing technology called HireVue to enhance our hiring and decision\-making ability. HireVue allows us to quickly connect and gain valuable information from you pertaining to your relevant skills and experience at a time that is best for your schedule.

Work\-At\-Home Requirements

To ensure Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees’ ability to work effectively, the self\-provided internet service of Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees must meet the following criteria:

  • At minimum, a download speed of 25 Mbps and an upload speed of 10 Mbps is required; wireless, wired cable or DSL connection is suggested.
  • Satellite, cellular and microwave connection can be used only if approved by leadership.
  • Employees who live and work from Home in the state of California, Illinois, Montana, or South Dakota will be provided a bi\-weekly payment for their internet expense.
  • Humana will provide Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees with telephone equipment appropriate to meet the business requirements for their position/job.
  • Work from a dedicated space lacking ongoing interruptions to protect member PHI / HIPAA information.

\#LI\-Remote

Social Security Task

Humana values personal identity protection. Please be aware that applicants may be asked to provide their Social Security Number, if it is not already on file. When required, an email will be sent from Humana@myworkday.com with instructions on how to add the information into your official application on Humana’s secure website.

Limited Geography Remote \- This is a remote position but located within a specific geography.

Work at Home Requirements To ensure Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees’ ability to work effectively, the self\-provided internet service of Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees must meet the following criteria: At minimum, a download speed of 25 Mbps and an upload speed of 10 Mbps is required; wireless, wired cable or DSL connection is suggested. In certain roles, the minimum recommended internet speed required by Humana may not be sufficient for business needs. Humana reserves the right to require associates to upgrade their internet service if necessary. Work from a dedicated space lacking ongoing interruptions to protect member PHI / HIPAA information. Travel: While this is a remote position, occasional travel to Humana's offices for training or meetings may be required. Scheduled Weekly Hours

40Pay Range

The compensation range below reflects a good faith estimate of starting base pay for full time (40 hours per week) employment at the time of posting. The pay range may be higher or lower based on geographic location and individual pay will vary based on demonstrated job related skills, knowledge, experience, education, certifications, etc.

$106,900 \- $147,000 per year

This job is eligible for a bonus incentive plan. This incentive opportunity is based upon company and/or individual performance.Description of Benefits

Humana, Inc. and its affiliated subsidiaries (collectively, “Humana”) offers competitive benefits that support whole\-person well\-being. Associate benefits are designed to encourage personal wellness and smart healthcare decisions for you and your family while also knowing your life extends outside of work. Among our benefits, Humana provides medical, dental and vision benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan, time off (including paid time off, company and personal holidays, paid parental and caregiver leave), short\-term and long\-term disability, life insurance and many other opportunities.About us

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About Humana: Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) is a leading U.S. healthcare company. Through our Humana insurance services and our CenterWell healthcare services, we make it easier for the millions of people we serve to achieve their best health – delivering the care and service they need, when they need it. These efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare and Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. Learn more about what we offer at Humana.com and at CenterWell.com.

Equal Opportunity Employer

It is the policy of Humana not to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability or protected veteran status. It is also the policy of Humana to take affirmative action, in compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, to employ and to advance in employment individuals with disability or protected veteran status, and to base all employment decisions only on valid job requirements. This policy shall apply to all employment actions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, upgrading, promotion, transfer, demotion, layoff, recall, termination, rates of pay or other forms of compensation and selection for training, including apprenticeship, at all levels of employment.

Salary Context

This $106K-$147K range is in the lower quartile 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 Humana
Title Senior Technology Leadership Professional; AI & Operations Engineering
Location Frisco, TX, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $106K - $147K
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 Humana, 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

Prompt Engineering (15% 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. This role's midpoint ($126K) sits 42% below the category median. Disclosed range: $106K to $147K.

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.

Humana AI Hiring

Humana has 5 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Positions span New York, NY, US, Frisco, TX, US. Compensation range: $147K - $208K.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 14% (508 positions) offer remote work, while 3,180 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,045 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (810 roles, $277,088 median); Los Angeles (397 roles, $215,000 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 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.
Humana 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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