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About This Role
NVIDIA is redefining computing at the intersection of graphics, accelerated computing, and AI. We are building platforms that make advanced AI useful wherever people create, work, and build. Doing what has never been accomplished before requires imagination, inventive thinking, and outstanding people. Come join a diverse, encouraging team where you can help build the future generation of computing.
We are seeking a highly technical and strategic Developer Relations leader to grow NVIDIA's local AI ecosystem. This role will work directly with the companies and collaborative software projects building the models, runtimes, tools, agent platforms, and applications that bring AI onto PCs, workstations, and personal AI. You will be a trusted partner to external developers and an internal advocate for their needs. You will help partners adopt and optimize NVIDIA technologies, remove integration barriers, and deliver excellent on\-premise and combined AI experiences. The ideal candidate combines hands\-on AI software expertise, strong partner instincts, and can transform emerging ecosystem opportunities into repeatable technical and go\-to\-market outcomes. Does this sound like your dream job? Those who are motivated and passionate about bringing new technologies to market should join us!
What you'll be doing:
- Own a portfolio of strategic local AI partners as NVIDIA's primary relationship and technical engagement lead, from opportunity identification and onboarding through integration, launch, and ongoing adoption.
- Serve as a trusted technical advisor and problem solver for model developers, AI application and tool providers, agent\-platform companies, inference\-runtime teams, and open\-source communities.
- Drive adoption and optimization of NVIDIA accelerated computing, AI runtimes, SDKs, and developer tools across local and hybrid AI workflows on Windows and Linux.
- Define joint partner plans with clear technical milestones, success criteria, launch readiness, and measurable ecosystem outcomes.
- Engage directly with partner engineers, technical leaders, founders, and development groups to understand goals, unblock integrations, and promote guidelines for performance, reliability, and user experience.
- Represent the voice of the partner inside NVIDIA, translating field insights into actionable product requirements and roadmap feedback for engineering and product teams.
- Collaborate with engineering, product management, Developer Technology, business development, marketing, legal, and sales to structure and complete complex partner engagements.
- Create and scale technical enablement through reference integrations, samples, tutorials, workshops, playbooks, and partner\-ready launch materials.
- Represent NVIDIA at developer events, conferences, community forums, and partner briefings, communicating a clear and credible point of view on local AI.
- Track emerging models, frameworks, runtimes, developer behaviors, and competitive shifts, then turn those signals into partner priorities and ecosystem strategy.
What we need to see:
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 8\+ years of professional experience in software engineering, developer relations, developer advocacy, solutions architecture, technical partnerships, or a similar technology position.
- Strong hands\-on experience with AI/ML software, including generative AI models, inference, model serving, or AI application development.
- Working knowledge of GPU acceleration and the software layers that shape local AI performance, such as inference frameworks (vLLM, SGLang, Llama.cpp, Ollama), model formats, quantization, memory management, and hardware\-aware optimization.
- Experience building and leading technical relationships with software companies, independent software vendors, startups, or open\-source projects from initial engagement through production delivery.
- Demonstrated ability to structure complex technical engagements, negotiate requirements, prioritize issues, and coordinate execution across engineering, product, marketing, business, sales, and legal teams.
- Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to audiences ranging from hands\-on developers to senior executives.
- Strong judgment, initiative, and follow\-through in fast\-moving environments with incomplete information and multiple stakeholders.
- Ability to occasionally travel as needed for partner engagements, developer events, and industry conferences (less than 20% of the time).
Ways to stand out from the crowd:
- Hands\-on experience building or optimizing local AI applications, inference engines, agent systems, or developer tools for GPU\-accelerated PCs and workstations.
- Experience with LLMs, VLMs, diffusion models, speech models, retrieval systems, tool use, or agentic application patterns.
- Depth in one or more performance\-critical areas such as quantization, distributed or multi\-GPU inference, low\-latency serving, heterogeneous compute, or model packaging and deployment.
- A track record of turning partner integrations into successful launches, developer adoption, compelling technical content, and durable ecosystem relationships.
- Prior experience with GPU manufacturers, AI platform companies, model providers, cloud or edge AI providers, research labs, or high\-growth developer\-tool companies.
Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 184,000 USD \- 287,500 USD for Level 4, and 224,000 USD \- 356,500 USD for Level 5\.
You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.
Applications for this job will be accepted at least until July 14, 2026\.
This posting is for an existing vacancy.
NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.
NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.
Salary Context
This $184K-$356K 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
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 NVIDIA, 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 $218,750 based on 3,817 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $200,000. This role's midpoint ($270K) sits 24% above the category median. Disclosed range: $184K to $356K.
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.
NVIDIA AI Hiring
NVIDIA has 26 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, AI Software Engineer, Data Scientist, AI Product Manager. Positions span CA, US, Santa Clara, CA, US, Austin, TX, US. Compensation range: $195K - $690K.
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
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