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About This Role
Who is Sonar?
Sonar is driving the future of agent\-centric software development. As the leader in AI code verification and governance, we solve a critical problem: ensuring that software generated by AI\-assisted developers or autonomous agents is reliable, secure, and maintainable.
Integrating seamlessly with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini, and Devin, we help over 75% of the Fortune 100 build trusted, reliable, compliant software. Customers who use Sonar are 44% less likely to report an outage due to AI\-generated code.
We believe code verification is the critical missing link in the Agent\-Centric Development Cycle (AC/DC). Industry giants like Nvidia, ServiceNow, Booking.com, Goldman Sachs, AstraZeneca, and Ford Motor Company count on us to provide independent, explainable, consistent review and governance of their AI\-generated code via products like:
- SonarQube: The world’s leading AI code review and verification platform.
- SonarQube Foundation Agent: Currently topping the leaderboards for agentic software repair.
- SonarSweep \& Sonar Context Augmentation: Providing the enterprise\-grade context and constraints agents need to be truly effective.
Our team operates across global hubs in Austin, Bochum, Dubai, Geneva, London, Singapore, Tokyo, and Washington D.C. We move with a mindset we call CODE:
- Committed to our customers and community.
- Obsessed with quality.
- Deliberate in our decisions.
- Effective as one team.
With over $400M in revenue and profitable, fast\-paced growth, we are building the backbone of the AI software revolution. If you’re hungry to have an impact, want to build at a fast pace, and ready to work at the forefront of AI, we want to hear from you.
Position description
As Director of Product Marketing, you will lead Sonar's narrative for the era of agentic software development. You will define how the world's largest engineering organizations adopt AI coding tools, agents, and LLMs with confidence, knowing the code these tools produce is secure, reliable, and maintainable.
This is a hands\-on, externally facing role. You will stand in front of customers and technical audiences to make Sonar's story land, and you will make our sales team the most confident and well\-equipped team in the market. Your work will directly shape how enterprises think about code quality and security as AI changes how software gets built.
### What you will do
- Define and evangelize: Own the positioning and messaging hierarchy for the Sonar platform, grounded in customer outcomes rather than feature lists, and carry that narrative across every stage of the customer journey.
- Shape the AI narrative: Build Sonar's point of view on the AC/DC (agentic SDLC), including AI coding tools, coding agents, and LLM\-generated code, based on hands\-on use of tools like Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Windsurf.
- Present to customers and the market: Deliver compelling presentations directly to customers and prospects, and represent Sonar on stage at major AI coding and developer events as a recognized voice in the space.
- Energize sales: Build and deliver enablement content and positioning that does more than inform the sales team. It should get them genuinely excited and confident to sell in AI\-driven deals.
- Orchestrate cross\-functionally: Act as the connective link between Product, Engineering, Sales, Demand Gen, Customer Success, PR, and Analyst Relations to keep go\-to\-market aligned.
- Track the market: Maintain a sharp view of the competitive landscape across DevOps, AppSec, and AI tools, and turn that into input for product and sales strategy.
- Build analyst and PR relationships: Partner with communications on analyst briefings (Gartner, Forrester) and media relationships that reinforce Sonar's leadership in code quality and security.
### Experience and qualifications
The ideal candidate will:
- Proven leadership: 10\+ years in Product Marketing within DevOps, AppSec, or Enterprise Software, including 2\+ years at Principal level or higher. Experience working closely with developers is a strong plus.
- Technical depth: Engineering degree or equivalent technical background preferred, with real understanding of the SDLC, CI/CD pipelines, and modern AI\-native development.
- Hands\-on agentic AI experience: Regular, current use of agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, or similar) and a clear, informed point of view on how AI agents are changing software engineering. This is not theoretical knowledge, it is practiced.
- Public and customer\-facing presence: A track record of delivering strong presentations directly to customers and speaking at AI coding or developer conferences. You are comfortable being the face of the product in front of a room.
- Sales enablement that lands: Experience building enablement programs that get sales teams excited to sell, not just trained on talking points.
- Strategic storytelling: Ability to connect technical detail to business value for both developers and executive buyers.
- Analyst relations: Experience engaging industry analysts and participating in major research evaluations (Gartner Magic Quadrant, Forrester Wave).
- Communication mastery: Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to simplify complex ideas for any audience.
In\-office culture
We're intentional about this. We believe the best teams are built in the room together. Three anchor days — Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays — create the collaboration rhythm that makes a hub office worth having.
Candidates need to be genuinely based in the location the role is posted — if that's not where you are today, we're happy to support relocation for the right person.
We value diversity, equity, and inclusion
At Sonar, we believe that our diversity is our strength. We are a global company that values and respects different backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute their best. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and welcome all qualified applicants, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.
If you need any accommodation, please reach out to us at \[email protected].
All offers of employment at Sonar are contingent upon the results of a comprehensive background check and reference verification conducted before the start date.
Applications that are submitted through agencies or third party recruiters will not be considered.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
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 Sonar, 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. Director-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $272,150.
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.
Sonar AI Hiring
Sonar has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Positions span Austin, TX, US, San Mateo, CA, US.
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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