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About This Role
We are so glad you are interested in joining Sutter Health!
Organization:
SHSO\-Sutter Health System Office\-BayPosition Overview:
\*\*\*\*Please Note: While this position is listed as hybrid, regular in\-office attendance is required. Candidates should be prepared to commute to the San Francisco office on a consistent basis to support team collaboration and business needs.\*\*\*\*
Responsible for leading the design, build, and maintain Sutter Health’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) infrastructure, including end to end pipelines for ML and large language models (LLM) that support analytics, data science, and enterprise AI use cases. This includes how AI models and associated data are ingested, processed, trained, deployed, monitored, governed, and secured across cloud and on premises environments. Ensures that AI systems meet high standards of performance, reliability, and compliance, enabling the organization to safely and effectively integrate AI capabilities into clinical, operational, and strategic workflows.
Utilizing modern artificial intelligence operations (AIOps) and machine learning operations (MLOps) practices, leads the operationalization of models, maintenance of scalable AI services, monitoring of system behavior, and automation of deployment workflows. Works with structured and unstructured data, clinical data models, healthcare data standards, and modern cloud platforms. Develops and validates ML models, integrates researcher built or vendor provided algorithms, and contributes to AI platform architecture and tooling. Sets standards for high quality, secure, and well governed AI systems that support advanced analytics, automation, and intelligent applications.Job Description:
\*\*\*\*Please Note: While this position is listed as hybrid, regular in\-office attendance is required. Candidates should be prepared to commute to the San Francisco office on a consistent basis to support team collaboration and business needs.\*\*\*\*
EDUCATION:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Information Systems, or related field; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
TYPICAL EXPERIENCE:
- 5 years recent relevant experience
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:
- Advanced experience with Azure cloud services, including containerized model hosting, Azure ML, secure environment management, and cloud‑native deployment patterns.
- Strong proficiency in MLOps / LLMOps practices, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability, model versioning, canary/AB rollouts, and drift monitoring.
- Hands‑on expertise in building and operating AI/ML/LLM pipelines (ingestion preprocessing training inference monitoring), using Python, modern container frameworks, and orchestration systems.
- Experience integrating researcher‑built or vendor‑provided ML/LLM models into production workflows, including API‑based embedding, performance tuning, and secure data handling.
- Familiarity with healthcare data standards and environments, such as clinical data models, unstructured clinical text, and privacy/security expectations in regulated domains.
SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE:
- Relevant experience in AI/ML Engineering and LLM/MLOps
- Experience building end to end AI/ML pipelines, including training, deployment, monitoring, and retraining loops.
- Strong programming skills in Python and familiarity with modern ML/LLM frameworks and libraries.
- Hands on experience with Azure, including services such as Fabric, Foundry, Container Apps, AKS, and Application Insights.
- Experience implementing AIOps / MLOps / LLM Ops practices, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability, and versioned deployments.
- Experience with GitOps principles using GitHub Actions or similar tools.
- Understanding of healthcare data models, including Epic Clarity, FHIR, HL7, and Caboodle.
- Ability to evaluate and integrate machine learning models into production systems and support model lifecycle management.
- Strong debugging skills across distributed systems, containerized environments, and cloud platforms.
- Ability to work in cross functional environments with clinicians, data scientists, architects, and engineering teams.
- Ability to produce high quality documentation and communicate complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders.
- Detail oriented, organized, and effective at prioritizing multiple concurrent initiatives.
- Familiarity with HIPAA, PHI/PII security requirements, and regulatory considerations for healthcare AI.
*These Principal Accountabilities, Requirements and Qualifications are not exhaustive but are merely the most descriptive of the current job. Management reserves the right to revise the job description or require that other tasks be performed when the circumstances of the job change (for example, emergencies, staff changes, workload, or technical development).*
Job Shift:
DaysSchedule:
Full TimeDays of the Week:
Monday \- FridayWeekend Requirements:
As NeededBenefits:
YesUnions:
NoPosition Status:
ExemptWeekly Hours:
40Employee Status:
Regular
Sutter Health is an equal opportunity employer EOE/M/F/Disability/Veterans.
Pay Range is $172,848\.00 to $276,577\.60 / annual salary*The compensation range may vary based on the geographic location where the position is filled. Total compensation considers multiple factors, including, but not limited to a candidate’s experience, education, skills, licensure, certifications, departmental equity, training, and organizational needs. Base pay is only one component of Sutter Health’s comprehensive total rewards program. Eligible positions also include a comprehensive benefits package.*
Salary Context
This $172K-$276K 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 Sutter Health, 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. Disclosed range: $172K to $276K.
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.
Sutter Health AI Hiring
Sutter Health has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in San Francisco, CA, US. Compensation range: $276K - $276K.
Location Context
AI roles in San Francisco pay a median of $277,088 across 810 tracked positions. That's 27% above the national 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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