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About This Role
Job Title
Network Systems Research Engineer, Levels III, IV, Sr I
Agency
Texas A\&M University System Offices
Department
Center for Applied Communications and Networks
Proposed Minimum Salary
Commensurate
Job Location
Bryan, Texas
Job Type
Staff
Job Description
The System Offices is one of several system members within the Texas A\&M University System representing one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation, with a network of 12 universities, a comprehensive health science center, eight state agencies, Texas A\&M – Fort Worth and the Texas A\&M \- RELLIS Campus. The Texas A\&M University System mission is to provide education, conduct research, commercialize technology, offer training, and deliver services for the people of Texas and beyond.
The System Offices, within the Texas A\&M University System, provides an outstanding benefits package including, but not limited to: competitive health benefits; paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays; a defined benefit retirement plan to include an employer contribution through Teachers Retirement System of Texas (TRS); if applicable, a defined contribution retirement plan to include an employer contribution through an approved ORP vendor: additional voluntary tax deferred annuity (TDA) options; tuition assistance; and wellness programs to promote work/life balance.
Salary:
Commensurate with experience.
Job Description Summary:
The Network Systems Research Engineer Ill\-IV or Senior Network Systems Engineer I, under general direction, is responsible for conducting and supporting basic and applied research on networks and networked applications. This role utilizes knowledge of existing networks to design, implement, and test creative and innovative solutions to new and emerging challenges in next generation networks. The primary responsibilities include supporting researching initiatives within the field of networking and networked applications. Performs as subject matter expert on research projects.
Responsibilities:
*Research Proposals 5%*
- Conducts evaluation and analysis of technical approaches to research opportunities.
- Conducts research and evaluation of appropriate equipment, protocols, designs, procedures, and tools to address research requirements.
- Produces network designs and other technical aspects of the research proposal submission.
*Network Design and Documentation 15%*
- Establishes standards and plans for new or upgraded research networks.
- Collects and evaluates input from researchers, systems administrators, contractors, and vendors to develop specifications, requirements, and plans for networks.
- Designs activities for network research projects.
- Recommends research network designs.
- Establishes standards and processes used to detail network engineering designs, and assists with planning and mapping methods, procedures, problems, and repairs to those standards and processes.
- Designs research network system security measures, configuration backup, and security methods.
*Network Configuration, Installation, and Testing 20%*
- Collaborates with research team and develops work plans and time schedules for projects including outlining phases, identifying personnel, and networking requirements.
- Establishes standards for the implementation of new technology deployments and research network integration and interoperability testing.
- Configures, installs, and tests research networks.
- Tests the methods and plans used to certify sophisticated research networking projects to required installation design standards.
*Network Research, Operations, and Support 20%*
- Establishes protocols and processes for problem management and support.
- Provides Tier I, II and Ill support for network issues and assists the rest of the research team as needed on other support issues.
- Performs diagnostics and repair of complex hardware and software problems.
- Monitors and evaluates effectiveness of established processes and protocols.
- Establishes procedures for compliance with network security regulations.
- Performs security assessments and audits to ensure compliance with government standards.
- Designs and implements security measures, data backup, and protection methods.
- Develops disaster recovery plans for network equipment and systems.
- Drives to other locations on campus, on other campuses, and to vendor and other locations for meetings and to assist with research network installation and operations.
- Supports researchers with gathering data, such as packet captures, for research and other projects.
*Research Project Presentations and Reporting 15%*
- Contributes to the preparation of monthly/quarterly updates to project sponsors.
- Contributes to the presentation of monthly/quarterly project updates to project sponsors.
- Collects technical updates for monthly/quarterly updates to project sponsors.
- Collaborates with the research team to help define the contents of project deliverable reports.
- Collections data and other artifacts needed for project reporting.
- Assists with the preparation of project deliverables and reports.
- Assists with the preparation of presentations to project sponsors and at industry symposia.
*Training and Development 10%*
- Stays abreast of emerging technologies and best practices.
- Engages in ongoing training and development opportunities to enhance technical skills and knowledge in research computing engineering.
*Supervision and Training 10%*
- Provides technical leadership to student teams.
- Leads, motivates, develops, and coaches Graduate Assistant and Student Technicians.
- Models ethical, regulatory, and performance standards.
- Models and promotes the open sharing of information, dedication to the team's mission, customer commitment, collaboration, and cooperation.
- Participates in training and professional development with a special emphasis on leadership development, management, industry related acumen, and project and operations management.
- Conducts professional development trainings for team members.
*Other Duties as Assigned 5%*
Education and Experience:
Network Systems Research Engineer III
- Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Six years of network/wireless networking related experience.
Network Systems Research Engineer IV
- Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Eight years of network/wireless networking related experience.
Senior Network Systems Research Engineer I
- Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Nine years of network/wireless networking related experience.
Registration, Certifications, and Licenses:
- Ability to obtain a US Passport and the ability to travel domestically and internationally.
- Ability to obtain Secret\-level US security clearance based on a background investigation
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
- LANs and L2 switching: such as copper, fiber, WiFi, VLANs, spanning tree
- IP networking and L3 switching/routing: such as IP subnetting, direct, static, and dynamic routing
- Supporting services: such as DHCP, NTP, DNS
- Skilled at using word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications to produce professional\-quality proposals and documentation.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Ability to work digitally (paperless) utilizing Microsoft 365 (Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, ... ), Adobe, and other tools.
- Willing and able to occasionally work outside normal office hours.
- Able to install/remove equipment such as servers, switches, radios and antennas, in racks or mounted on walls or polls or other locations.
- Ability to multitask and work cooperatively with others
Preferred Qualifications:
Licenses and Certifications:
- IT certifications in Networking, Network Security, Juniper, Cisco or other routing and security categories.
Network Technology:
- Monitoring: such as SNMP, logging
- Network security: such as firewalls, NAT/PAT
Other Requirements:
*This position requires the ability to perform the following essential functions, with or without reasonable accommodation:*
- *Sit or stand for extended periods*
- *Walk, use as step stool*
- *Climb ladders to reach radio locations*
*Work will generally be performed in an environmentally controlled office space; however, occasional activities at outdoor facilities may be required, which could involve exposure to varying weather conditions, including extreme temperatures. Reasonable accommodations may be provided to enable individuals with disabilities to perform these essential functions.*
This is a security\-sensitive position and is restricted to U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents only. Only complete applications will be considered for employment at The Texas A\&M System Offices. Incomplete job application data could result in your application being rejected without an option to reapply. A cover letter and resume may be required in addition to a completed employment application.
All positions are security\-sensitive. Applicants are subject to a criminal history investigation, and employment is contingent upon the institution’s verification of credentials and/or other information required by the institution’s procedures, including the completion of the criminal history check.
Equal Opportunity/Veterans/Disability Employer.
Role Details
About This Role
Research Engineers bridge the gap between research and production. They implement papers, build experiment infrastructure, optimize training pipelines, and make research prototypes production-ready. They're the engineers who make research work at scale.
The role sits at a unique intersection. You need to understand the math well enough to implement novel architectures correctly, and you need the engineering chops to make them run efficiently on distributed systems. When a research scientist has a breakthrough idea, you're the person who turns it from a notebook prototype into a training pipeline that runs on 256 GPUs.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, Research Engineer positions make up 2% of the market. At Texas A&M University, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Research Engineer roles are growing as AI labs recognize that research velocity depends on engineering quality. The role is less competitive than Research Scientist (no PhD required), but the bar for engineering skill is very high. These roles are concentrated at major labs and well-funded startups.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week involves: implementing a new attention mechanism from a recent paper, profiling and optimizing a training pipeline that's bottlenecked on data loading, building evaluation infrastructure for a new benchmark, debugging distributed training issues across a GPU cluster, and pair-programming with a research scientist on their latest experiment. The work is deeply technical.
Research Engineer roles are growing as AI labs recognize that research velocity depends on engineering quality. The role is less competitive than Research Scientist (no PhD required), but the bar for engineering skill is very high. These roles are concentrated at major labs and well-funded startups.
Skills Required
Strong software engineering fundamentals plus ML knowledge. Python, C++, and CUDA experience are common requirements. You'll need to read papers and turn ideas into working code. Distributed systems experience (especially distributed training) is highly valued. Performance optimization skills separate great candidates from good ones.
Experience with large-scale training infrastructure (FSDP, DeepSpeed, Megatron), GPU programming (CUDA, Triton), and the internals of ML frameworks (PyTorch internals, custom autograd functions) is what makes candidates stand out. The best research engineers can debug issues that span the full stack from GPU memory management to numerical precision to algorithmic correctness.
Strong postings mention the team's recent research, the infrastructure scale, and the specific technical challenges. They often list the research areas you'd support. Look for roles that emphasize both implementation quality and research understanding.
Compensation Benchmarks
Research Engineer roles pay a median of $280,000 based on 147 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000.
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 AI Architect ($254,798). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
Texas A&M University AI Hiring
Texas A&M University has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Research Engineer. Based in Bryan, TX, 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 Research Engineer roles include Software Engineer, ML Engineer, Research Intern.
From here, career progression typically leads toward Senior Research Engineer, Research Scientist, ML Architect.
This is one of the best entry points into AI research without a PhD. Build a strong engineering portfolio with ML projects, contribute to open-source ML frameworks, and demonstrate that you can implement complex ideas correctly and efficiently. The transition to Research Scientist is possible with published first-author work, which some research engineer roles support.
What to Expect in Interviews
Technical screens test both engineering skill and research understanding. Expect coding rounds with performance-critical implementations (GPU optimization, efficient data loading). Be prepared to discuss papers relevant to the team's research area and explain how you'd implement key ideas. System design questions focus on training infrastructure: distributed training, experiment tracking, and compute resource management.
When evaluating opportunities: Strong postings mention the team's recent research, the infrastructure scale, and the specific technical challenges. They often list the research areas you'd support. Look for roles that emphasize both implementation quality and research understanding.
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).
Research Engineer roles are growing as AI labs recognize that research velocity depends on engineering quality. The role is less competitive than Research Scientist (no PhD required), but the bar for engineering skill is very high. These roles are concentrated at major labs and well-funded startups.
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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