Senior Solutions Engineer, West US, AI Security

San Diego, CA, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

AwsAzureDockerGcpJavascriptKubernetesPython

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

Company Description

Lakera, a Check Point Company, is seeking a Solutions Engineer to accelerate sales velocity, increase customer success and shape the product experience as we scale. In this customer\-facing role, you’ll be the primary technical point of contact through the sales process and a resource for customer success. You’ll translate customer needs into solutions, architecting with Check Point's AI Defense Plane to help enterprises secure their AI stacks and unlock cutting\-edge use cases.

You’ll work closely with Sales, Customer Success, Product, and Engineering to ensure we deliver on our mission. With your blend of technical expertise, communication skills, and customer empathy, you’ll be at the forefront of AI security innovation.

About Lakera, a Check Point Company.

Lakera, a Check Point Company, is on a mission to ensure AI does what we want it to do. We are heading towards a future where AI agents run our businesses and personal lives. We're not just dreaming about the future; we're building the security foundation for it. We empower security teams and builders so that their businesses can adopt AI technologies and unleash the next phase of intelligent computing.

We work with Fortune 500 companies, startups, and foundation model providers to protect them and their users from adversarial misalignment. We are also the company behind Gandalf, the world’s most popular AI security game.

We move fast and work with urgency. We act as one team but expect everyone to take substantial ownership and accountability. We prioritize transparency at every level and are committed to always raising the bar in everything we do. We promote diversity of thought as we believe that creates the best outcomes

Job Description

  • Act as the primary technical point of contact for prospects evaluating our product. Understand their needs and design solutions that align with their infrastructure using our platform.
  • Partner with Customer Success to ensure customers onboard quickly and realize value from the platform.
  • Develop and maintain technical documentation and guides to streamline pre\-sales and guide post\-sales workflows.
  • Support product configuration and deliver minor technical changes required for prospect and customer implementations.
  • Feed prospect feedback directly into Product and Engineering, helping shape the roadmap and ensuring the platform evolves with real\-world needs.
  • Lay the foundation for a scalable Solutions Engineering function by building playbooks and repeatable best practices.

Qualifications

  • 5\+ years of experience as a Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, or similar role.
  • A track record of managing relationships with large, complex organizations, preferably with a deeply technical enterprise product.
  • Proficiency coding in the Python and Javascript ecosystems.
  • A track record of enabling large scale implementations in at least one of the hyperscalers (AWS,GCP, Azure). Preferred experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
  • An understanding of and experience navigating security, compliance, and IT processes and requirements when implementing B2B products at large enterprises.
  • Strong written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills with a comfort presenting in front of customers 1:1, in small groups, and at large conference venues.
  • A track record of working directly with customers of varying sizes, including large enterprises.
  • An organized, self\-starter approach with an eye for finding creative ways to get projects to the finish line.
  • A passion for what AI can do for the good of humanity and a desire to ensure that it is implemented in a secure and ethical way.
  • Comfortable in a small and fast moving startup environment.

Role Details

Title Senior Solutions Engineer, West US, AI Security
Location San Diego, CA, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary Not disclosed
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 Check Point Software Technologies, 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

Aws (30% of roles) Azure (24% of roles) Docker (10% of roles) Gcp (17% of roles) Javascript (6% of roles) Kubernetes (12% of roles) Python (51% 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.

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.

Check Point Software Technologies AI Hiring

Check Point Software Technologies has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Positions span Atlanta, GA, US, San Diego, CA, US, Irving, TX, US. Compensation range: $165K - $165K.

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.
Check Point Software Technologies 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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