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About This Role
### About EarnIn
As one of the first pioneers of earned wage access, our passion at EarnIn is building products that deliver real\-time financial flexibility for those with the unique needs of living paycheck to paycheck. Our community members access their earnings as they earn them, with options to spend, save, and grow their money without mandatory fees, interest rates, or credit checks.
We're fortunate to have an incredibly experienced leadership team, combined with world\-class funding partners like A16Z, Matrix Partners, DST, Ribbit Capital, and a very healthy core business with a tremendous runway. We're growing fast and are excited to continue bringing world\-class talent onboard to help shape the next chapter of our growth journey.
POSITION SUMMARY
EarnIn is making AI\-native engineering a core capability — not an initiative, but how we design, build, and ship. We're not hiring a software engineer who dabbles in AI. We're hiring an AI builder who also writes great software — someone who looks at every step of how we design, build, test, and ship, and asks: *why isn't an agent doing this?* This is not a side project. The agents and harnesses you build here will run in production, making real decisions for real people — people who depend on EarnIn to access their pay when it matters most. If that bar excites you rather than intimidates you, keep reading.
You'll work at the intersection of platform engineering, developer experience, and applied AI — partnering with architects, domain leads,, and product engineers to build the tools, patterns, and guardrails that make AI adoption fast, safe, and durable. The Mountain View base salary range for this full\-time position is $228,000 \- $279,000, plus equity and benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. This is a hybrid position in Mountain View that requires in\-office work 2 days a week.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
*Agents that take real actions.* You'll design how agents think — prompts, reasoning chains, tool calls, and the full architecture beneath them. From MCP servers and agent scaffolding to context harnesses and a Skills Marketplace, you're building the layer every squad at EarnIn builds on. Not a proof of concept. Production infrastructure.
*A PDLC that doesn't look like 2022\.* The product development lifecycle is overdue for a rethink. You'll challenge each stage — from scoping and design through to review, testing, deployment, and monitoring — and replace manual friction with agentic workflows wherever it makes sense. Evaluation pipelines, automated PR hygiene, deployment gating, generation\-to\-merge metrics: you'll build the scaffolding that makes governed AI fast, not slow.
*Evals that actually mean something.* You'll own the evaluation infrastructure — building the pipelines, benchmarks, and quality gates that tell us whether our AI is working, degrading, or ready to ship. That means designing eval harnesses for AI\-assisted workflows, setting generation\-to\-merge and review latency baselines, and making model quality visible and trustworthy across teams. If you've built evals that caught real problems before they hit production, you'll fit right in.
*Pilots that graduate to production.* EarnIn's engineering leads are running experiments. You'll be the person who takes what's working and turns it into something the next team can fork and ship in a week. Less "interesting prototype," more "thing we rely on." You'll build reusable libraries, templates, and reference implementations that give squads a running start on AI integration, so no one has to solve the same problem twice
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
- Teams across engineering can ship AI\-assisted features faster, with fewer rework loops
- The harnesses you build are actively used and well\-documented
- AI pilot quality and safety metrics are visible, trustworthy, and improving
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- 4\+ years of full\-time software engineering experience, with at least 2 years building tooling, platforms, or internal developer products
- Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent industry experience. We care about what you've built, not where you studied.
- Hands\-on experience with LLM integration patterns — prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, tool/function calling, and agent architectures
- Proficiency and comfort working across the stack when needed
- Experience with MCP, LangChain, or comparable orchestration frameworks
- Experience with open source LLM models
- Strong opinions about developer experience and a track record of building things other engineers actually use
YOU'LL STAND OUT IF YOU HAVE
- Hands\-on experience with reinforcement learning — especially RLHF, RLAIF, or reward modeling in applied product contexts
- Experience in fintech or regulated/security\-sensitive environments
- Hands\-on work with AI governance — bias evaluation, audit logging, model cards
- Exposure to multi\-step reasoning pipelines or human\-in\-the\-loop system design
\#LI\-Hybrid
At EarnIn, we believe that the best way to build a financial system that works for everyday people is by hiring a team that represents our diverse community. Our team is diverse not only in background and experience but also in perspective. We celebrate our diversity and strive to create a culture of belonging. EarnIn does not unlawfully discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, legally protected medical condition, family care status, military or veteran status, marital status, registered domestic partner status, sexual orientation, genetic information, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal laws. EarnIn is an E\-Verify participant.
EarnIn does not accept unsolicited resumes from individual recruiters or third\-party recruiting agencies in response to job postings. No fee will be paid to third parties who submit unsolicited candidates directly to our hiring managers or HR team.
Salary Context
This $228K-$279K 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 EarnIn, 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. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $230,000. This role's midpoint ($253K) sits 16% above the category median. Disclosed range: $228K to $279K.
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.
EarnIn AI Hiring
EarnIn has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Mountain View, CA, US. Compensation range: $279K - $279K.
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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