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About This Role
### AI DevOps Engineer
- JR\-159048
- Hybrid
- Redwood City
- Chicago
- Sales
- Full time
Who are we?
Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company®, shortening the path to connectivity to enable the innovations that enrich our work, life and planet.
A place where bold ideas are welcomed, human connection is valued, and everyone has the opportunity to shape their future.
A career at Equinix means being at the center of shaping what comes next and amplifying customer value through innovation and impact. You’ll work across teams, influence key decisions, and help shape the path forward. You’ll find belonging, purpose, and a team that welcomes you—because when you feel valued, you’re empowered to do your best work.Job Summary
The AI DevOps Engineer in Global Value Advisory team at Equinix is a specialized pre sales individual contributor role that is responsible for supporting the development and delivery of technical PoCs with customers and technology partners, creation of demos and architectural blueprints, doing quantitative performance studies, writing technical whitepapers, and doing presentations and workshops to customers that demonstrate the value of Equinix.
The ideal candidate has a builder mindset who leverages AI coding tools to build solutions. This person needs to have high hands\-on dexterity in building, measuring and deploying complex distributed solutions that consist of components from multiple service providers. They need to have solid background in networking, data and AI technologies. We are looking for a person who is self\-motivated and keeps abreast of fast\-moving technological changes and has an innovative and problem\-solving mindset in an environment where constant change is the norm. We need a team\-first person because in this job one must constantly collaborate with internal teams, customers and partners.
Responsibilities
- Create and validate AI solution demos and blueprints with internal product team and partners
- Helps sales team with customer meetings and workshops
- Research, evaluate and stay ahead of emerging tools, techniques and technologies
- Provide technical support for new product initiatives through participation beta testing of new solutions
- Identify, develop, update and implement standards and procedures
- Conduct quantitative experiments and write technical white papers
- Work with staff members in the CRO, GMPO, and CDIO organizations on system infrastructure problems, technical concerns
- Meet with technical sales team members to convert customer requirements into a technical Statement of Work.
- Create Proofs of Concepts that integrate the Equinix product suite into customer solutions. Looking for a hands\-on person who can stitch together reference architectures and solutions.
- Help with internal training of technical staff on emerging technologies
Qualifications
- New to Career in deploying AI solutions
- New to Career in customer facing solution engineering environment (will train)
- Advanced level skills in AI and Cloud technologies
- Basic/Medium level skills in networking technologies
- BSc or MSc degree in Computer Science
Technologies include
- AI Technologies: Advanced Hands\-On experience leveraging the following:
+ AI Gateway technologies like LiteLLM
+ Agentic AI Platforms like LangChain/LangFlow/LangGraph
+ AI OS like OpenClaw/NemoClaw
+ NVIDIA RunAI/MissionControl
+ Vector/Graph DB, Delta\-sharing, RAG solutions
+ MCP/A2A Protocol
+ Inferencing technologies like vLLM and Ollama
+ End to End AI solution deployment life cycle
- Networking Technologies: Basic/Medium understanding of Networking technologies:
+ L3 Technologies \- OSPF, BGP, IS\-IS, IPv4, IPv6, Multicast
+ L2 Technologies \- Ethernet, VLAN, VXLAN
+ Network platforms like Firewalls, Loadbalancers, SD\-WANs, DDoS
- Cloud and Virtualization Technologies: Advanced hands\-on experience leveraging:
+ Docker container technology
+ Cloud AI platforms like Sagemaker, Vertex AI, Azure AI Foundry
+ Cloud storage/data platforms like S3, BigQuery, Redshift
+ Serverless Platforms Google CloudRun, AWS Lambda
This posting is a new position within our organization.
The targeted pay range for this position in the following location is / locations are:
United States \- Redwood City Office GHQ : 178,000 \- 266,000 USD / Annual
United States \- Chicago Office CHO1 : 163,000 \- 245,000 USD / Annual
Our pay ranges reflect the minimum and maximum target for new hire pay for the full\-time position determined by role, level, and location.The pay range shown is based on our compensation structure in place at the time of posting and may be updated periodically based on business needs. Individual pay is based on additional factors including job\-related skills, experience, and relevant education and/or training.
The targeted pay range listed reflects On\-Target Earnings or OTE, which is base pay plus commissions, and does not include equity or benefits. Equity may be offered depending on the position.
Equinix Benefits
As an employee, you become important to Equinix’s success. We ensure all your benefits are in line with our core values: competitive, inclusive, sustainable, connected and efficient. We keep them competitive within the current marketplace to ensure we’re providing you with the best package possible. So, wherever you are in your career and life, you’ll be able to enhance your experience and bring your whole self to work.
Employee Assistance Program: An Employee Assistance program is available to all employees.
US Benefits: \- Insurance: You may enroll in health, life, disability and voluntary plans that are designed for you and your eligible family members. \- Retirement: You and Equinix may contribute to a retirement plan to help you plan for your financial future. \- Paid Time Off (PTO) and Paid Holidays: You will receive an accrued amount of PTO each pay period along with various paid holidays for you to rest and recharge. Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits. Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to specific plan or program terms.
Equinix is committed to ensuring that our employment process is open to all individuals, including those with a disability. If you are a qualified candidate and need assistance or an accommodation, please let us know by completing form.
Equinix is an Equal Employment Opportunity and, in the U.S., an Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to unlawful consideration of race, color, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, place of birth, citizenship, sex, pregnancy / childbirth or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or domestic partnership status, age, veteran or military status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, political / organizational affiliation, status as a victim or family member of a victim of crime or abuse, or any other status protected by applicable law.
We use artificial intelligence in our hiring process. Learn more here.
This posting is a new position within our organization.
Salary Context
This $163K-$245K range is above the median 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 Equinix, 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. This role's midpoint ($204K) sits 7% below the category median. Disclosed range: $163K to $245K.
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.
Equinix AI Hiring
Equinix has 4 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Product Manager, AI/ML Engineer. Positions span Dallas, TX, US, Chicago, IL, US. Compensation range: $204K - $403K.
Location Context
AI roles in Chicago pay a median of $205,100 across 97 tracked positions. That's 6% below 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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