Senior Machine Learning Engineer

$196K - $265K San Francisco, CA, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

EmbeddingsFaissLangchainLlamaindexMilvusPineconePrompt EngineeringPythonRagWeaviate

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

EvenUp is on a mission to close the justice gap using technology and AI. We empower personal injury lawyers and victims to get the justice they deserve. Our products enable law firms to secure faster settlements, higher payouts, and better outcomes for victims injured through no fault of their own in vehicle collisions, accidents, natural disasters, and more.

We are one of the fastest\-growing vertical SaaS companies in history, and we are just getting started. EvenUp is backed by top VCs, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, SignalFire, and Lightspeed. We are looking to expand our team with talented, driven, and collaborative individuals who seek to have a lasting impact. Learn more at www.evenuplaw.com.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

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At EvenUp, we leverage cutting\-edge AI to bring fairness and accessibility to the legal system. Tackling the most complex legal document challenges requires expertise in data quality, robust model development, and ongoing innovation.

We're looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to help build the models and systems powering Piai, our proprietary claims\-intelligence platform. You'll work across the ML stack \- from data pipelines to production model deployment \- alongside ML engineers, data scientists, and legal subject\-matter experts to turn raw legal and medical data into systems that directly improve outcomes for personal\-injury clients.

What You'll Do

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  • Design, build, and own production ML systems across the full lifecycle \- problem framing, data strategy, training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
  • Architect scalable data pipelines that handle structured, unstructured, and embeddings\-based data for training and inference.
  • Build reusable frameworks and infrastructure for model development, evaluation, and benchmarking.
  • Partner with data scientists and product managers to translate ambiguous business problems into concrete ML system designs.
  • Apply and productionize state\-of\-the\-art techniques across NLP, information retrieval, and generative AI where the problem calls for it.
  • Define and implement evaluation strategies \- quality metrics, human\-in\-the\-loop review, automated benchmarks \- to ensure model reliability.
  • Drive scalability and efficiency across ML workflows, from large\-scale data processing to real\-time inference.
  • Work with ML platform engineers to integrate models and frameworks into production environments.
  • Document system architectures and establish best practices that other engineers build on.
  • Mentor other engineers and contribute technical judgment to hiring and calibration as the team grows.

What You Bring

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  • 5\+ years building and deploying machine learning systems in production.
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals \- Python, distributed systems, API design.
  • Experience owning the full ML lifecycle, not just model training in isolation.
  • A track record of turning ambiguous problems into scoped, shippable solutions.
  • Experience mentoring other engineers and influencing technical direction beyond your own code.
  • Ability to work hybrid (3 days your choice) in our San Francisco or Toronto Canada office.

Nice to Have

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  • Experience with NLP, LLMs, or generative AI \- embeddings, fine\-tuning (LoRA or other PEFT), or prompt engineering.
  • Familiarity with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, Milvus, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch) or orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex).
  • Experience with evaluation methodologies for generative AI \- RAG benchmarks, hallucination reduction, factual grounding.
  • Experience in a high\-growth startup environment.
  • Background in legal tech, healthcare, or other high\-stakes, regulated domains.

Notice to Candidates:

EvenUp has been made aware of fraudulent job postings and unaffiliated third parties posing as our recruiting team – please know that we have no affiliation or connection to these situations. We only post open roles on our career page (evenuplaw.com/careers) or reputable job boards like our official LinkedIn or Indeed pages, and all official EvenUp recruitment emails will come from the domains @evenuplaw.com, @evenup.ai, @ext\-evenuplaw.com, no\[email protected] or no‑[email protected] email addresses.

To ensure fairness and proper consideration, we do not accept resumes or expressions of interest via email or social media messages. If you’re interested in a role, please submit your application directly through our careers page.

*If you receive communication from someone you believe is impersonating EvenUp, please report it to us at talent\-ops\[email protected]. Examples of fraudulent domains include “careers\-evenuplaw.com” and “careers\-evenuplaws.com”.*

Benefits \& Perks:

As part of our total rewards package, we offer attractive benefits and perks to our employees, including:

  • Choice of medical, dental, and vision insurance plans for you and your family.
  • Additional insurance coverage options for life, accident, or critical illness.
  • Flexible paid time off, sick leave, short\-term and long\-term disability.
  • 10 US observed holidays, and Canadian statutory holidays by province.
  • A home office stipend.
  • 401(k) for US\-based employees and RRSP for Canada\-based employees.
  • Paid parental leave.
  • A local in\-person meet\-up program.
  • Hubs in San Francisco and Toronto.

*Please note the above benefits \& perks are for full\-time employees*

*EvenUp is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to diversity and inclusion in our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.*

Compensation Range: $196K \- $265K

Salary Context

This $196K-$265K 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

Company EvenUp
Title Senior Machine Learning Engineer
Location San Francisco, CA, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary $196K - $265K
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 EvenUp, 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

Embeddings (6% of roles) Faiss (1% of roles) Langchain (10% of roles) Llamaindex (4% of roles) Milvus (1% of roles) Pinecone (2% of roles) Prompt Engineering (15% of roles) Python (51% of roles) Rag (23% of roles) Weaviate (1% 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. This role's midpoint ($230K) sits 5% above the category median. Disclosed range: $196K to $265K.

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.

EvenUp AI Hiring

EvenUp has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Positions span San Francisco, CA, US, US. Compensation range: $265K - $301K.

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

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.
EvenUp 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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