Director Applied AI / ML Engineer

$126K - $255K Jersey City, NJ, US Mid Level AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

EmbeddingsHugging FaceLangchainLlamaindexMilvusPgvectorPineconeRagWeaviate

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

### Job Description:

Note: Fidelity will not provide immigration sponsorship for this position.

### The Role

AltIQ is seeking an Applied AI / ML Engineer to help build the intelligence layer of our alternative investment platform.

This role will focus on redefining complex financial documents and datasets into structured, searchable, and actionable information. You will build and implement solutions that parse documents, generate embeddings, drive similarity\-based search, and enable retrieval of information across a large corpus of investment\-related content, including private placement memoranda (PPMs), prospectuses, deal registration documents, performance reports, investor presentations, and other alternative investment materials.

Collaborating directly with Data Engineering and Product teams, you will help build scalable AI\-powered capabilities. These capabilities enable advanced search, document intelligence, knowledge retrieval, and analytics across both structured and unstructured datasets.

This is a hands\-on engineering role for someone who enjoys building production\-grade AI systems and applying modern machine learning techniques to tackle real business problems.

### Primary Responsibilities

  • Build and develop document parsing and information extraction solutions for intricate financial paperwork.
  • Build and maintain embedding pipelines that convert unstructured content into searchable knowledge assets.
  • Design, develop, and optimize semantic search and vector retrieval capabilities.
  • Develop Retrieval\-Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions that combine large language models with proprietary investment data.
  • Work in close coordination with Data Engineers to integrate AI workflows into enterprise\-scale data pipelines.
  • Build APIs and services that expose AI\-powered capabilities to internal and external applications.
  • Develop and maintain user documentation, architecture diagrams, and operational procedures.
  • Collaborate with Product and Business teams to translate user needs into intelligent platform capabilities.
  • Provide technical recommendations regarding AI architecture, model selection, and infrastructure requirements.
  • Mentor junior engineers and contribute to engineering guidelines.

### Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus, pgvector, Elasticsearch, or similar technologies.
  • Experience with LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face, or related AI frameworks.
  • Experience building enterprise search, knowledge management, or document intelligence platforms.
  • Experience with OCR and document processing technologies.
  • Knowledge of MLOps and machine learning deployment patterns.
  • Experience working with financial services, investment data, or alternative investments.
  • Familiarity with private equity, venture capital, private credit, hedge funds, or real estate investment products.

### About AltIQ

AltIQ is building a next\-generation intelligence platform for alternative investments. Our mission is to transform fragmented and document\-heavy investment information into structured, searchable, and actionable insights. By combining advanced data engineering, artificial intelligence, and domain expertise, we enable investors to better discover, evaluate, and analyze alternative investment opportunities.

### The Team

We are Fidelity Labs, Fidelity Investments’ in\-house fintech incubator with a mission to build new businesses to drive growth for Fidelity. We seek to shape the future of our industry by building new products and services to improve the lives of the diverse set of customers, businesses and financial institutions we serve.

Fidelity Labs is a dynamic workplace that combines the best parts of startup life—building from scratch, adapting quickly, and moon\-shot ambition—with the scale and stability of an industry leader. We provide a safe space for startup teams to explore new business ideas, quickly test them with customers, and scale the most promising concepts within an existing business unit, or as a new venture.

This opportunity is brought to you by Fidelity Labs. Learn more at labs.fidelity.com.

Fidelity’s Onsite Working Model

Fidelity is transitioning to a full\-time onsite working model through a phased rollout across regions and roles. Currently, some roles and locations require 100% onsite presence, while others require less. Onsite expectations are likely to evolve as the rollout continues. This transition does not apply to fully remote roles.

The base salary range for this position is $126,000\-255,000 USD per year.

Placement in the range will vary based on job responsibilities and scope, geographic location, candidate’s relevant experience, and other factors.

Base salary is only part of the total compensation package. Depending on the position and eligibility requirements, the offer package may also include bonus or other variable compensation.

We offer a wide range of benefits to meet your evolving needs and help you live your best life at work and at home. These benefits include comprehensive health care coverage and emotional well\-being support, market\-leading retirement, generous paid time off and parental leave, charitable giving employee match program, and educational assistance including student loan repayment, tuition reimbursement, and learning resources to develop your career. Note, the application window closes when the position is filled or unposted.

Please be advised that Fidelity’s business is governed by the provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Investment Company Act of 1940, ERISA, numerous state laws governing securities, investment and retirement\-related financial activities and the rules and regulations of numerous self\-regulatory organizations, including FINRA, among others. Those laws and regulations may restrict Fidelity from hiring and/or associating with individuals with certain Criminal Histories.

### Certifications:

### Category:

Information Technology

Salary Context

This $126K-$255K 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

Title Director Applied AI / ML Engineer
Location Jersey City, NJ, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Mid Level
Salary $126K - $255K
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 Fidelity Investments, 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) Hugging Face (4% of roles) Langchain (10% of roles) Llamaindex (4% of roles) Milvus (1% of roles) Pgvector (1% of roles) Pinecone (2% 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. Director-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $272,150. This role's midpoint ($190K) sits 13% below the category median. Disclosed range: $126K to $255K.

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.

Fidelity Investments AI Hiring

Fidelity Investments has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer. Based in Jersey City, NJ, US. Compensation range: $185K - $255K.

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.
Fidelity Investments 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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