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Who We Are
At Kyndryl, we design, build, manage and modernize the mission\-critical technology systems that the world depends on every day. So why work at Kyndryl? We are always moving forward – always pushing ourselves to go further in our efforts to build a more equitable, inclusive world for our employees, our customers and our communities.
The Role
Join Kyndryl as a Director, Deal Maker – US Strategic Sales and lead the next generation of transformative deals centered on AI\-driven business and application transformation. This role is designed for a senior deal leader who thrives at the intersection of technology innovation, commercial strategy, and measurable business outcomes.
Role Overview
As a Deal Maker, you will lead the end\-to\-end development and closure of complex, multi\-million\-dollar strategic deals, with a strong emphasis on AI, application modernization, and business transformation. You will shape opportunities that go beyond traditional infrastructure and managed services, focusing instead on innovative, outcome\-based solutions powered by data, AI, and modern applications.
In this role, you will be the driving force behind the success in our Core and Strategic accounts, where you will create Kyndryl's unique and compelling propositions tailored to meet market demands and customer requirements. Collaboration will be key as you will partner directly with CxO\-level stakeholders to understand business challenges and co\-create differentiated solutions that deliver tangible value, leveraging advancements such as agentic AI, automation, and intelligent applications.
Your drive for profitable, outcome\-based growth will be evident as you lead complex contract negotiations, balancing commercial value with meaningful business impact for clients. You will serve as a strategic bridge between client stakeholders and cross\-functional teams, ensuring alignment from opportunity shaping through deal closure while maintaining a strong focus on delivering AI\-enabled business and application transformation outcomes.
A core part of your role will be shaping and owning compelling, executive\-ready proposals that clearly articulate the value of AI\-driven and application\-led transformation. You will translate complex technical solutions into concise, outcome\-focused narratives, ensuring alignment across stakeholders. Your attention to detail and discipline will support strong deal governance, risk management, and performance tracking, enabling consistent execution and successful deal outcomes.
Join us in redefining the market through innovative, AI\-first propositions that address evolving client needs across industries. Your ability to craft differentiated, insight\-led solutions tied to business outcomes will be critical to our growth. If you are passionate about shaping transformative deals, advancing enterprise AI and application modernization, and driving meaningful client impact, this is your opportunity to lead from the front and make a lasting difference.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead Strategic Deal Development: Own deal strategy, shaping, and execution for large, complex engagements (\> $10M TCV), ensuring alignment to customer business transformation goals.
- Drive AI\-Led Transformation: Design and position solutions centered on AI, data platforms, and application modernization, translating emerging technologies into business outcomes
- Craft Outcome\-Based Value Propositions: Build differentiated, industry\-relevant propositions tied to measurable client impact (growth, efficiency, innovation), rather than infrastructure\-led delivery
- Engage Senior Executives: Build trusted relationships with CIOs, CTOs, and business leaders, leading strategic conversations on digital and AI transformation
- Shape End\-to\-End Solutions: Collaborate across architecture, consulting, and delivery teams to create integrated solutions spanning applications, data, cloud, and AI
- Own Commercial Strategy: Develop pricing, risk mitigation, and deal structuring approaches that balance competitiveness and profitability
- Lead Proposal \& Negotiation: Direct the creation of compelling proposals and lead negotiations through contract signature
- Champion Innovation: Bring forward emerging trends (e.g., agentic AI, automation, intelligent workflows) to differentiate Kyndryl in competitive pursuits
Why This Role
This is an opportunity to move beyond traditional deal\-making and lead high\-impact, AI\-first transformation engagements that redefine how enterprises operate. You will play a critical role in positioning Kyndryl as a leader in innovation\-led, outcome\-driven solutions—focused on business value, not just infrastructure delivery.
Your Future at Kyndryl
Every position at Kyndryl offers a way forward to grow your career. We have opportunities that you won’t find anywhere else, including hands\-on experience, learning opportunities, and the chance to certify in all four major platforms. Whether you want to broaden your knowledge base or narrow your scope and specialize in a specific sector, you can find your opportunity here.
Kyndryl currently does not require employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID\-19, however, if you are hired to work at a client, customer, or partner location, you may be required to show proof of vaccination to align with their respective COVID\-19 vaccination policies. Those who believe they are eligible may apply for a medical or religious accommodation prior to the start of employment.
Who You Are
You’re good at what you do and possess the required experience to prove it. However, equally as important – you have a growth mindset; keen to drive your own personal and professional development. You are customer\-focused – someone who prioritizes customer success in their work. And finally, you’re open and borderless – naturally inclusive in how you work with others.
Required Skills and Experience
- Minimum of 10\+ years of experience leading complex deal cycles and negotiations
- Deep expertise in complex deal shaping and sales execution, with a track record of closing large, strategic deals
- Strong technical and commercial acumen, particularly across AI, data, and application transformation domains
- Proven ability to translate technology capabilities into business strategy and outcomes
- Experience leading AI\-driven or digital transformation programs, including application modernization and intelligent automation
- Executive presence with the ability to influence CxO\-level stakeholders and cross\-functional teams
- Strong understanding of market trends, especially in AI, agentic systems, and enterprise application innovation
Preferred Qualifications
- Background in technical sales, consulting, or solution architecture aligned to AI and application ecosystems
- Bachelor’s or advanced degree in a relevant field
Compensation
The compensation range for the position in the U.S. is $161,520 to $290,760 based on a full\-time schedule. Your actual compensation may vary depending on your geography, job\-related skills and experience. For part\-time roles, the compensation will be adjusted appropriately. The pay or salary range will not be below any applicable state, city or local minimum wage requirement.
There is a different applicable compensation range for the following work locations:
California (San Francisco Bay Area): $193,920 to $348,840
California (All Other): $177,720 to $319,800
Colorado: $161,520 to $290,760
Massachusetts: $161,520 to $319,800
New York City: $193,920 to $348,840
Washington: $177,720 to $319,800
Washington DC: $177,720 to $319,800
This position will be eligible for Kyndryl’s discretionary annual bonus program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Kyndryl’s applicable plans. You may also receive a comprehensive benefits package which includes medical and dental coverage, disability, retirement benefits, paid leave, and paid time off. Note: If this is a sales commission eligible role, you will be eligible to participate in a sales commission plan in lieu of the annual discretionary bonus program.
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.
Being You
Diversity is a whole lot more than what we look like or where we come from, it’s how we think and who we are. We welcome people of all cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. But we’re not doing it single\-handily: Our Kyndryl Inclusion Networks are only one of many ways we create a workplace where all Kyndryls can find and provide support and advice. This dedication to welcoming everyone into our company means that Kyndryl gives you – and everyone next to you – the ability to bring your whole self to work, individually and collectively, and support the activation of our equitable culture. That’s the Kyndryl Way.
What You Can Expect
With state\-of\-the\-art resources and Fortune 100 clients, every day is an opportunity to innovate, build new capabilities, new relationships, new processes, and new value. Kyndryl cares about your well\-being and prides itself on offering benefits that give you choice, reflect the diversity of our employees and support you and your family through the moments that matter – wherever you are in your life journey. Our employee learning programs give you access to the best learning in the industry to receive certifications, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Skillsoft, and many more. Through our company\-wide volunteering and giving platform, you can donate, start fundraisers, volunteer, and search over 2 million non\-profit organizations. At Kyndryl, we invest heavily in you, we want you to succeed so that together, we will all succeed.
Get Referred!
If you know someone that works at Kyndryl, when asked ‘How Did You Hear About Us’ during the application process, select ‘Employee Referral’ and enter your contact's Kyndryl email address.
Salary Context
This $161K-$348K 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 Kyndryl, 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 in Demand for This Role
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 ($255K) sits 17% above the category median. Disclosed range: $161K to $348K.
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.
Kyndryl AI Hiring
Kyndryl has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Positions span US, New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $348K - $409K.
Location Context
AI roles in New York pay a median of $220,000 across 1,045 tracked positions.
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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