Solution Director of Data & AI

$200K - $250K New York, NY, US Mid Level AI/ML Engineer

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About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

This position is part of TCS Industrial Autonomy and Engineering horizontal business unit to drive the growth of Engineering and IoT services for AI and Data in North America. The ideal candidate will have over 13 years of industry experience shaping proposals, building strong client relationships, and drive solution\-based sales while collaborating with cross\-functional teams to create business opportunities and enhance value for Customers. Experience to sell cloud, data and niche expertise like AI is important to make an impact.

Key responsibilities:

  • Present, promote, and sell AI and Data solutions \& services to existing and prospective customers in the North America.
  • Build strong client relationships by understanding client needs and jointly identifying their challenges and preferences
  • Develop and implement comprehensive business development strategies to drive growth and expand market share for IAE units AI and Data business in the NA.
  • Carry out market analysis and lead business planning and strategic sales activities
  • Drive growth by identifying new opportunities, building client relationships, and closing strategic deals.
  • Collaborate with cross\-functional teams to deliver tailored solutions for clients.
  • Lead the technical discussions with customers for TCS’s solutions
  • Represent the company at industry events and forums.
  • Actively drive awareness of AI and data solutions with targeted clients \- tradeshows, research\-led thought leadership, client roadshows and workshops, etc.

Minimum Qualifications :

  • Bachelor’s in Engineering/ Master’s in Engineering with 13\+ years of experience with at least 5\+ years of Digital (Cloud, Data and AI ) solution development / sales experience
  • Experience and domain knowledge in Engineering Industries.
  • Working knowledge of AI , data, and cloud with basic knowledge of latest Gen AI skills.
  • Experience of positioning offerings, developing, and presenting proposals, value propositions, business cases, and complex deal structuring.
  • Strong technical skills with ability to engage customers with “consultative selling” is essential.
  • Ability to understand market/customer needs and work with solution teams to help develop innovative solutions for the industry.
  • Strong network in the NA ecosystem.

KPIs relevant for the role

  • Revenue growth in the AI and Data offerings in NA.
  • Number of new client acquisitions
  • Expansion of existing accounts
  • Pipeline development and conversion rates
  • Solutions and Services developed for the clients and monetized
  • Leverage of Partnerships / Alliances

Preferred Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in engineering

Salary Range: $200,000 \- $250,000 a year

\#LI\-MG2

Location

New York, NY

Job Function

CONSULTANCY

Role

Director

Job Id

421923

Desired Skills

Digital : Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Salary Range

$200,000\-$250,000 a year

Salary Context

This $200K-$250K 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

Title Solution Director of Data & AI
Location New York, NY, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Mid Level
Salary $200K - $250K
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 Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), 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 (51% of roles) Aws (30% of roles) Azure (24% of roles) Rag (23% of roles) Gcp (17% of roles) Prompt Engineering (15% of roles) Pytorch (15% of roles) Claude (13% 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. Disclosed range: $200K to $250K.

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.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) AI Hiring

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has 16 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, Data Scientist, AI Agent Developer. Positions span US, Owings Mills, MD, US, New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $80K - $286K.

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

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.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) 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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