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About This Role
Who We Are:
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Video is 90% of the world's data. Most of it is invisible to machines.
TwelveLabs builds the intelligence layer to change that. Our multimodal AI models understand video the way humans do — across sight, sound, and motion — and power production\-scale AI workloads across media, entertainment, sports, security, and government.
We have raised more than $210 million from NEA, Radical Ventures, Amazon, NVIDIA, Snowflake, Databricks, Index Ventures, NAVER Ventures, Korea Investment Partners, Quadrille Capital, Red Bull Ventures, and AI pioneers including Fei\-Fei Li, Silvio Savarese, and Alexandr Wang.
We are a global company, headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Seoul, New York, and London, and employees around the world. We believe the differences in our cultural, educational, and life experiences make our products stronger. Building technology that understands the world in all its complexity requires people who see it from every angle. We are looking for individuals who are driven by hard problems and want their work to matter. Come build it with us!
About the Role:
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You will be a vital member of our ML Data Operations Team – which leads the full spectrum of video\-language data collection, labeling operations, and model quality measurement. This role comes with high ownership and includes responsibilities such as defining dataset and evaluation requirements in consultation with our research and product teams; designing and building data pipelines; and coordinating with our vendor partners that execute at scale. You will also be responsible for automating as much of the repetitive partnership and annotation\-quality\-evaluation work as possible. A desire to work cross functionally and to build relationships is critical for success in this position.
Position is hybrid in San Francisco \- onsite Tuesdays \& Thursdays.
In this role, you will:
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- Evaluation Strategy \& Design: Define and build evaluation protocols for video\-language model quality, working with Research and Product teams to translate ambiguous quality questions into measurable, repeatable benchmarks or evaluation flows.
- Data\-to\-Insight Pipelines: Turn raw customer and usage data into structured signal, building pipelines and analyses that surface where our models are underperforming and working with XFN partners to translate these insights into concrete improvement plans.
- Labeling Operations: Design and execute video\-language data collection and labeling projects, automating repetitive processes so the team can focus on higher\-leverage work.
- Vendor \& Partner Collaboration: Coordinate with vendor and outsourcing partners executing at scale, keeping quality high through clear guidelines and feedback loops.
- Cross\-Functional Partnership: Work closely with Engineering and Research teams to align on top\-priority data and evaluation needs, communicating findings through dashboards and reports that drive decisions.
You may be a good fit if you have:
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- Direct experience building or running model evaluation pipelines (benchmark design, human eval frameworks, automated scoring systems), and translating ambiguous quality questions into measurable criteria.
- 5\+ years of experience working in an AI focused data operations organization.
- A proven track record designing and executing large scale data projects, including gathering, labeling, and post\-processing data.
- The ability to analyze messy and complex data, identify overarching patterns, and distill your findings into crisp annotation guidelines or other accessible documentation.
- Proficiency with Python, agentic coding, or other popular industry tools for automation.
- Excellent communication and project management skills, and the ability to support several projects simultaneously.
- A foundational understanding of and interest in LLMs/VLMs and multimodal AI.
- Conviction that data is the key ingredient for the performance of AI models.
Preferred Qualifications:
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- Experience in data collection and labeling for multimodal language models.
- Experience working with research scientists and engineers.
- Experience planning and operating new data tools and labeling systems.
- Expertise or interest in video\-centric domains, such as sports, advertising, and content creation.
Tech Stack:
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- Technical: Python, FFMPEG, AWS (S3, EC2\)
- Project Management: Linear, Notion, Google Suite, Encord
Even if there are a few checkboxes that aren’t ticked through your prior experience, we still encourage you to apply! If you are a 0\-1 achiever, a ferocious learner, and a kind and fun team player who motivates others, you will find a home at TwelveLabs.
We are a global company that values the uniqueness of each person’s journey. It is the differences in our cultural, educational, and life experiences that allow us to constantly challenge the status quo. We are looking for individuals who are motivated by our mission and eager to make an impact as we push the bounds of technology to transform the world. Join us as we revolutionize video understanding and multimodal AI.
Benefits and Perks:
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An open and inclusive culture and work environment
Work closely with a collaborative, mission\-driven team on cutting\-edge AI technology
Full health, dental, and vision benefits
Extremely flexible PTO and parental leave policy. Office closed the week of Christmas and New Years
Monthly wellness stipend
Annual Learning \& Development stipend to invest in your growth
Global offices in San Francisco and Seoul, and co\-working office memberships for remote team members
Transportation stipend (SF onsite/hybrid only)
Daily lunch \& dinner provided (SF onsite/hybrid only)
Compensation Range: $140K \- $160K
Salary Context
This $140K-$160K range is below 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 Twelve Labs, 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 ($150K) sits 31% below the category median. Disclosed range: $140K to $160K.
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.
Twelve Labs AI Hiring
Twelve Labs has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in San Francisco, CA, US. Compensation range: $160K - $240K.
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
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