Loading the job postings and counting them…
Loading the job postings and counting them…
AI Career Compass · role
Builds the systems that train, serve and run AI models. Training clusters, inference and serving, ML platforms, GPUs and the tooling other engineers use; not only deploying models.
Measured ML infrastructure and MLOps engineers make up 217 of the 1,694 AI postings in our tracked sample, about 13%.1
Measured The postings we track for this role ask most often for distributed systems, meaning software that runs across many machines (89 of 217), Python (84 of 217) and software engineering practice (83 of 217).123
Written by an AI analyst (claude-opus-5-5) and checked by code against the numbers it cites.
What these postings say the work involves, counted from their lists of duties. A posting can list several.
Out of these 217 postings. “Asked for” adds required, one of several options, and listed; preferred is counted apart.
Programming, data, maths and statistics, and domain knowledge
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Python | 84 of 217 | 28 | 30 | 26 | 21 |
| Software engineering practice | 83 of 217 | 34 | 0 | 49 | 16 |
| C++ | 47 of 217 | 9 | 23 | 15 | 8 |
| Go | 38 of 217 | 12 | 18 | 8 | 5 |
| Rust | 36 of 217 | 7 | 18 | 11 | 12 |
| TypeScript or JavaScript | 12 of 217 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| Java | 7 of 217 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 1 |
| SQL | 7 of 217 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
Modelling, training, retrieval, agents, evaluation and other methods
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine learning | 77 of 217 | 29 | 2 | 46 | 39 |
| Large language models | 46 of 217 | 21 | 0 | 25 | 46 |
| PyTorch | 15 of 217 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 19 |
| AI agents | 14 of 217 | 5 | 0 | 9 | 12 |
| Deep learning | 13 of 217 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 8 |
| Evaluation (evals) | 10 of 217 | 4 | 0 | 6 | 14 |
| Fine-tuning and post-training | 9 of 217 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 9 |
| JAX | 9 of 217 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 4 |
Deployment, infrastructure, reliability, security, monitoring and cost
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Distributed systems | 89 of 217 | 29 | 7 | 53 | 12 |
| Backend services and APIs | 54 of 217 | 23 | 0 | 31 | 21 |
| Kubernetes and containers | 53 of 217 | 24 | 2 | 27 | 36 |
| Reliability and incident response | 48 of 217 | 22 | 0 | 26 | 11 |
| Performance and latency | 47 of 217 | 14 | 0 | 33 | 18 |
| Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) | 44 of 217 | 14 | 7 | 23 | 25 |
| Model serving and inference | 41 of 217 | 18 | 1 | 22 | 31 |
| Monitoring and observability | 40 of 217 | 18 | 0 | 22 | 17 |
Publishing and leading research
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-source contributions | 9 of 217 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 23 |
| Research publications | 4 of 217 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Leading research | 2 of 217 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
Customers, communication, product thinking and leadership
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Communication | 53 of 217 | 17 | 0 | 36 | 7 |
| Leading and mentoring | 29 of 217 | 14 | 0 | 15 | 6 |
| Product thinking | 11 of 217 | 4 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| Technical writing | 6 of 217 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| Working with customers | 5 of 217 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 8 |
AI rules, policy and trust and safety
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Risk and compliance | 2 of 217 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| AI governance and regulation | 1 of 217 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Trust and safety | 0 of 217 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Measured Experience with large language models, the kind of AI behind chat assistants, is listed as preferred, meaning nice to have, in 46 of 217 postings for this role.1
Measured GPU programming, meaning writing code that runs directly on graphics chips, is listed as preferred in 36 of 217 postings for this role.1
Employers list these as preferred. That they ask does not show that these skills decide who is hired.
The systems these postings expect people to build, run or work within.
Only what the postings state. Most do not say everything, so each number has its own count of postings.
110 of 217 postings state a minimum; the median is 5 years.
59 of 217 postings state a degree; 32 of them accept equivalent experience instead.
2 more postings list a PhD as preferred.
24 postings are remote. Of these, 22 name where you must live or work from, 0 do not say, and 2 say anywhere.
What employers advertise, grouped only when the ranges are comparable. Not a prediction of what you would earn.
Measured For full-time jobs in the US, the median of advertised range midpoints is 307,500 USD per year in base pay, from 53 comparable disclosures; the middle half of those midpoints lies between 250,000 and 337,500 USD.1234
157 of 217 postings (72%) advertise a pay range. Employers that publish ranges may differ from those that do not, and some places require it by law, so these ranges do not describe all pay.
| Group of alike ranges | Postings | Median of range midpoints | Middle half of midpoints |
|---|---|---|---|
| USD, a year, base pay, United States, full-time14 employers | 53 | $307,500 | $250,000 to $337,500 |
| USD, a year, base pay, United States, employment type not stated4 employers | 17 | $362,500 | $295,000 to $445,000 |
This is advertised pay, not what anyone earns. We pool ranges only when currency, pay period, pay type, country and employment type are the same, and only with at least 10 of them. Nothing is converted. 87 other ranges could not be pooled (period not stated, several countries, or too few alike).
Advice built from what these 217 postings ask for. Tick what you can already do; we suggest up to three steps and one portfolio project, each with the requirement behind it and a way to show the result.
Analysis Tracking began on 6 October 2026, so the 217 postings here come from a single reading and cannot show a trend yet.1
Analysis These postings come from 41 employers that publish jobs through public feeds; employers that run their own job systems are not included, so this is not the whole job market.1
Measured Many open listings are not new: 32 of 217 were first published in the 30 days before our reading, and 27 more than a year before it.12
How everything is counted: our method. All roles: AI Career Compass.