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What the market looks like

Director of AI Engineering is one of the most consequential technical leadership roles we track — a few hundred live postings in the US at any given time, with the role typically sized for a 20–50-person AI engineering organization. Base compensation generally lands in a $200K–$300K band with meaningful variable upside, and the strongest directors we place are those who can hire and develop senior engineering talent while making the pragmatic trade-offs between platform investment and near-term product delivery.

Job responsibilities

Lead a cross-functional AI engineering organization responsible for production ML and GenAI systems
Set the technical strategy across model development, platform infrastructure, and MLOps practice
Hire, develop, and retain senior engineering talent across ICs and engineering managers
Partner with product, research, and data science leadership on roadmap priorities and cross-team dependencies
Drive budget, headcount, vendor, and tooling decisions across the AI engineering stack
Represent the AI engineering function in executive-level forums and with key external partners
Own the long-term technical direction — feature stores, platforms, evaluation infrastructure, and internal standards
Create the environment that lets senior engineers do their best work

Candidate requirements

10+ years of engineering experience with at least 4 years managing senior engineers or engineering managers
Deep background in ML, MLOps, or AI platform engineering at scale
Proven ability to hire and develop senior technical talent
Strong business judgment — able to trade off long-term platform investment against near-term delivery
Excellent executive communication and stakeholder influence
Track record of scaling AI capabilities inside a product or enterprise environment

Director, AI Engineering