AI engineer jobs: the applied-AI track

“AI engineer” has become a real title in 2026, and it means something specific: building products, agents and deployments on top of models rather than training them. OpenAI posts Applied AI Engineer (12 US reqs), Forward Deployed Engineer (13) and Applied AI Architect (8) titles in an Applied AI org of 111 postings; Anthropic posts Applied AI Engineer and Applied AI Architect reqs; Google posts Forward Deployed Engineer IV Applied AI, AI Outcome Customer Engineer and AI Engineer reqs in its Advanced Solutions Lab; Apple posted an Applied AI Engineer req on October 7, 2026; NVIDIA lists nine Applied AI and AI Engineer reqs; Netflix posts AI Research Engineer and Applied AI titles; and Amazon has a handful of AI/ML Engineer reqs. The programs below are the ones with a distinct applied-AI track — Meta, Microsoft, Waymo, Pinterest and Reddit fold the work into ML engineer, applied scientist or software titles. For the customer-facing version of this track, see The FDE List.

7 of 12 ranked programs match · Last verified October 11, 2026 · See the full ML Engineer List →

OpenAI research engineers build and scale the training and post-training systems behind frontier models, mostly inside Research teams on a dual research engineer / research scientist track, while a separate Applied AI Engineering org builds products and deployments on top. Hiring is rolling through Ashby with one evergreen generic req plus team reqs, and the loop stresses coding and a technical deep dive.

Base salary

$250k–$445k

Locations

SF · Seattle

Work setup

Hybrid, 3 days a week in office — nine of the 20 reqs state a ‘hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week’ with relocation help; the generic Research Engineer req is silent

Experience

The generic Research Engineer req states no years or degree. MLE, API Multicloud asks for 3+ years and a master’s or PhD or equivalent; MLE, Monetization asks for a master’s or PhD. The entry path is the Residency (any background); no new-grad or intern track.

Worth knowing: On October 11, 2026 OpenAI’s Ashby feed lists 815 open postings — Go To Market 146, Scaling 113, Applied AI 111, Research 62 — and the top posted Research Engineer base is $850K, on the RE/RS Foundations (Search) req.

20 US individual-contributor reqs titled Research Engineer, RE/RS or Machine Learning Engineer open on OpenAI’s Ashby board (815 postings) as of Oct 11, 2026 — 19 in San Francisco and one in Seattle — across Post-training (6), Research and Codex (3), Applied AI Engineering MLE (3), Foundations, Agents, Reasoning, Chip Design, API and Devices, plus one MLE manager req

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Salary band, hiring status & score breakdown — see the full OpenAI ML Engineer page →

Anthropic research engineers sit inside research teams — pretraining, post-training, RL, interpretability, alignment — in a blended research and engineering role that values code quality and pairing. Hiring is rolling through Greenhouse and mostly in office, and the only early-career route is the paid Fellows program.

Base salary

$350k–$500k

Locations

SF · NYC · Seattle

Work setup

Mostly in office — 22 of 26 reqs are tagged On-Site and four Hybrid (travel required); policy is at least 25% of time in an office, more for some roles, and the FAQ says some staff come in one week a month

Experience

A bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience on all 26 reqs; years of experience ‘will correlate with the internal job level’ and none are stated; credentials and publications are not required. The entry path is Fellows (any experience level; US, UK or Canada work authorization; no visa sponsorship); no new-grad or intern track.

Worth knowing: Anthropic Fellows (req updated September 30, 2026) pays $3,850 a week for four months plus about $15k a month of compute, and says over 80% of fellows in an earlier cohort produced papers.

26 US individual-contributor reqs titled Research Engineer or ML Engineer open on Anthropic’s Greenhouse board (645 postings) as of Oct 11, 2026, three of them Staff-level — all list San Francisco, 19 New York, 11 Seattle, and three are remote-friendly with travel — inside an AI Research & Engineering department of 67 reqs

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Salary band, hiring status & score breakdown — see the full Anthropic ML Engineer page →Anthropic interview guide →

Google ML engineers are hired as software engineers with an AI/ML focus, building ranking, generative AI and infrastructure systems in Cloud AI, Search, Ads and YouTube, while DeepMind research engineers work on Gemini and agents. Hiring is rolling through a structured six-to-eight-week process with a hiring committee.

Base salary

$147k–$210k

Locations

Mountain View · Sunnyvale · NYC · Kirkland · SF · Seattle

Work setup

Hybrid, about 3 office days a week per Google’s norm; reqs state no days and most say interviews are in person ‘in most instances’

Experience

SWE III (L4) AI/ML: a bachelor’s or equivalent, 2 years of Python or C++ and 1 year of ML; Senior (L5): 5 years of programming and 3 years of ML, with a master’s or PhD only preferred. DeepMind Research Software Engineer: a bachelor’s and 5 years in industry (2 in ML or software). Entry path: the PhD-only early-career req and Student Researcher.

Worth knowing: On October 11, 2026 Google DeepMind has 94 open roles (71 in the US) on the main google.com careers board, and the PhD Early Career AI/Machine Learning 2027 Start req (listed August 24, 2026) spans ten US cities.

At least 90 US ML and AI-titled engineering reqs listed on Oct 11, 2026 — 57 non-Staff (18 Software Engineer III AI/ML, 25 Senior SWE AI/ML, 8 DeepMind Research Engineer-type, 6 other) and 32 Staff+ — mainly in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, New York and Kirkland, counted across three careers-site crawls; Google DeepMind alone lists 94 open roles (71 US) on the same board

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Salary band, hiring status & score breakdown — see the full Google ML Engineer page →Google interview guide →

Apple ML engineers ship models into Siri, Search, Health, Camera and Apple Intelligence, from on-device runtimes to cloud foundation-model services. Hiring is rolling and req by req with level and pay posted, plus an annual AIML Residency for advanced-degree graduates.

Base salary

$150k–$278k

Locations

Cupertino · Seattle · Sunnyvale · Santa Clara · Austin

Work setup

Hybrid, in office about 3 days a week; none of the 130 ML req records carries a remote flag

Experience

Core reqs span ICT3–ICT4 with varying bars — 3+ years, a BS plus 3 years, or a degree plus 2+ years or a PhD. Entry path: an ICT2 Machine Learning Engineer req (October 9, 2026) needs only a bachelor’s, and the Residency targets master’s graduates and recent PhDs.

Worth knowing: On October 9, 2026 Apple posted an ICT2 Machine Learning Engineer – Agentic AI req (Sunnyvale, $129,300–$194,700) whose only degree bar is a bachelor’s, with production agentic-systems experience as the minimum.

111 distinct US reqs titled Machine Learning Engineer on jobs.apple.com as of Oct 11, 2026, 64 of them non-senior (40 at ICT3), led by Cupertino, Seattle, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara — counted by paging Apple’s search endpoint and deduplicating by position

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Salary band, hiring status & score breakdown — see the full Apple ML Engineer page →Apple interview guide →

NVIDIA ML and deep learning engineers build and optimize models and software for LLM safety, autonomous driving, chip design and GPU performance. Hiring is rolling per req with phone screens and a required onsite round, and the new-grad and internship pipeline is one of the deepest on this list.

Base salary

$124k–$242k

Locations

Santa Clara · Austin · Westford · Hillsboro · Durham · Seattle

Work setup

Hybrid — the core reqs carry the #LI-Hybrid tag, days per week are not published, and some reqs also list California-remote locations

Experience

MLE, AI Safety (Level 2–3): an MS or PhD in CS or EE or equivalent and 2+ years deploying ML in production. AI Developer Technology Engineer: an MS or equivalent plus 1+ year. Senior reqs ask for 6–12+ years. Entry path: the Applied ML Engineer, AI for VLSI Design – New College Grad 2026 req (MS or PhD) and the internships.

Worth knowing: NVIDIA’s FY2026 10-K (year ended January 25, 2026) reports about 42,000 employees, 31,000 of them in R&D — and on October 11, 2026 it listed 1,405 US postings, including 44 New College Grad and 43 intern reqs.

22 US reqs in ML-engineering title families on NVIDIA’s Workday board (1,405 US postings) as of Oct 11, 2026 — seven Machine Learning Engineer, two Deep Learning Engineer, four AI Developer Technology and nine Applied AI or AI Engineer — of which three post a Level 2 entry band (MLE AI Safety, AI Developer Technology Engineer, a New College Grad Applied ML Engineer) and the rest start at Level 3–4 or higher; Santa Clara dominates, with Westford, Austin, Hillsboro, Durham and Seattle

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Salary band, hiring status & score breakdown — see the full NVIDIA ML Engineer page →

Amazon ML engineers ship models for ads, Prime Video, Music, AWS and the AGI teams, while Applied Scientists own model research and experiments on a separate ladder. Hiring is rolling and posted per team, and the loop weighs Leadership Principles as heavily as technical depth.

Base salary

$144k–$194k

Locations

Seattle · Bellevue · NYC · Sunnyvale · Santa Clara

Work setup

In office 5 days a week for corporate staff since January 2, 2025; req text does not restate it

Experience

Applied Scientist II: a PhD, or a master’s plus 4+ years of CS or ML experience, plus 3+ years building models. MLE: 3+ years of professional software development and a bachelor’s. The entry path is internships only.

Worth knowing: On December 17, 2025 Andy Jassy put Peter DeSantis over one org spanning Nova and AGI models, Trainium and Graviton silicon and quantum, with Pieter Abbeel leading frontier model research.

180 Applied Scientist-titled US reqs below Senior and Principal on amazon.jobs as of Oct 11, 2026 (64 posted in the last 30 days, 35 titled Applied Scientist II) plus 13 ML-engineer-titled reqs (six MLE, five Senior MLE, two AI/ML Engineer), led by Seattle (77 Applied Scientist reqs), New York, Bellevue and Sunnyvale; the AGI org alone lists 24 US reqs

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Salary band, hiring status & score breakdown — see the full Amazon ML Engineer page →Amazon interview guide →

Netflix ML engineers build ads, personalization and AI-platform systems as senior individual contributors with high autonomy. Hiring is rolling and per team, pay is all cash, and the only early-career ML route is a single PhD internship.

Base salary

$466k–$750k

Locations

Los Gatos · LA · NYC · Seattle · US remote

Work setup

Per-req work type — three of the four MLE 5 reqs are tagged Onsite and one (Ads Signals & Targeting) Remote US; Netflix publishes no days per week

Experience

No years or degree bar is printed on the MLE 5 reqs; they ask for production ML at scale, backend skills and Java, Python or Scala. L5 is Senior, no L3 or L4 MLE req is open, and the only early-career route is a PhD-only ML/AI Infrastructure Engineering internship for Winter 2027.

Worth knowing: On October 11, 2026 all four open Netflix MLE 5 reqs post the same $466,000–$750,000 salary-only range, and the only ML intern req is a PhD-only Winter 2027 internship posted September 30, 2026.

Four Machine Learning Engineer 5 reqs on Netflix’s careers API (457 global roles) as of Oct 11, 2026 — Ads Measurement, Ads Platform Engineering, Ads Signals & Targeting, and Decisioning & Optimization — plus ten ML Scientist 4–6, four AI Research and one Staff ML Software Engineer (L6) req, counted by title across the full paged API

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Salary band, hiring status & score breakdown — see the full Netflix ML Engineer page →Netflix interview guide →

Common questions

Builds on top of models: integrating LLMs and agents into products, designing retrieval and evaluation pipelines, hardening prompts and tools, and deploying systems for customers. OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s Applied AI Engineer reqs sit in go-to-market and applied orgs rather than research, Google’s AI Engineer reqs sit in its Advanced Solutions Lab, and Apple’s and NVIDIA’s Applied AI Engineer reqs build internal tools and chip-design workflows. The research engineer and ML engineer reqs on this list train and serve the models those teams build with.

Seven of the twelve post them as a distinct track: OpenAI (Applied AI Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Applied AI Architect), Anthropic (Applied AI Engineer, Applied AI Architect), Google (Forward Deployed Engineer IV Applied AI, AI Outcome Customer Engineer, AI Engineer Advanced Solutions Lab), Apple (Applied AI Engineer, posted October 7, 2026), Amazon (AI/ML Engineer, a few reqs), Netflix (AI Research Engineer 6, AI Research Scientist, Manager Applied AI) and NVIDIA (Applied AI Engineer, Senior AI Engineer). Meta, Microsoft, Waymo, Pinterest and Reddit do not — their agent and applied-AI work is posted under ML engineer, applied scientist or software engineer titles.

The applied-AI reqs on this list post inside the same engineering bands as their ML counterparts rather than a separate scale: Apple’s Applied AI Engineer sits in its ICT ladder, NVIDIA’s Applied AI Engineer reqs post the same Level 2–6 bands as its ML engineers, and Google’s AI Engineer reqs are Software Engineer bands. At the labs the applied-AI roles sit outside the research engineer bands ($250,000–$445,000 at OpenAI, $350,000–$500,000 at Anthropic) and are posted per req. For forward deployed roles specifically, The FDE List tracks posted bands at 18 companies.

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