Machine Learning Engineer
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
A Machine Learning Engineer specializes in designing, building, and deploying machine learning models. They utilize statistical and mathematical techniques, parallelizing processing, hyperparameter tuning, and other optimization methodologies to improve model performance. Responsibilities also include collecting and preprocessing large datasets, conducting exploratory data analysis, working closely with data engineers to understand data requirements, and engineer input variables for machine learning models.
Job Outlook
There were 533 Machine Learning Engineer job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 27644 in the United States.
In combination with other careers in the Artificial Intelligence Engineer industry, which includes the Machine Learning Engineer career, the following graph shows the number of people employed for each year since 2016:
Salary
Many new Machine Learning Engineer jobs have salaries estimated to be in the following ranges, based on the requirements and responsibilities listed in job postings from the past year.
National
The average estimated salary in the United States for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $149,840.
State
The average estimated salary in North Carolina for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $127,233.
Percentiles represent the percentage that is lower than the value. For example, 25% of estimated salaries for Machine Learning Engineer postings in the United States in the past year were lower than $124,444.
Education and Experience
Posted Machine Learning Engineer jobs typically require the following level of education. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list education requirements.
| Education Level | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Associate's Degree | 0% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 48.91% |
| Master's Degree | 46.67% |
| Doctoral Degree | 33.15% |
| Other | 0.87% |
Posted Machine Learning Engineer jobs typically require the following number of years of experience. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Years of Experience | Percentage |
|---|---|
| 0 to 2 years | 16.17% |
| 3 to 5 years | 50.86% |
| 6 to 8 years | 21.17% |
| 9+ years | 11.8% |
Skills
Below are listings of the most common general and specialized skills Machine Learning Engineer positions expect applicants to have as well as the most common skills that distinguish individuals from their peers. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is also listed.
Baseline Skills
A skill that is required across a broad range of occupations, including this one.
- Communication (%)
- Research (%)
- Innovation (%)
- Problem Solving (%)
- Mathematics (%)
- Operations (%)
- Forecasting (%)
- Mentorship (%)
- Leadership (%)
- Management (%)
Defining Skills
A core skill for this occupation, it occurs frequently in job postings.
- Machine Learning (99.48%)
- Python (Programming Language) (70.53%)
- Computer Science (61.2%)
- Artificial Intelligence (60.36%)
- PyTorch (Machine Learning Library) (43.1%)
- TensorFlow (38.42%)
- Algorithms (34.93%)
- Software Engineering (33.37%)
- Data Science (28.75%)
- Deep Learning (32.77%)
- Scalability (39.57%)
- Amazon Web Services (30.96%)
- C++ (Programming Language) (21.18%)
- Software Development (21.99%)
- Statistics (17.27%)
- MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) (19.3%)
- Scikit-Learn (Python Package) (15.18%)
- Computer Vision (12.37%)
- Machine Learning Algorithms (13.95%)
- Large Language Modeling (12.59%)
- Reinforcement Learning (8.9%)
- Keras (Neural Network Library) (5.25%)
- Artificial Neural Networks (6.31%)
Necessary Skills
A skill that is requested frequently in this occupation but isn’t specific to it.
- SQL (Programming Language) (18.58%)
- Apache Spark (14.11%)
- Generative Artificial Intelligence (25.14%)
- Microsoft Azure (18.21%)
- Java (Programming Language) (14.58%)
- Kubernetes (16.03%)
- CI/CD (16.57%)
- Docker (Software) (14.99%)
- Workflow Management (17.58%)
- Data Pipelines (16.73%)
- Automation (14.42%)
- Programming Languages (13.39%)
- Data Analysis (11.2%)
- R (Programming Language) (9%)
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) (11.37%)
- Big Data (11.03%)
- Application Programming Interface (API) (13.09%)
- Data Engineering (12.2%)
- Agile Methodology (9.75%)
- Debugging (10.78%)
- Version Control (9.51%)
- Data Structures (10.18%)
- Computer Engineering (8.69%)
- C (Programming Language) (8.12%)
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (10.08%)
- Git (Version Control System) (7.39%)
- DevOps (8.49%)
- Data Processing (9.47%)
- Scala (Programming Language) (7.23%)
- Code Review (8.92%)
- Electrical Engineering (7.07%)
- Pandas (Python Package) (7.59%)
- Physics (5.92%)
- Apache Hadoop (6.02%)
- Business Problems (7.07%)
- Linux (5.4%)
Distinguishing Skills
A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.
- Feature Engineering (%)
- AWS SageMaker (%)
- Transformer (Machine Learning Model) (%)
- MLflow (%)
- Nvidia CUDA (%)
- Machine Learning Model Training (%)
- Kubeflow (%)
- Machine Learning Methods (%)
- Recommender Systems (%)
- AI/ML Inference (%)
- LangChain (%)
Salary Boosting Skills
A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is listed.
- Artificial Intelligence (%)
- Computer Vision (%)
- Computer Science (%)
- Scalability (%)
- Software Engineering (%)
- Deep Learning (%)
- PyTorch (Machine Learning Library) (%)
Alternative Job Titles
Sometimes employers post jobs with Machine Learning Engineer skills but a different job title. Some common alternative job titles include:
- Machine Learning Software Engineer
- Machine Learning Data Scientist
- Machine Learning Scientist
- Lead Machine Learning Engineer
- Software Engineer
- Machine Learning Research Scientist
- Machine Learning Data Engineer
- Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Engineer
- Machine Learning Operations Engineer
Similar Occupations
If you are interested in exploring occupations with similar skills, you may want to research the following job titles. Note that we only list occupations that have at least one corresponding NC State Online and Distance Education program.
Common Employers
Here are the employers that have posted the most Machine Learning Engineer jobs in the past year along with how many they have posted.
United States
- Apple (1547)
- Amazon (1536)
- Google (1178)
- Launch Potato (957)
- Tiktok (924)
- Meta (743)
- General Motors (351)
- JPMorgan Chase (284)
- Uber (280)
- Snowflake Computing (268)
North Carolina
- Launch Potato (69)
- Google (16)
- Cox Communications (11)
- Genesis10 (10)
- INSPYR Solutions (10)
- Randstad (10)
- Red Hat (10)
- Innova Solution (9)
- Ericsson (9)
- NTT DATA (8)
NC State Programs Relevant to this Career
If you are interested in preparing for a career in this field, the following NC State Online and Distance Education programs offer a great place to start!
All wages, job posting statistics, employment trend projections, and information about skill desirability on this page represents historical data and does not guarantee future conditions. Data is provided by and downloaded regularly from Lightcast. For more information about how Lightcast gathers data and what it represents, see Lightcast Data: Basic Overview on Lightcast's Knowledge Base website.