Applied AI Engineer Jobs

An Applied AI Engineer turns new model capabilities into features and deployments that customers rely on in production. The role sits between research and product engineering: applied AI engineers prototype with frontier models, build the retrieval, tool-use and evaluation code around them, and work with customers or product teams to ship. The title is used most heavily by frontier labs, which post it alongside Applied AI Architect roles for enterprise and public-sector customers. Listings ask for production Python or TypeScript, hands-on LLM experience and the judgment to know when a model is ready for real users.

As of October 2026, AgenticCareers tracks 189 open Applied AI Engineer positions across 58 companies. The median advertised salary is $190K–$276K per year (based on 71 listings with disclosed pay). 10% of roles are remote. The most active employers are OpenAI, Anthropic, Klaviyo.