Engineering & IT · San Diego, CA

Machine Learning Engineer jobs in San Diego, CA

Machine learning engineers take models from notebook to production — building training pipelines, serving infrastructure, and monitoring so ML systems keep working after launch.

177
Open roles today
$51–$130/hr
Typical pay range
$174k
Median, full-time
3
Fresh in this list

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01

Open machine learning engineer roles

12 shown of 177 · sorted by freshness

Plumbing Project Engineer PE

Gulfstream Strategic Placements, LLC · San Diego, CA · Full-time

Plumbing Project Engineer PE in City Heights, San Diego Currently looking for an experienced Plumbing Project Engineer PE to fill the open position in San Diego. The ideal candidate must be local and have stable work-his…

Posted today
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Plumbing Project Engineer

Gulfstream Strategic Placements, LLC · San Diego, CA · Full-time

Plumbing Project Engineer position in San Diego, CA We are a large mechanical contractor that specializes in large Mechanical projects in CA. Responsibilities for Plumbing Project Engineer: Assist Project Managers with o…

Posted today
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Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Seasats · San Diego, CA · Full-time
$180k - $250k

Role: Senior Machine Learning Engineer Location: San Diego, CA (in-office) Salary Range: $180,000 - $250,000 / yr + stock options, 401k matching, and other benefits Role Overview: Seasats' vehicles operate in highly remo…

Posted 1w ago
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Computational Biology MLOps Engineer

Marlabs · San Diego, CA · Full-time

intelligent solutions across AI, data, analytics, and product engineering. Since 2000, we have partnered with some of the largest... ...edge AI research and production systems at the intersection of machine learning, com…

Posted 1w ago
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Principal Machine Learning Engineer

ServiceNow · San Diego, CA · Full-time
$216.1k - $378.2k

It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy... ...on the nature of their work and their assigned work location. Learn more here . To…

Posted 2w ago
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Machine Learning Engineer

AbbVie Inc. · San Diego, CA · Full-time

Description Responsibilities Own small to medium components of machine learning systems from technical designthrough implementation and... ...to plan Build and maintain data pipelines and feature engineering workflows to…

Posted 2w ago
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Machine Learning Engineer III

The Marlin Alliance · San Diego, CA
$140k - $195k

Machine Learning Engineer III The Marlin Alliance, Inc. | San Diego, CA | Hybrid | Clearance Required About The Marlin Alliance Incorporated in 2002, The Marlin Alliance is a digital transformation company dedicated to e…

Posted 2mo ago
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Senior Machine Learning Engineer

The Marlin Alliance, Inc. · San Diego, CA
$110k - $180k

The Marlin Alliance, Inc. is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to design, develop, and implement advanced machine learning models and algorithms in support of naval applications. This role requires deep technica…

Posted 2mo ago
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Sr Machine Learning Engineer

The Marlin Alliance, Inc. · San Diego, CA
$165k - $195k

The Marlin Alliance, Inc. is seekinga talented and experienced Senior Machine Learning Engineer to join our team. The successful candidate will be expected to design, develop, and implement advanced machine learning mode…

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Staff ML Engineer

Alldus International Consulting Ltd · San Diego, CA · Full-time

Staff Machine Learning Engineer Location: Remote Are you tired of being kept in a restricted creative box with limited autonomy to push boundaries and ideas to solve problems with ML? Or not seeing your work directly imp…

Posted 2mo ago
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02

What machine learning engineers earn in San Diego

Hourly first — that's how the offer arrives

ExperienceHourlyAnnual, full-time
Entry level $51–$71 $106k–$148k
Mid level $71–$97 $148k–$201k
Senior $94–$130 $195k–$271k

Adjusted for the San Diego market from national ranges.

03

What employers ask for

The skills these listings keep naming

Python and software engineeringPyTorch or TensorFlowML fundamentals and evaluationModel serving and APIsMLOps (tracking, registries, CI)Docker and KubernetesData pipelines and feature storesLLM fine-tuning and RAG (a plus)Monitoring and drift detection
04

Interview questions worth rehearsing

With the thing the interviewer is actually listening for

Walk me through taking a model from prototype to production.

Cover data pipelines, training reproducibility, serving, and monitoring. Emphasize that the model is a small part of the system — that framing is the job.

How do you monitor a model in production?

Discuss input drift, prediction distributions, delayed labels, and business metrics — plus what triggers retraining. Mention that silent degradation is the default failure mode.

How would you reduce inference latency or cost for a large model?

Options include distillation, quantization, batching, caching, and smaller models. Frame it as measuring first, then choosing the cheapest acceptable quality tradeoff.

Tell me about a time a model failed in production. What happened?

A real story about skew, drift, or a data bug — with detection and prevention — is far more convincing than claiming smooth deployments.

How do you evaluate a model beyond accuracy?

Talk about the metric matching the business cost of errors, slicing by segment, and offline-online gaps. Naming a case where accuracy misled is a strong touch.

When would you fine-tune an LLM versus use retrieval or prompting?

Start cheap: prompting, then RAG for knowledge, fine-tuning for behavior and format. Cost and maintenance burden should drive the answer.

How do you make training reproducible?

Version code, data, and config; track experiments; pin environments. This is engineering discipline applied to ML, which is exactly the role.

05

Resume tips that move the needle

For machine learning engineers specifically — generic advice costs you here

01

Center bullets on production systems: models served, request volume, latency, and the business metric they moved.

02

Show software engineering credentials explicitly — testing, CI, code review — since MLE hiring filters hardest on engineering rigor.

03

Name the MLOps tooling you have run (MLflow, SageMaker, Kubeflow, vector databases) as these are common screens.

04

Include LLM work with specifics — fine-tuning, RAG, evaluation — if you have it; vague 'GenAI experience' claims read poorly.

05

Distinguish your role on shared projects: built the serving layer, owned the pipeline, or trained the model.

06

Where this role goes

Typical progression

01 ML Engineer
02 Senior ML Engineer
03 Staff ML Engineer
04 ML Platform Lead
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