Contract Machine Learning Engineer Jobs in Lakeland, FL

At Deloitte, Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) don't just build AI solutions, they help clients turn AI ambition into enterprise-scale impact, pairing leading class engineering with pod-based delivery and vertical expertise. If you thrive at the intersection of product, engineering, problem-solving, and client impact, this role puts you at the forefront of AI transformations.

Work you'll do

As an AWS AI&Data FDE, you will work side by side with senior functional and technical client team members to rapidly prototype and deliver high-impact GenAI-enabled solutions. This requires a highly motivated practitioner who moves with speed and precision, building working software, engaging confidently with senior stakeholders and engineers to bring measurable business impact from day one. Additional responsibilities include:

Client Engagement

• Embed with clients to identify business needs and translate high-value GenAI use cases into solutions.
• Partner with leaders, product owners, architects, and engineers to align priorities and delivery.
• Lead working sessions to shape solutions and drive client outcomes.
• Prototype and deliver working AI solutions using industry expertise and emerging capabilities.
• Contribute independently within an FDE pod while mentoring newer team members.

Solution Engineering

• Build AI-enabled solutions, agentic platforms, and workflows across enterprise AI platforms.
• Develop scalable AI engineering patterns, tool-use approaches, and human-in-the-loop controls.
• Apply architecture decisions that balance quality, safety, latency, cost, and model risk.
• Deliver production-quality code using strong practices in testing, CI/CD, logging, versioning, and documentation.
• Design extensible functionality, support sprint sizing, and align solutions with senior team members.
• Contribute reusable assets including code, prompt libraries, runbooks, and reference implementations.

The team

AI & Engineering leverages cutting-edge engineering capabilities to build, deploy, and operate integrated/verticalized sector solutions in software, data, AI, network, and hybrid cloud infrastructure. These solutions are powered by engineering for business advantage, transforming mission-critical operations. We enable clients to stay ahead with the latest advancements by transforming engineering teams and modernizing technology & data platforms. Our delivery models are tailored to meet each client's unique requirements.

Required qualifications 

• Bachelor's degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Data Science or Engineering.
• 3+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, data science, or analytics engineering. 
• 1+ years of hands-on experience building and deploying GenAI/LLM-powered solutions in client or production environments
• 1+ years of experience with AWS AI&Data including hands on experience with one of the following key platforms/products: Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock AgentCore, Strands Agents SDK, Knowledge Bases, Guardrails
• 1+ years of experience with AWS Neptune and OpenSearch
• 1+ years of experience leading project workstreams/engagements and translating business problems into AI solutions
• At least 3 of 6 certifications from the following list: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate), AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01), AWS Certified Generative AI Developer (Professional - AIP-C01), AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer (Associate - MLA-C01) or AWS Certified Data Engineer (Associate)
• 1+ years of experience building reliable, maintainable, and well-documented code 
• Ability to travel 50%, on average, based on the work you do and the clients and industries/sectors you serve
• Limited immigration sponsorship may be available

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with cloud environments (AWS, Azure, and/or Google Cloud) and common platform services (storage, compute, IAM, networking)
• Demonstrated ability to work directly alongside client technical teams and program stakeholders in fast-paced, ambiguous delivery environments 
• Data engineering experience with Spark, Airflow/dbt, streaming, data modeling or ML/data science background feature engineering, experimentation or model evaluation
• Experience with MLOps/LLMOps practices: evaluation frameworks, model monitoring, and prompt management 
• Experience with SageMaker fine-tuning (SFT and RFT) for domain SLMs
• Experience integrating LLM solutions with enterprise systems via APIs, microservices, or event-driven architectures 
• Experience operating within hybrid onshore/offshore teams 
• Familiarity with security, privacy, and compliance considerations

The wage range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. The disclosed range estimate has not been adjusted for the applicable geographic differential associated with the location at which the position may be filled. At Deloitte, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is $134,500 to $265,100.

You may also be eligible to participate in a discretionary annual incentive program, subject to the rules governing the program, whereby an award, if any, depends on various factors, including, without limitation, individual and organizational performance.

At Deloitte, Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) don't just build AI solutions, they help clients turn AI ambition into enterprise-scale impact, pairing leading class engineering with pod-based delivery and vertical expertise. If you thrive at the intersection of product, engineering, problem-solving, and client impact, this role puts you at the forefront of AI transformations.

Work you'll do

As an AWS AI&Data FDE, you will work side by side with senior functional and technical client team members to rapidly prototype and deliver high-impact GenAI-enabled solutions. This requires a highly motivated practitioner who moves with speed and precision, building working software, engaging confidently with senior stakeholders and engineers to bring measurable business impact from day one. Additional responsibilities include:

Client Engagement

• Embed with clients to identify business needs and translate high-value GenAI use cases into solutions.
• Partner with leaders, product owners, architects, and engineers to align priorities and delivery.
• Lead working sessions to shape solutions and drive client outcomes.
• Prototype and deliver working AI solutions using industry expertise and emerging capabilities.
• Contribute independently within an FDE pod while mentoring newer team members.

Solution Engineering

• Build AI-enabled solutions, agentic platforms, and workflows across enterprise AI platforms.
• Develop scalable AI engineering patterns, tool-use approaches, and human-in-the-loop controls.
• Apply architecture decisions that balance quality, safety, latency, cost, and model risk.
• Deliver production-quality code using strong practices in testing, CI/CD, logging, versioning, and documentation.
• Design extensible functionality, support sprint sizing, and align solutions with senior team members.
• Contribute reusable assets including code, prompt libraries, runbooks, and reference implementations.

The team

AI & Engineering leverages cutting-edge engineering capabilities to build, deploy, and operate integrated/verticalized sector solutions in software, data, AI, network, and hybrid cloud infrastructure. These solutions are powered by engineering for business advantage, transforming mission-critical operations. We enable clients to stay ahead with the latest advancements by transforming engineering teams and modernizing technology & data platforms. Our delivery models are tailored to meet each client's unique requirements.

Required qualifications 

• Bachelor's degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Data Science or Engineering.
• 3+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, data science, or analytics engineering. 
• 1+ years of hands-on experience building and deploying GenAI/LLM-powered solutions in client or production environments
• 1+ years of experience with AWS AI&Data including hands on experience with one of the following key platforms/products: Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock AgentCore, Strands Agents SDK, Knowledge Bases, Guardrails
• 1+ years of experience with AWS Neptune and OpenSearch
• 1+ years of experience leading project workstreams/engagements and translating business problems into AI solutions
• At least 3 of 6 certifications from the following list: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate), AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01), AWS Certified Generative AI Developer (Professional - AIP-C01), AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer (Associate - MLA-C01) or AWS Certified Data Engineer (Associate)
• 1+ years of experience building reliable, maintainable, and well-documented code 
• Ability to travel 50%, on average, based on the work you do and the clients and industries/sectors you serve
• Limited immigration sponsorship may be available

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with cloud environments (AWS, Azure, and/or Google Cloud) and common platform services (storage, compute, IAM, networking)
• Demonstrated ability to work directly alongside client technical teams and program stakeholders in fast-paced, ambiguous delivery environments 
• Data engineering experience with Spark, Airflow/dbt, streaming, data modeling or ML/data science background feature engineering, experimentation or model evaluation
• Experience with MLOps/LLMOps practices: evaluation frameworks, model monitoring, and prompt management 
• Experience with SageMaker fine-tuning (SFT and RFT) for domain SLMs
• Experience integrating LLM solutions with enterprise systems via APIs, microservices, or event-driven architectures 
• Experience operating within hybrid onshore/offshore teams 
• Familiarity with security, privacy, and compliance considerations

The wage range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. The disclosed range estimate has not been adjusted for the applicable geographic differential associated with the location at which the position may be filled. At Deloitte, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is $134,500 to $265,100.

You may also be eligible to participate in a discretionary annual incentive program, subject to the rules governing the program, whereby an award, if any, depends on various factors, including, without limitation, individual and organizational performance.