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Machine Learning Engineer Jobs in Des Plaines, IL

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Chicago, IL · On-site

$107K - $147K/yr

About the role Attain is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to own our production ML systems and build out the MLOps platform infrastructure that powers our suite of B2C financial services.

* Own model training and post-training pipelines end to end: SFT, RLHF, PPO, DPO, and reward model training in PyTorch * Build and maintain the infrastructure around RL training: rollout collection ...

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Chicago, IL · On-site +1

$107K - $147K/yr

About the role Attain is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to own our production ML systems and build out the MLOps platform infrastructure that powers our suite of B2C financial services.

Salary Range $200,000-$225,000 USD About Us IMC is a research-driven trading firm where quantitative modeling, machine learning, and engineering shape how modern markets are traded. A stabilizing ...

... engineers to implement, verify, and deploy ML inference solutions from proof-of-concept through production * Track and evaluate emerging research in neural architecture search, machine learning ...

Salary Range $200,000-$225,000 USD About Us IMC is a research-driven trading firm where quantitative modeling, machine learning, and engineering shape how modern markets are traded. A stabilizing ...

Senior AI Machine Learning Engineer

Chicago, IL · Hybrid

$126K - $166K/yr

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer , you will play a critical role in designing, building, and operationalizing productiongrade AI solutions-partnering closely with product, engineering, and ...

As an AI Engineering team member, you will be instrumental in advancing new features and/or solutions from the Proof of Concept stage to full production readiness. Your role involves refining and ...

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer , you will play a critical role in designing, building, and operationalizing production‑grade AI solutions--partnering closely with product, engineering, and ...

Showing results 41-60

Machine Learning Engineer information

See Des Plaines, IL salary details

$30.7K

$125.5K

$188.6K

How much do machine learning engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Sep 9, 2026, the average yearly pay for machine learning engineer in Des Plaines, IL is $125,483.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $98,900.00 and $151,000.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a machine learning engineer?

Machine Learning Engineers are specialized software engineers who design, build, and deploy machine learning models and systems. They work at the intersection of software engineering and data science, transforming data-driven prototypes into scalable, production-ready solutions. Their responsibilities include data preprocessing, model selection, algorithm implementation, and optimizing models for performance and efficiency. Machine Learning Engineers often collaborate with data scientists, software developers, and other stakeholders to integrate AI technologies into products and services.

What does a machine learning engineer do?

A machine learning engineer maintains production systems and often works with other engineers. In this career, you work with software development methodology, use modern software development tools, and use agile practices. You also play a role in software design and architecture, so you may occasionally work with a programmer. An engineer may help to predict how a model should perform or seek out regression issues by using different test types and algorithms. To fulfill your duties and responsibilities, you work on a computer and use an array of skills and programs to carry out these tests.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a machine learning engineer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Machine Learning Engineer, you need strong programming skills (particularly in Python), a solid background in mathematics and statistics, and a degree in computer science or a related field. Experience with machine learning frameworks (such as TensorFlow or PyTorch), data processing tools, and cloud platforms is typically required. Problem-solving ability, effective communication, and adaptability are crucial soft skills for collaborating with teams and translating complex models into practical solutions. These competencies ensure the development, deployment, and continual improvement of machine learning systems that drive business value.

What are some common challenges faced by machine learning engineers when deploying models to production?

Machine Learning Engineers often encounter challenges such as ensuring model scalability, maintaining data consistency between training and production environments, and monitoring model performance over time. Integrating models into existing software infrastructure may require collaboration with DevOps and software engineering teams to address issues like latency, version control, and resource allocation. Additionally, ongoing model maintenance is crucial to prevent model drift and ensure that predictions remain accurate as new data becomes available.

What is the difference between Machine Learning Engineer vs Data Scientist?

AspectMachine Learning EngineerData Scientist
CredentialsBachelor's or Master's in CS, Data Science, or related; experience with ML frameworksBachelor's or Master's in Statistics, Data Science, or related; strong analytical skills
Work EnvironmentDevelops scalable ML models, deploys algorithms into productionAnalyzes data, builds models, interprets data insights
Industry UsageTech companies, startups, AI-focused firmsFinance, healthcare, marketing, research organizations

While both roles work with data and machine learning, Machine Learning Engineers focus on building and deploying scalable ML models in production environments. Data Scientists primarily analyze data, create models, and generate insights. The roles often overlap but differ in their core responsibilities and focus areas.

What are popular job titles related to Machine Learning Engineer jobs in Des Plaines, IL?

For Machine Learning Engineer jobs in Des Plaines, IL, the most frequently searched job titles are:

What job categories do people searching Machine Learning Engineer jobs in Des Plaines, IL look for?

The top searched job categories for Machine Learning Engineer jobs in Des Plaines, IL are:

What cities near Des Plaines, IL are hiring for Machine Learning Engineer jobs?

Cities near Des Plaines, IL with the most Machine Learning Engineer job openings:

Infographic showing various Machine Learning Engineer job openings in Des Plaines, IL as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% As Needed, 73% Full Time, 25% Part Time, and 1% Contract. Highlights an 87% Physical, 2% Hybrid, and 11% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $125,483 per year, or $60.3 per hour.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Chicago, IL • On-site

$107K - $147K/yr

Full-time

Posted 5 days ago


Job description

About Attain
Built for consumers and companies, alike.
Klover's engineering team powers one of the fastest-growing fintech platforms in the U.S., supporting over one million active users each month. Our systems process and move more than $1.5 billion annually, enabling real-time access to financial tools, rewards, and services that help people improve their day-to-day lives.
As part of this team, you'll help design, build, and scale the systems that underpin Klover's core products and platform. You'll work on high-impact, production-grade systems that prioritize reliability, security, and performance, and that integrate with a broad ecosystem of internal and external services. The work you do will directly shape how users interact with Klover's products, access their money, and experience transparent, low-fee financial services.
Klover engineers collaborate closely with colleagues across backend, frontend, data science, and product teams to deliver scalable, high-quality solutions for a rapidly growing user base. You'll have the opportunity to work with modern technologies and architectures while helping define and evolve the next generation of inclusive, data-powered financial products-building systems and interfaces that emphasize reliability, privacy, and performance at scale.
About the role
Attain is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to own our production ML systems and build out the MLOps platform infrastructure that powers our suite of B2C financial services. This role will be highly hands-on and infrastructure-first, focused on designing, building, and operating the pipelines, platforms, and tooling that take models from experiment to reliable production service across our app portfolio-and on keeping those systems healthy, performant, and cost-effective once they're live.
You will work on the systems and infrastructure behind our high-impact predictive models, including the pipelines, feature infrastructure, model-serving, CI/CD, and observability that keep them reproducible, automated, monitored, and fast in production. Day to day, this means building the platform and automation that let us move fast without sacrificing performance-streamlining retraining and rollouts, tuning systems for speed and efficiency, and building the metrics and alerting that give us confidence to ship-while enabling data scientists to deploy and iterate on models quickly and safely. The ideal candidate combines strong software and platform engineering fundamentals with practical MLOps experience building and operating production ML systems from scratch, and treats modern AI tooling as a first-class part of how the work gets done-directing coding agents to write, test, and ship infrastructure code, with the judgment to know when to verify their work.
Attain Office Hybrid Schedule:
  • Chicago, IL: 4 days in-office; 1 day remote
What a typical week might look like
  • Build, deploy, and operate the production ML systems at the core of our EWA product, with a focus on reliability, performance, and fast, high-quality execution
  • Build and improve the pipelines and serving infrastructure behind our predictive models across consumer decisioning, fraud, churn, transaction intelligence, and other business-critical use cases
  • Own the production side of the model lifecycle: feature pipelines, deployment, CI/CD, monitoring, and automated retraining
  • Build and maintain reusable modeling pipelines, feature engineering systems, model-serving infrastructure, and production-quality code, deployed via Terraform and CI/CD into our GCP + Kubernetes environment
  • Instrument models and pipelines with monitoring, alerting, and automated retraining-defining the metrics and dashboards (e.g., Prometheus/Grafana) that surface drift and degradation and give us confidence to ship
  • Direct AI coding agents as a force multiplier to write, test, and ship infrastructure and pipeline code-and apply strong judgment about when to trust their output and when to verify it yourself
  • Automate manual, repetitive steps in the ML lifecycle so the team can move faster without sacrificing reliability
  • Partner with data scientists to give them fast, safe paths to deploy, iterate on, and retrain models in production
  • Collaborate with analysts, platform engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders to deliver ML systems with quality, efficiency, and precision
  • Identify new areas where platform improvements, automation, and MLOps tooling can improve product velocity and business outcomes
Preferred Qualifications
  • 5+ years of direct experience as a Machine Learning Engineer, ML Platform Engineer, MLOps Engineer, Applied Scientist or similar role building and operating production ML systems
  • Strongly preferred: degree in STEM field such as Computer Science, Statistics, Economics, Mathematics, Engineering, Physics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field
  • Demonstrated ability to apply critical thinking, abstract reasoning, and sound engineering judgment to complex, ambiguous technical and business problems
  • Strong expertise deploying, serving, monitoring, and operating ML models in production-including feature engineering systems, training/serving parity, retraining, and model performance diagnostics
  • Experience building low-latency online model serving (e.g., gRPC/microservices, ideally with a service mesh such as Istio) for real-time decisioning
  • Hands-on MLOps experience: pipelines, CI/CD for ML, containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform), and workflow schedulers (e.g., Airflow)
  • Experience with model versioning, reproducibility, and safe progressive rollout (shadow, canary, champion-challenger) of models in production
  • Demonstrated fluency directing AI coding agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) to build, operate, and debug real ML systems-with experienced judgment on verifying their work
  • A track record of replacing manual, repetitive ML workflows with durable automation
  • Experience building the infrastructure behind high-impact applied ML use cases such as credit decisioning, risk modeling, fraud, churn, or consumer behavior modeling
  • Familiarity with model explainability, auditability, and the compliance considerations of regulated decisioning (a plus for credit/fintech contexts)
  • Strong software and platform engineering fundamentals
  • Strong Python coding skills, with the ability to build pipelines, services, and production-quality tooling from scratch; experience with a systems or backend language such as Go or Rust is a plus
  • Experience with distributed computing and GPU-accelerated workloads (e.g., Spark, Ray, Dask, or distributed training/inference), including scaling data and model pipelines across clusters
  • Strong SQL skills and experience with cloud data warehouses and operational databases (e.g., BigQuery, Spanner), including working with large, messy, real-world datasets
  • Experience with observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog
  • Experience with cloud computing services or platforms; GCP preferred
  • Willingness to roll up your sleeves and wear multiple hats across engineering, infrastructure, and ML execution based on business needs
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical topics to both technical and non-technical audiences

We are excited to hear from you.
At Attain, we are passionate about finding people to continuously help us grow our organization. We encourage you to apply, even if your experience doesn't match every detail on the job description. If we don't see something that immediately fits, we will keep your resume on file for future opportunities.