Mlops Engineer Jobs in California
Mlops Engineer jobs in California are among the most active in the country, concentrated in artificial intelligence infrastructure, cloud platform engineering, and large-scale model deployment across technology, financial services, and biotechnology. The largest hiring clusters are in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, where companies like Google, Meta, and Nvidia maintain deep mlops engineering teams. The most in-demand specialties are ML pipeline automation, model monitoring and observability, and Kubernetes-based deployment infrastructure. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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About Gallatin
At Gallatin, we are rebuilding logistics infrastructure for the national security missions of the United States and allied partners. We build AI systems that determine how logistics decisions are made — not just how they're executed. From factory to foxhole, we operate at the layer where data becomes decisions, and decisions make the advantage.
What You'll Do
In this role, you will build the systems that move a model out of a notebook and into the hands of a planner. Sometimes, that means deploying to an air-gapped rack in a tent instead of a VPC. You will own the path from training run to deployed capability: the infrastructure it runs on, the release process that ships it, the evaluation harness that proves it works, and the telemetry that tells us when it stops working.
Our AI/ML team works across retrieval-grounded systems for doctrine and logistics data, document and feature extraction, military symbol recognition, optimization and movement models, and an LLM agent platform. This role underpins that work: building the infrastructure, release processes, and evaluation systems that make it shippable and keep it honest in production. You will have plenty of room to shape how we build it.
Training & Serving Infrastructure
Own model training, fine-tuning, and batch inference infrastructure across AWS (SageMaker, EKS) and on-premises GPU hardware.
Stand up and tune LLM inference serving: vLLM-class stacks, quantization, continuous batching, KV-cache and throughput sizing. Make the hosted-vs-local call with numbers behind it.
Build for DDIL: local inference with configurable fallback, degraded-mode behavior, and sane resource envelopes on hardware we do not get to choose.
Release & Reproducibility
Build CI/CD for models and pipelines: versioned datasets, a model registry, promotion gates, and rollback that actually works under pressure.
Own infrastructure as code, containerization, and GitOps deployment across environments ranging from a dev cluster to a disconnected enclave.
Make reproducibility a hard requirement. Any result we put in front of a customer or evaluator must be reproducible from a commit and dataset version.
Evaluation & Observability
Build and own the evaluation harness: regression suites for retrieval and extraction pipelines, LLM-as-judge pipelines with measured judge-human agreement, and adversarial and held-out sets.
Instrument production for drift, latency, cost, retrieval quality, and failure modes, including quiet ones such as a retrieval miss that produces a fluent but wrong answer.
Make our metrics defensible to external test and evaluation reviewers. “We think it’s good” is not a deliverable.
Data & Pipeline Ownership
Own ingestion, versioning, and lineage for logistics and doctrinal data drawn from a heterogeneous set of authoritative sources.
Build and operate embedding and feature pipelines, incremental indexing, and the unglamorous systems that keep a retrieval index fresh.
Build the human-in-the-loop infrastructure: confidence-scored routing, review queues, and feedback capture that improves the next model.
Secure & Accredited Deployment
Deploy and operate ML systems in IL5 and IL6 environments, including air-gapped or restricted-network enclaves. Build the release, observability, artifact-management, and incident-response workflows those environments require.
Support ATO and continuous-authorization work with implementation evidence tied to applicable security controls (NIST SP 800-171, NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5, CMMC Level 2, FIPS 140-3, and RMF/eMASS).
Handle CUI and classified data correctly without being asked twice.
What We’re Looking For
Strong Platform & Infrastructure Skills
5+ years in MLOps, ML platform, or infrastructure engineering, including meaningful time working on systems with real users.
Strong Python skills and comfort in a production codebase, not just notebooks.
Deep Kubernetes and containerization experience, plus infrastructure as code.
Production experience with AWS ML/Azure infrastructure (SageMaker, EKS, or equivalent).
Hands-on GPU infrastructure experience: scheduling, utilization, memory sizing, and cost.
Hands-on experience deploying and operating production software in IL5 or IL6 environments, including disconnected or restricted-network deployments.
Production ML Judgment
You have shipped an LLM or ML system to production and then had to keep it working. You know what breaks.
You have built evaluation and monitoring for ML systems rather than adopting a vendor dashboard and hoping.
You can reason about where a pipeline’s quality actually comes from and say so when a metric is measuring the wrong thing.
Ownership
You are comfortable with ambiguity and owning a domain end to end. This is a small team; there is no one to hand the pager to.
You are willing to learn the mission domain. The engineers who do best here become genuinely interested in the logistics problem itself.
Nice to Have
Clearance: Preferred
LLM serving and inference optimization (vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, quantization, prefix caching).
Retrieval-grounded systems in production: hybrid retrieval, re-ranking, index freshness, and citation quality.
Edge, on-premises, or disconnected deployment.
Experience supporting ATO, continuous authorization, or production operations in classified environments.
Defense, intelligence, or another accredited or regulated environment.
Palantir Foundry, PostgreSQL/pgvector, NATS/JetStream, or ArgoCD.
A degree in CS, engineering, or a related technical field, or the equivalent built the hard way.
Mission and Identity
We are building the system that enables faster, smarter logistics decisions in contested environments, and we're doing it with a team of seasoned entrepreneurs, operators, and technologists who have built and scaled solutions in this space before. We hold ourselves to an extremely high standard. We value clear thinking, direct communication, and the kind of ownership that doesn't stop until something actually works.
Our mission is to create decision advantage when the stakes are the highest. If we succeed, the system doesn't just run; it gets smarter. We're not building AI for its own sake. We're building it because faster, smarter decisions in the most demanding environments on earth can't wait. If you want to work somewhere the stakes are real and the mission is urgent — you'll fit in here.
Why Gallatin?
The logistics infrastructure that supports America's warfighters and humanitarian disaster responders is overdue for transformation, and we are building it. From defense operations to disaster response, we're solving the hardest problems that keep missions moving when it matters most. Join a team where the mission is the point.
Compensation: Gallatin offers competitive compensation commensurate with experience. Actual compensation may vary based on experience, skills, and location. In addition to base salary, we offer a generous equity grant, full healthcare coverage, 401k, unlimited PTO, and the perks of working in a high-caliber, mission-driven environment.
Gallatin is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.
This position may require the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance. The successful candidate must be able to work in a classified environment when necessary.
We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.
Note: Due to the nature of certain government contracts held by this organization, U.S. citizenship is a requirement for all positions at Gallatin. Proof of citizenship will be required prior to employment if selected.
Compensation Range: $80K - $210K
See All 12 Mlops Engineer Jobs in California
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Find Mlops Engineer JobsMlops Engineer Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Mlops Engineer Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring



Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in mlops engineer jobs across California.
- Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, data science, or a related engineering field
- Hands-on experience with ML pipeline orchestration tools such as Kubeflow, MLflow, or Apache Airflow
- Proficiency deploying and monitoring models on cloud platforms including GCP, AWS, or Azure
- Strong programming skills in Python with experience in containerization using Docker and Kubernetes
- Familiarity with CI/CD practices applied to machine learning model training and deployment workflows
- Experience with data versioning, feature stores, and model registry tools in production environments
Mlops Engineer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a mlops engineer in California?
There is no state-issued license required to work as a mlops engineer in California. Most California employers expect a bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, data engineering, or a related field, combined with demonstrated experience building and operating ML pipelines in production. Strong candidates pair their degree with cloud certifications from Google, AWS, or Microsoft and a portfolio of deployed model projects. California's dense network of community colleges and UC and CSU campuses also offers applied data engineering programs that feed directly into mlops roles.
Which companies hire mlops engineers in California?
Employers hiring mlops engineers in California right now include TikTok, Grindr, and Molex, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of October 2026. California's concentration of large technology companies, AI-focused startups, and pharmaceutical firms with computational research arms means consistent mlops hiring across multiple industries and seniority levels.
Which California cities have the most mlops engineer jobs?
The cities with the most mlops engineer openings in California are San Jose, San Francisco, and Irvine. The Bay Area dominates because of its density of AI-native companies and major tech headquarters, while Los Angeles draws mlops engineers into entertainment technology, adtech, and fintech, and San Diego's openings are anchored by its biotech corridor and defense technology contractors.
Are there remote mlops engineer jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 57% of mlops engineer openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of October 2026, reflecting how much of the work involves cloud infrastructure and code rather than physical hardware. Model monitoring, pipeline development, and experiment tracking are the tasks most commonly performed fully remotely, while on-site expectations tend to apply mainly to roles that involve managing GPU clusters or sensitive on-premises data environments.
How can I get hired as a mlops engineer in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is moving into mlops from an adjacent role such as data engineer, software engineer, or data scientist, where you have already worked with production systems. Large California employers including Google, Salesforce, and Apple run new-graduate and associate engineering programs that place candidates without direct mlops titles into platform or infrastructure teams where mlops skills develop on the job. Building a public portfolio of end-to-end ML pipeline projects on GitHub and earning a cloud certification from Google Cloud or AWS strengthens applications significantly for California entry-level roles.
Where can I find and apply to mlops engineer jobs in California?
You can find and apply to mlops engineer jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings across the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, and beyond. Search the listings, find roles that match your background and target location, and apply directly to the ones that fit.
See All 12 Mlops Engineer Jobs in California
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