ML Engineer Visa Sponsorship Jobs in Washington DC
Washington DC's ML engineer job market is anchored by federal agencies, defense contractors, and consulting firms including Booz Allen Hamilton, Leidos, and Palantir. Many roles require security clearances, which affects sponsorship availability. The broader metro area, including Northern Virginia's tech corridor, offers the highest concentration of ML engineering positions with visa sponsorship.
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Get Access To All JobsHi, We're AppFolio
We're innovators, changemakers, and collaborators. We're more than just a software company — we're building the AI-native platform where the real estate industry comes to do business. We're transforming Property Management; how property managers operate, how residents live, and how intelligence flows across an entire industry.
Realm-X is AppFolio's AI-native platform powering this transformation. It enables a new generation of intelligent capabilities across our products, including Realm-X Assistant (copilot), Flows (AI Agentic workflows) and Performers (autonomous AI Agents). Realm-X serves as both a foundation for internal teams to build and scale AI-powered products, and a core layer delivering intelligent, high-impact experiences directly to our customers.
At its core, Realm-X is built on a structured domain ontology and a set of shared business primitives—such as transactions, actions, reports, metrics, and skills—that enable AI systems to deeply understand and operate across the full context of property management workflows. This foundation allows us to build context-aware, action-oriented AI systems that go beyond simple assistance to power real automation and decision-making.
Who We Are Looking For
We're hiring a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to design and ship the next generation of voice and conversational AI agents within Realm-X. This role helps define AppFolio's production voice and chat agent pipelines, working at the intersection of LLM agent frameworks, real-time voice technology, and streaming infrastructure.
You will work with Product, Voice channel, and ML Platform teams to translate cutting-edge agent and voice research into reliable, low-latency, multi-channel experiences that scale across our entire customer base.
Your Impact
- Ship Voice & Text Agents: Architect and ship voice and text agent pipelines that handle real-time, multi-turn customer interactions.
- Reasoning vs. Latency: Make principled trade-offs between reasoning depth and latency across frontier LLMs, smaller models, and routing strategies.
- Lead a Pod: Lead a small pod of ML and platform engineers; raise the bar on agent evaluation, observability, and incident response.
- Define Quality: Partner with Product and Voice channel teams to define KPIs, eval harnesses, and acceptance criteria for agent quality.
- Optimize for Voice: Drive selective Small Language Model (SLM) fine-tuning and inference optimization for voice latency and cost.
Qualifications
You have shipped production AI agents serving real users in voice and/or text channels. You think in pipelines and systems, not just models. You move fast, deliver impact, and maintain sound engineering judgment. You are humble, collaborative, and low-ego, and you elevate those around you. You value work-life balance as a foundation for sustained high performance.
Must Have
- Agent frameworks: Deep, shipped experience with LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, and LangChain Deep Agents (or equivalent agent frameworks).
- Voice stack: Hands-on with Voice-to-Voice models and traditional TTS / STT pipelines; understands the trade-offs between end-to-end voice models and modular STT LLM TTS architectures.
- LLM fluency: Strong grasp of LLM reasoning behavior, tool use, structured output, and reasoning-vs-latency trade-offs across providers.
- Telephony & cloud: Production experience with Twilio (or comparable telephony) and AWS.
- Engineering: Expert Python, async programming, and WebSockets for real-time, bidirectional streaming.
- ML fundamentals: Solid foundation in deep learning, model evaluation, and inference optimization; able to deploy with Docker on AWS.
- Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead a small team, mentor engineers, and partner credibly with Product and Design.
Nice to Have
- Experience fine-tuning Small Language Models for domain-specific voice applications.
- Familiarity with RAG over structured business data and tool-using agents over API surfaces.
- Prior experience in regulated or customer-facing industries with strict reliability requirements.
- Publicly verifiable work on GitHub, in open-source agent frameworks, or in community competitions.
Location
Find out more about our locations by visiting our site.
All late-stage candidates complete an in-person meeting with an AppFolian as part of our hiring process.
Compensation & Benefits
The compensation that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is: 167,200 - 209,000 base pay. The actual compensation for this role will be determined by a variety of factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s skills, education, experience, and internal equity.
Please note that compensation is just one aspect of a comprehensive Total Rewards package. The compensation range listed here does not include additional benefits or any discretionary bonuses you may be eligible for based on your role and/or employment type.
Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits - see here.
LI-KB1
Hi, We're AppFolio
We're innovators, changemakers, and collaborators. We're more than just a software company — we're building the AI-native platform where the real estate industry comes to do business. We're transforming Property Management; how property managers operate, how residents live, and how intelligence flows across an entire industry.
Realm-X is AppFolio's AI-native platform powering this transformation. It enables a new generation of intelligent capabilities across our products, including Realm-X Assistant (copilot), Flows (AI Agentic workflows) and Performers (autonomous AI Agents). Realm-X serves as both a foundation for internal teams to build and scale AI-powered products, and a core layer delivering intelligent, high-impact experiences directly to our customers.
At its core, Realm-X is built on a structured domain ontology and a set of shared business primitives—such as transactions, actions, reports, metrics, and skills—that enable AI systems to deeply understand and operate across the full context of property management workflows. This foundation allows us to build context-aware, action-oriented AI systems that go beyond simple assistance to power real automation and decision-making.
Who We Are Looking For
We're hiring a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to design and ship the next generation of voice and conversational AI agents within Realm-X. This role helps define AppFolio's production voice and chat agent pipelines, working at the intersection of LLM agent frameworks, real-time voice technology, and streaming infrastructure.
You will work with Product, Voice channel, and ML Platform teams to translate cutting-edge agent and voice research into reliable, low-latency, multi-channel experiences that scale across our entire customer base.
Your Impact
- Ship Voice & Text Agents: Architect and ship voice and text agent pipelines that handle real-time, multi-turn customer interactions.
- Reasoning vs. Latency: Make principled trade-offs between reasoning depth and latency across frontier LLMs, smaller models, and routing strategies.
- Lead a Pod: Lead a small pod of ML and platform engineers; raise the bar on agent evaluation, observability, and incident response.
- Define Quality: Partner with Product and Voice channel teams to define KPIs, eval harnesses, and acceptance criteria for agent quality.
- Optimize for Voice: Drive selective Small Language Model (SLM) fine-tuning and inference optimization for voice latency and cost.
Qualifications
You have shipped production AI agents serving real users in voice and/or text channels. You think in pipelines and systems, not just models. You move fast, deliver impact, and maintain sound engineering judgment. You are humble, collaborative, and low-ego, and you elevate those around you. You value work-life balance as a foundation for sustained high performance.
Must Have
- Agent frameworks: Deep, shipped experience with LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, and LangChain Deep Agents (or equivalent agent frameworks).
- Voice stack: Hands-on with Voice-to-Voice models and traditional TTS / STT pipelines; understands the trade-offs between end-to-end voice models and modular STT LLM TTS architectures.
- LLM fluency: Strong grasp of LLM reasoning behavior, tool use, structured output, and reasoning-vs-latency trade-offs across providers.
- Telephony & cloud: Production experience with Twilio (or comparable telephony) and AWS.
- Engineering: Expert Python, async programming, and WebSockets for real-time, bidirectional streaming.
- ML fundamentals: Solid foundation in deep learning, model evaluation, and inference optimization; able to deploy with Docker on AWS.
- Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead a small team, mentor engineers, and partner credibly with Product and Design.
Nice to Have
- Experience fine-tuning Small Language Models for domain-specific voice applications.
- Familiarity with RAG over structured business data and tool-using agents over API surfaces.
- Prior experience in regulated or customer-facing industries with strict reliability requirements.
- Publicly verifiable work on GitHub, in open-source agent frameworks, or in community competitions.
Location
Find out more about our locations by visiting our site.
All late-stage candidates complete an in-person meeting with an AppFolian as part of our hiring process.
Compensation & Benefits
The compensation that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is: 167,200 - 209,000 base pay. The actual compensation for this role will be determined by a variety of factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s skills, education, experience, and internal equity.
Please note that compensation is just one aspect of a comprehensive Total Rewards package. The compensation range listed here does not include additional benefits or any discretionary bonuses you may be eligible for based on your role and/or employment type.
Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits - see here.
LI-KB1
ML Engineer Job Roles in Washington DC
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Search ML Engineer Jobs in Washington DCML Engineer Jobs in Washington DC: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies sponsor visas for ML engineers in Washington DC?
Booz Allen Hamilton, Leidos, CACI International, Palantir, and Amazon Web Services have all filed H-1B visa petitions for ML engineering roles in the DC metro area. Consulting firms like Accenture and Deloitte Federal also sponsor ML engineers regularly. Note that roles tied to federal contracts often require security clearances, which can limit sponsorship eligibility for international candidates.
Which visa types are most common for ML engineer roles in Washington DC?
The H-1B is the most common visa for ML engineers in DC, given that the role qualifies as a specialty occupation requiring at least a bachelor's degree in computer science, statistics, or a related field. Candidates with a master's degree from a U.S. university may benefit from the advanced degree exemption in the H-1B lottery. L-1B visas are also used by multinational firms transferring ML specialists into DC offices.
Which areas in Washington DC have the most ML engineer sponsorship jobs?
Most ML engineering sponsorship activity in the DC area is concentrated in Northern Virginia, particularly Tysons Corner, Reston, and Arlington, which form the region's primary technology corridor. Downtown DC itself hosts federal agency contractors and policy-adjacent tech firms. Maryland suburbs like Bethesda and Rockville also have a notable presence, particularly in health data and biotech ML applications.
How to find ml engineer visa sponsorship jobs in Washington DC?
Migrate Mate filters ML engineer jobs in Washington DC specifically by visa sponsorship availability, so you're not manually screening hundreds of listings. The platform surfaces roles from contractors, tech firms, and consulting companies in the DC metro that have a documented history of sponsoring H-1B and other work visas for ML engineering positions. It's a practical starting point for international candidates targeting this market.
Are there any DC-specific considerations for ML engineers seeking visa sponsorship?
The DC metro market is heavily shaped by federal contracting, and many ML roles require active security clearances or at minimum U.S. persons eligibility, which excludes most visa holders. Candidates should prioritize commercial-sector employers or contractors with dedicated commercial divisions. University pipelines from Georgetown, George Mason, and the University of Maryland supply strong local talent networks and occasionally lead to OPT-to-sponsorship pathways.
What is the prevailing wage for sponsored ml engineer jobs in Washington DC?
U.S. employers sponsoring a visa must pay at least the prevailing wage, which is what workers in the same role, area, and experience level typically earn. The Department of Labor sets this rate to make sure companies aren't hiring foreign workers simply because they'd accept lower pay than a U.S. worker. It varies by job title, location, and experience. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search page.