ML/AI Engineer – Senior Managing Consultant

IBM Computing; Houston (TX); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Consulting is seeking a Senior Managing Consultant to drive ML/AI solutions and lead a small delivery team. You will translate business needs into scalable models and oversee implementation, testing, and deployment with a focus on quality and reproducibility.

In this role, you will guide a team of 2–4 engineers, own the delivery plan, and communicate results to stakeholders. You will leverage modern AI tools, agents, and MLOps practices to deliver tangible business outcomes.

Qualifications

• Deep software‑engineering discipline with rigorous code standards
• Experience guiding a small team and reviewing work
• Ability to plan, sequence, and manage technical risk to delivery
• Strong ML/AI domain knowledge across modern methods and LLMs
• Excellent communication bridging business needs and technical work

Responsibilities

• Turn business needs into ML/AI solutions by designing models and systems
• Set engineering bar with standards for code quality, testing, and reproducibility
• Be the technical point of contact translating business needs into build plans
• Lead a 2‑4 person team, assign and review work, and grow individuals
• Own the delivery plan and manage risk to keep projects on track
• Communicate results with actionable insights for business impact
• Drive informed decision-making by embedding ML insights into strategy
• Leverage agentic AI, LLMs, and modern AI tooling in solutions
• Design scalable ML platforms and MLOps infrastructure
• Mentor and collaborate with cross‑functional partners

Skills

ML Solutions

Team Leadership

Delivery Ownership

AI/LLM Expertise

Cross‑functional Collaboration

Job description

Introduction

A career in IBM Consulting is built on long-term client relationships and close collaboration worldwide. You’ll work with leading companies across industries, helping them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from our strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat, you’ll have the tools to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. At IBM Consulting, curiosity fuels success. You’ll be encouraged to challenge the norm, explore new ideas, and create innovative solutions that deliver real results. Our culture of growth and empathy focuses on your long-term career development while valuing your unique skills and experiences.

Your role and responsibilities

As a Senior Managing Consultant, you are the hands‑on technical driver for a project. You define the technical approach and drive the code and implementation, building the hardest, highest‑risk parts of the solution. You guide a small team, keep the work correct, and pull the delivery through by example.

Your primary responsibilities will include:

• Turn needs into Machine Learning / AI Solutions: Take high ambiguity from the business and define the problem worth solving. Design and implement systems and models to solve complex business problems, selecting relevant features and algorithms to achieve desired outcomes.

• Set the engineering bar by example: establish standards for code quality, testing/validation, version control, and reproducibility — and hold them by writing to that bar yourself. You take on the pieces where getting the details right matters most.

• Be the technical point of contact: translate business needs into the build and report progress to stakeholders on the solution.

• Guide a small team: lead a team of 2-4. Assign and review work, unblock people, and grow them while building alongside them, not above them.

• Own delivery of the solution: own the plan and sequencing, manage the technical risk, and keep the solution on track.

• Communicate Results: Clearly articulate the results of Machine Learning initiatives, providing actionable insights and recommendations to drive business outcomes.

• Drive Informed Decision-Making: Collaborate with stakeholders to integrate Machine Learning insights into business decision‑making processes, driving informed strategic choices.

• Leverage Agentic AI & Modern LLMs: Claude, Copilot, LLM agents, prompt engineering, intelligent pipelines

• Design Scalable ML Platforms: MLOps infrastructure, enterprise integration

• Mentor & Collaborate: Cross‑functional partnerships, team building

This job can be performed from anywhere in the US.

Required technical and professional expertise

• Deep software‑engineering discipline: sets testing/validation and reproducibility standards for a team and lives them in the code; known for rigor and correctness.

• Technical leadership of a small team: has guided a small team's technical work, owning the approach and reviewing others, while remaining a primary builder.

• Delivery ownership: credible at planning and sequencing a solution and managing its technical risk to delivery.

• Advanced ML/AI: broad command of ML/AI methods and modern AI/LLM/agentic approaches; sound judgment on where each applies.

• Communication & bridging business and technology: the primary bridge between business and engineering for the solution. Comfortable being the technical point of contact, translating business needs into the build and technical reality back into decisions stakeholders can act on.

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.