MLOps Engineer

DPR Construction; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

DPR Construction is seeking an experienced MLOps Engineer to join their Data and AI team in Houston, Texas. This role involves designing and implementing scalable, cloud-native solutions and managing DataOps pipelines to support AI initiatives. Candidates should have 5+ years of experience, a Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, and strong proficiency with cloud technologies, especially Azure. The position offers a chance to work in a forward-thinking environment with significant opportunities for growth and impact.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in DevOps, MLOps, Data Engineering, Software Engineering or Site Reliability Engineering.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure and experience with a major cloud provider, preferably Azure.
• Proficiency in at least one object-oriented programming language, preferably Python.

Responsibilities

• Lead hands-on implementation of automation-first DevOps and MLOps practices.
• Design and manage intelligent DataOps pipelines.
• Standardize observability practices across development teams.
• Design and deploy containerized ML workloads.
• Implement AI-driven data validation and schema drift detection.

Skills

Automation-first DevOps and MLOps practices

DataOps pipelines

Observability practices (logging, metrics, tracing)

Containerized ML workloads

AI-driven data validation

Infrastructure provisioning automation

Reusable patterns and documentation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or related field

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Azure

Datadog

Grafana

Snowflake

Apache Airflow

Job description

Overview

DPR is looking for an experienced Data and MLOps Engineer to join our Data and AI team and work closely with the Data Platform, BI and Enterprise architecture teams to influence the technical direction of DPR’s AI initiatives. You will work closely with cross-functional teams, including business stakeholders, data engineers, and technical leads, to ensure alignment between business needs and data architecture and define data models for specific focus areas.

Position Overview

The MLOps Engineer will be instrumental in the design and implementation of scalable, cloud-native solutions to meet the growing needs of our Data & Development team. The successful candidate will demonstrate the ability to abstract complexity and create reusable, scalable patterns that accelerate development. The MLOps Engineer will design, build and support the infrastructure and systems that enable our teams to deliver reliable, high-impact data, workflows, and collaborating closely with data engineers, software developers, data scientists and product teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead hands-on implementation of automation-first DevOps and MLOps practices, enabling infrastructure-as-code and consistent, repeatable environment provisioning
• Design and manage intelligent DataOps pipelines with automated data quality monitoring and anomaly detection
• Standardize observability practices across AI/ML and other development teams including logging, metrics, tracing, and model performance monitoring, ingesting data from multiple platforms
• Design and deploy containerized ML workloads, partnering with Infrastructure Engineering for cluster provisioning and governance
• Extend existing CI/CD pipelines to support automated infrastructure changes and ML workflows
• Implement AI-driven data validation, schema drift detection, and metadata management
• Establish governance frameworks for AI systems, including bias detection, explainability, and auditability
• Extend existing Azure RBAC strategy by automating role and permission management to reduce manual intervention
• Collaborate with Infrastructure Engineering to automate infrastructure provisioning
• Act as a technical point of contact for DevOps and MLOps practices, developing reusable patterns, documentation, and proof-of-concepts to drive adoption

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or a related field
• 5+ years of experience in DevOps, MLOps, Data Engineering, Software Engineering or Site Reliability Engineering
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure and experience working with at least one major cloud provider, preferably Azure
• Proficiency in at least one objected-oriented programming language, preferably Python with hands-on experience in ML frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch or Scikit-learn

Required Skills

• Experience with CI/CD processes and automation
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, Bicep
• Proficiency in containerized application deployments and container orchestration – experience with Kubernetes, especially AKS would be a huge plus
• Experience standing up and managing observability tools such as Datadog, Azure Monitor or Grafana for APM, LLM Ops and model performance monitoring
• Experience deploying production-ready machine learning models
• Experience with Model explainability (SHAP, LIME) or similar
• Experience with cloud cost management and practices (e.g., Azure Cost Management, chargeback/show back models)

Nice to Have

• Experience in Azure, particularly AKS, ACR, ARM, App Service, Azure Machine Learning and AI Foundry, Azure Monitor
• Familiarity with semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or embedding pipelines
• Exposure to managing and monitoring ML workloads that support generative AI or advanced analytics use cases
• Proficiency with Snowflake
• Experience with workflow orchestration platforms such as Apache Airflow, Argo Workflow, Prefect, etc.

DPR Construction is a forward-thinking, self-performing general contractor specializing in technically complex and sustainable projects for the advanced technology, life sciences, healthcare, higher education and commercial markets. DPR is a private, employee-owned company with offices around the world. Working at DPR, you'll have the chance to try new things and shape your future. We are recognized as a great place to work by various outlets and invite you to explore our opportunities at www.dpr.com/careers.