Lead AI Ops Engineer, Infrastructure

USAA

Confirmed live today High trust
Closes tomorrow

Quick summary

Work type
On-site
Location
San Antonio, TX
Salary
$127,310–$243,340 / yr
Employment
Full-time
Posted
6 days ago
Freshness
Confirmed live today
Closes
Nov 5, 2026 (soon)

Market check

Salary context

Competitive pay

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $180k
This role $185k
$108k $258k
below market most similar roles pay here above market

This role pays more than 57% of similar roles. Most pay $144,350–$215,375 — the blue band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $185k versus about $180k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About USAA

USAA (United Services Automobile Association) is a San Antonio-based Fortune 500 financial services company founded in 1922, dedicated to providing insurance, banking, and investment solutions exclusively to U.S. military members, veterans, and their families.

USAA currently has 74 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $114,080–$218,030 across 42 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at USAA

At a glance

TL;DR · Lead AI Ops Engineer, Infrastructure

The Lead AI Ops Engineer - Infrastructure joins the Infrastructure AI Ops team to build and operate the data-to-automation pipeline for individual capacity, anomaly, and remediation use cases. This role involves owning technical design and architecture for high-consequence builds, setting reusable patterns for telemetry-consuming feature pipelines, and leading the progression toward self-healing automation. You will personally ship production code and infrastructure-as-code while serving as the primary technical escalation point during major incidents. Key technologies include TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes operators. The role solves complex infrastructure operational problems by productionizing ML models for operational data, establishing safety and control frameworks, and ensuring all automation is defensible against regulated institutional standards for production compute and storage.

What you'll do

  • Own the technical design and architecture for high-ambiguity and high-consequence AIOps builds.
  • Ship production code and infrastructure-as-code for the hardest components of the data-to-automation pipeline.
  • Establish reusable patterns for telemetry-consuming feature pipelines, topology-graph designs, and remediation scaffolding.
  • Determine which infrastructure use cases are ready for self-healing automation and provide the justifying evidence.
  • Serve as the primary technical escalation point during major incidents and make real-time "kill switch" decisions.
  • Mentor senior engineers on technical depth and judgment to grow the next generation of technical leads.
  • Lead postmortems to convert incident lessons into updated engineering standards.
  • Represent engineering in engagements with Model Risk Management and Internal Audit to resolve complex control considerations.

What we're looking for

  • Bachelor's degree; OR 4 years of relevant education and/or experience.
  • 7+ years of hands-on infrastructure, platform, or site-reliability engineering experience with sustained ownership of production systems at scale.
  • Proven track record as a technical authority leading design reviews and setting engineering standards for senior-level engineers.
  • Deep expertise productionizing ML models for infrastructure operational data using frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or scikit-learn.
  • Advanced hands-on expertise with infrastructure-as-code and orchestration tooling including Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes operators.
  • Demonstrated experience designing and defending production automation for a regulated institution's infrastructure.
  • Demonstrated judgment under real incident pressure to make critical calls during production incidents.
  • US military experience gained through military service or as a military spouse/domestic partner (preferred).

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