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Data & AI engineer:the fastest-growing role in India, if you have the fundamentals.
Data pipelines, warehouses, ML models, LLM applications (RAG, agents) and the MLOps to run them. AI/ML hiring grew ~28% year on year in India; the catch is that the jobs go to people with Python, SQL and systems skills — not prompt collectors.
What the job is
- Build data pipelines (Airflow/dbt), warehouses (BigQuery/Snowflake/PostgreSQL), dashboards
- Train/evaluate ML models; deploy as APIs; monitor drift
- Build LLM apps: RAG over company data, agents with tools, evaluation sets, guardrails
- GPU infrastructure basics; cost control for inference
Core skills
- Python (pandas, scikit-learn, PyTorch basics), SQL deeply
- Statistics and evaluation (you must know when a model is wrong)
- Data modelling, pipelines, orchestration
- LLM engineering: embeddings, vector DBs, prompt/tool design, evals
- Docker, cloud basics, GPU awareness
Python, SQL, Airflow, dbt, SparkPostgreSQL/pgvector, BigQuery, SnowflakePyTorch, scikit-learn, Hugging FaceLangChain/LlamaIndex, vLLM, OllamaMLflow, Grafana
Certifications that matter in India
| Certification | Issuer | Level | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Professional Data Engineer | Mid–Senior | Data engineering credibility | |
| AWS Machine Learning Specialty | AWS | Advanced | ML on AWS |
| Microsoft AI-102 / DP-203 | Microsoft | Mid | Azure AI/data roles |
| Databricks Data Engineer Associate | Databricks | Mid | Spark/lakehouse shops |
| Portfolio of evaluated projects | — | All | A RAG app with a measured eval beats any cert |
The path
- 0–6 monthsPython + SQL + statistics; Kaggle-style projects; one end-to-end pipeline
- 6–18 monthsData analyst/junior data engineer; dashboards, pipelines, data quality
- 18–36 monthsData/ML engineer: models in production, LLM app with evals, MLOps basics
- 3–6 yearsSenior AI engineer / architect: platform, GPU capacity, governance, cost
Typical pay (India, 2026)
| Level | Range |
|---|---|
| Data analyst | ₹4–8 LPA |
| Data/ML engineer (2–4 yrs) | ₹9–20 LPA |
| Senior AI engineer | ₹20–45 LPA |
| AI architect / lead | ₹45–90 LPA |
Product companies and GCCs in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Delhi-NCR pay at the top of each band; service companies at the bottom. Contract/migration work pays a premium.
Labs to do this month- RAG over 200 PDFs with pgvector; 100-question eval set; report accuracy honestly
- Airflow pipeline: ingest → transform (dbt) → dashboard; add a data-quality test
- Serve a small open-weight model with vLLM on a rented GPU; measure cost per 1,000 requests
Want this path with a mentor and real projects?
We hire and train engineers for client work, and we connect vetted engineers with companies. Search terms people use for this role: ai engineer jobs india · machine learning course · data engineer roadmap · llm engineering · ai ml salary india.