Can machines gain human intelligence? You must have seen various sci-fi movies where high-end robots look quite similar to humans and are capable of performing a number of manual tasks. Coming to reality, much progress has been made in designing such machines and we see those results in the form of products like virtual assistants, chatbots, and self-driving cars. The technology that powers these applications is artificial intelligence (AI) and its subset machine learning. As such, speech recognition, image processing, robotics, and computer vision have become quite popular terms among those familiar with AI.
Professionals taking Machine learning online courses are finding it easier to become a part of the AI talent pool and getting good career opportunities. One of the top job roles in the field of AI is that of a Machine Learning engineer. Along with data scientist and site reliability engineer, the job role of a machine learning engineer is among the list of highest-paying and most in-demand job roles of 2020 in the technology sector. Compared to traditional software engineers, professionals today are exploring new career options and the field of AI and machine learning is meeting their expectations.
This article lets you know why it is worth becoming a machine learning engineer and what are the salary prospects for such a role.
What is a Machine Learning Engineer?
Machine learning is an important part of AI that focuses on training machines to make human-like decisions and perform certain actions. Much like humans, it allows machines to learn from experience and improve their predictions. For the process of learning, a huge amount of training data is fed into the machine and then it is tested for unknown data (test data). Based on what input is fed to the machine, it develops a logic by comparing its actual performance with the desired output. So, machine learning engineers are professionals who create AI or ML-powered models as per customer needs.
The role of a machine learning engineer is familiar to that of a data scientist. The responsibility of both includes gathering, organizing huge chunks of data and analyzing them to find hidden patterns. Machine learning engineers use that data to train and develop production-ready ML models. Their work acts as a bridge between the statistical and model-building work of the data scientist. For an organization, these individuals combine their understanding of AI and ML concepts with programming and software engineering skills to allow easy access to ML models.
The demand of machine learning engineers isn’t limited to the Information Technology industry. Banking and financial institutions are the major contributors to the global machine learning market. This is because they generate enormous amounts of data on a regular basis. As such, they data management technologies like machine learning to gain critical business insights and make more informed decisions.
Machine learning engineers are contributing their expertise in various applications of the following industries:
- Banking and finance – for fraud detection, digital assistance, investment prediction
- Retail – recommendation engine, cross channel marketing, inventory planning
- Healthcare – identifying diseases, image analytics, online consultation/generation of reports
- Energy and utilities – power usage analytics, managing smart grid, seismic data processing
Though the demand is high in all these sectors, there is a lack of skilled machine learning engineers to fill those positions. Being a relatively new and highly technical field, professionals are unable to understand what skills are employers actually seeking. That said, companies are ready to pay higher salaries for those who meet the required qualifications. Let us look at the salary prospects more closely.
Machine Learning Engineer Salary Prospects
According to Payscale, the median salary of a machine learning engineer is $111,727 per year in the US. Categorizing it based on the experience level, here are the salary figures one can expect:
Less than 1 year – $93,575
1 year to 4 years – $110,886
5 years to 9 years – $136,435
Here are the salary figures for machine learning engineers based on the different countries:
- US – $111,727
- India – Rs. 681,881
- Canada – C$ 84,208
- UK – £50,121
- Japan – ¥5,000,000
- Germany – €53,360
By gaining relevant skills and achieving industry-recognized certifications in machine learning, one can further improve their earning potential. The top skills that machine learning engineers should have are statistics, Python programming, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing (NLP).
The names of the companies paying sufficiently higher salaries to machine learning engineers include:
- Apple
- Amazon
- JP Morgan Chase
- Microsoft
- PWC
- Intel
- Accenture
- SAS Institute Inc.
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- Oracle Corporation
Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer
By now you know that you need specialized technical skills to enter the world of machine learning. Your responsibilities would include designing machine learning systems, using algorithms like linear regression and KNN classification, performing statistical analysis, and automating the model training and evaluation process. Wondering how you would become capable of handling such tasks? Well, aspirants like you have taken to machine learning online courses for this purpose.
A machine learning training program will help you start learning from the scratch and gradually move on to advanced concepts. Your recorded video lessons will be accompanied by instructor-led on demand classes, interactive quizzes, case studies, industry-oriented projects, and different machine learning tools as well. So why not rely on it and take one step closer to becoming a machine learning engineer!