MLOps Engineer.

Where do you fall?

Salary trend

Estimated total: $177,000

If you are interviewing for MLOps Engineer roles in Billings, here is what you are walking into. Billings is Montana's largest city and economic hub, driven by energy, agriculture, and healthcare. The city serves as a regional center for the Northern Plains. Remote work has brought a wave of tech professionals seeking Montana's quality of life, gradually diversifying the local job market. Experience with ML pipeline orchestration (Kubeflow, MLflow, Vertex AI), model monitoring in production, and infrastructure automation are the key salary levers. Engineers who can reduce model deployment time from weeks to hours earn premiums. Understanding both the ML lifecycle and cloud infrastructure deeply is what separates mid level from senior compensation.

Junior MLOps engineers start at $105,000 to $135,000, reaching mid level at $140,000 to $180,000 in two to three years. Senior MLOps engineers earn $180,000 to $240,000. Staff level ML platform engineers at top companies can exceed $300,000 in total compensation, with a path into ML infrastructure leadership. In Billings, your dollars stretch further. Cost of living runs 11% below the national average, which means even a median salary buys a stronger lifestyle.

Base salary is not the full picture. Equity at AI companies adds $20,000 to $90,000+ annually. Bonuses of 10 to 20% are typical. On call compensation is common since MLOps engineers maintain production ML systems. Benefits frequently include cloud certification sponsorship, training budgets, and flexible work arrangements. And on the tax side: montana has a top income tax rate of 5.9% but no state sales tax. Billings has no city income tax. The no sales tax benefit helps offset the state income tax. When someone quotes you $141,000, ask what the total package looks like. The gap between base and total comp is where real money hides.

On negotiation: Negotiate remote work arrangements. Billings employers are increasingly open to remote and hybrid setups to attract talent from larger metros. The range for MLOps Engineers in Billings runs from $106,000 to $185,000. That is not a narrow window. Where you land inside it depends almost entirely on whether you negotiate and how well you prepare.

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