Hugging Face has 1M+ models.

Replicate lets you deploy any model with one API call. Together AI rents you any open-source model by the token.

A model marketplace economy has formed — and it's creating jobs that look nothing like traditional ML engineering.

New roles in the model economy: Model Curator (selecting and recommending the right model for specific use cases). Fine-Tuning-as-a-Service Engineer (customizing models for clients). Model Evaluation Specialist (benchmarking and comparing models systematically). AI Marketplace Platform Engineer (building the infrastructure for model discovery and deployment).

The business model is clear: most companies don't need to train models. They need to find the right pre-trained model, adapt it to their needs, and deploy it efficiently.

The engineers who understand the landscape of available models — their strengths, weaknesses, costs, and ideal use cases — provide enormous value as navigators in an increasingly complex ecosystem.

Think of it like the early app store era. The opportunity wasn't just in building apps — it was in app discovery, curation, optimization, and the platform itself.

Salary: $120K-$250K depending on the specific role and company.

If you love exploring and evaluating models (and many engineers do — it's genuinely fun), this emerging economy has a place for you. The model marketplace is only getting larger and more complex.