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Live, updated October 17, 2026

AI & ML Salary Report 2026

1,236 pay ranges from 358 companies. Real postings, not surveys.1,236 pay ranges from 358 companies. Real postings, not surveys.

Median AI salary, all roles
$214k

The middle half of posted AI roles land between $175k and $260k. No self-reported data, just ranges published in current job postings.

Ranges analyzed
1,236
live postings
Middle half
$175k-$260k
p25 to p75
Remote delta
+3%
vs on-site median
Top-paying role
$288k
Engineering Manager
Where do you stand

The AI salary curve

Drag along the distribution of every posted AI salary to see what a number is worth and how much of the market it out-earns.

If you earn
$214k
50%
you out-earn
median
$50k$100k$150k$200k$250k$300k$350k$400k$450k
Drag across 1,236 posted AI salaries
Roles paying $200k+Roles paying $300k+Entry-level roles
By role

Pay by role

Median and middle-half range for every role with at least 5 posted ranges. Click a row to see open jobs.

~/roles --sort median desc
Role
Median
Range
Jobs
Engineering Manager
$288k
$237k-$350k
47
Product Manager
$247k
$210k-$308k
50
Product Designer
$246k
$203k-$345k
12
AI Research Scientist
$238k
$205k-$288k
21
Technical Program Manager
$221k
$203k-$265k
43
Software Engineer
$215k
$185k-$270k
293
Forward Deployed & Solutions Engineer
$214k
$194k-$250k
159
AI / ML Architect
$210k
$173k-$277k
34
Data Engineer
$204k
$110k-$232k
14
Data Analyst
$200k
$160k-$232k
9
Security Engineer
$199k
$146k-$313k
12
Machine Learning Engineer
$195k
$162k-$238k
47
Infrastructure Engineer
$185k
$144k-$253k
23
AI / Generative AI Engineer
$180k
$150k-$230k
105
Data Scientist
$177k
$130k-$232k
18

Median is the midpoint of posted ranges (annual USD). Roles need at least 5 ranges to appear.

By level

Pay by seniority

How the median climbs from entry level to staff and above. Bar heights are to scale.

  1. $142k
    Entry level
    $100k-$173k · 71 ranges
  2. $182k
    +28% vs entry level
    Mid level
    $145k-$225k · 181 ranges
  3. $214k
    +18% vs mid level
    Senior
    $179k-$253k · 594 ranges
  4. $236k
    +11% vs senior
    Staff+
    $205k-$288k · 390 ranges

Level comes from the posting's seniority and title. Staff+ covers staff, principal, lead, and director titles.

By company

Top-paying AI companies

Companies with at least 5 posted ranges, ranked by median pay. Click one to see its open roles.

  1. 01
    Anthropic$363k
    65 roles
  2. 02
    OpenAI$309k
    89 roles
  3. 03
    Suno$304k
    8 roles
  4. 04
    Replit$288k
    6 roles
  5. 05
    Sierra$285k
    18 roles
  6. 06
    Ramp$275k
    11 roles
  7. 07
    Modal$275k
    7 roles
  8. 08
    Harvey$270k
    19 roles
  9. 09
    Perplexity$266k
    8 roles
  10. 10
    Baseten$251k
    8 roles

Bars show each company's middle-half range on the same scale as the role table.

By arrangement

Remote vs. on-site

Remote
$214k
IQR $181k to $263k
298 listings
HybridTop pay
$218k
IQR $178k to $281k
347 listings
On-Site
$208k
IQR $167k to $245k
591 listings
+3%

higher median salary for remote AI roles versus on-site. Remote roles draw a global applicant pool, which can compress or widen ranges depending on a company's location policy.

By skill

Highest-paying technical skills

01CUDA
$245k32 jobs
02Rust
$243k52 jobs
03Airflow
$231k22 jobs
04Model Evaluation
$230k201 jobs
05System Design
$228k24 jobs
06Distributed Systems
$228k227 jobs
07Reinforcement Learning
$225k47 jobs
08Go
$221k147 jobs
09Hugging Face
$221k33 jobs
10Cloud Infrastructure
$220k49 jobs
11dbt
$218k35 jobs
12AI Guardrails
$218k58 jobs

Median salary for jobs tagged with each curated AI, data, or infrastructure skill. Skills need at least 10 listings to appear; business responsibilities and soft skills are excluded.

Open now

Highest-paying open roles

The top posted pay on the board right now, one role per company.

All $300k+ roles →
  • Staff Research Engineer, Multi-Agent Scaling

    10/2

    Anthropic • San Francisco, CA +1

    Software EngineeringMachine LearningResearch Engineering+18+17+16
    $500k – 850k
  • Director, Lakebase Sales Specialists - Retail

    9/21

    Databricks • United States

    Enterprise Software SalesSaasCloud Platforms+21+20+19
    $430k – 592k
  • Head of Data Science, Strategic Finance

    9/30

    OpenAI • San Francisco, CA

    SQLPythonTime Series Modeling+9+8+7
    $459k – 536k
  • Senior Research Scientist/Software Engineer, LLM/Agent Platform (TikTok-Content Ecology AI Innovation & Platform)

    10/10

    TikTok • San Jose, CA

    LlmsNLPComputer Vision+37+36+35
    $254k – 588k
  • Senior Director of Engineering – Horizon Catalog, Collaboration & Marketplace

    10/3

    Snowflake • Remote

    Software EngineeringDistributed SystemsCloud Native Architecture+32+31+30
    $340k – 489k
  • Director, Foundation Model Data Recipes

    9/21

    Waymo • Mountain View, CA

    Foundation ModelsMachine LearningReinforcement Learning+18+17+16
    $349k – 431k
Key questions

Fast answers from the data

Short answers backed by the same posted-salary data behind every number on this page.

What counts as a high AI salary in 2026?

Posted AI roles cluster around a $214k median, and the top quartile starts near $260k. Clearing $260k puts you in roughly the upper 25 percent of the market.

$260k
Top quartile

Which AI companies pay the most?

Anthropic leads with a $363k median across 65 posted ranges, followed by OpenAI at $309k. The ranking covers companies with at least 5 posted ranges on the live board.

$363k
Top company

How much more do senior AI roles pay?

The median runs from $142k at entry level to $236k for staff, principal, and lead titles, about 67 percent more.

+67%
Entry to staff+

Do remote AI roles pay more than on-site?

Remote roles run about 3 percent above on-site at the median. Remote postings draw a global applicant pool, which can widen or compress ranges.

+3%
Remote delta

Which AI skills pay the most right now?

CUDA leads the board at a $245k median across 32 listings. The leaderboard ranks technical AI, data, and infrastructure skills on the live board.

$245k
Top skill
How we count

Methodology and data sources

Methodology

  • •Based on 1,236 posted pay ranges from 358 companies on the live board, recalculated hourly.
  • •Each range is the pay stated in the posting: the structured salary field where the source provides one, otherwise the pay range written in the job description.
  • •The same role reposted by the same company counts once.
  • •Ranges wider than 2.5x, and pay converted from an hourly, daily, or monthly rate, are left out.
  • •Median uses the midpoint of each posting's range (min plus max, divided by two).
  • •Roles and companies need at least 5 ranges, skills at least 10, to appear.

Limitations

  • •Base salary only. Equity and bonus are not included.
  • •US-dollar postings only, so this reflects the US market.
  • •Pay varies widely by company size, stage, and funding.
  • •Posted ranges can be wider than the eventual offer.
  • •The AI market moves fast, so treat this as directional guidance.

1,236 analyzed salary ranges, recalculated hourly

Know your number. Go get it.

Every number on this page comes from roles you can apply to today. Get matched before they fill.

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