AI salary: $230K median
From 955 open roles that publish a yearly US-dollar range. Advertised ranges, not verified pay.
$230Kmedian advertised salary
$193K – $275Kmiddle half of roles
$236Kaverage advertised salary
955roles counted
AI salary by level
Lead roles advertise a median of $255K, 19% more than senior roles ($215K). The level comes from the job title; titles without a level word are counted separately.
| Level | Median salary | Middle half | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | $215K | $192K–$238K | 254 |
| Lead and above | $255K | $226K–$290K | 332 |
| No level in title | $216K | $168K–$278K | 359 |
AI salary by location
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸Pittsburgh | $252K | 15 |
| 🇺🇸San Francisco Bay Area | $242K | 470 |
| 🇺🇸California | $241K | 531 |
| 🇺🇸New York | $241K | 168 |
| 🇺🇸United States | $232K | 904 |
| 🇺🇸Washington, DC | $216K | 19 |
| 🇺🇸Seattle | $214K | 62 |
| 🇺🇸Boston | $209K | 23 |
| 🇺🇸Chicago | $202K | 24 |
| 🇺🇸Los Angeles | $155K | 18 |
Top-paying companies
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| Wayve | $358K | 12 |
| Mercor | $330K | 15 |
| Roblox | $309K | 20 |
| Discord | $306K | 3 |
| Figure | $300K | 8 |
| Suno | $296K | 9 |
| Perplexity | $296K | 14 |
| Anthropic | $295K | 51 |
| $290K | 22 | |
| Harvey | $286K | 6 |
| Sentry | $278K | 3 |
| Duolingo | $276K | 3 |
| $276K | 26 | |
| Crusoe | $275K | 12 |
| Fivetran | $274K | 5 |
| Zoox | $272K | 20 |
| Adyen | $270K | 6 |
| OKX | $268K | 8 |
| Figma | $264K | 14 |
| Cloudflare | $262K | 11 |
| Ripple | $261K | 3 |
| Ramp | $260K | 9 |
| Sigma | $255K | 6 |
| Waymo | $254K | 40 |
| EarnIn | $254K | 3 |
Highest-paying open AI roles
All AI jobs- Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)Anthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY$500K - $850KRustPythonC++
- Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)Anthropic · 🇺🇸Remote-Friendly (Travel-Required) | San Francisco, CA | N…$500K - $850KRemoteMachine LearningPyTorchAI
- Tech Lead, Applied AI - SearchMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$350K - $600KLeadLLMAI
- Senior Director of Engineering, Generative AIRoblox · 🇺🇸San Mateo, CA, United States$526K - $574KLeadMachine LearningLLMAI
- Director, Machine Learning Engineering, Ads MeasurementPinterest · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA, US; Palo Alto, CA, US; Seattle, WA, US$315K - $551KLeadMachine LearningAI
- Director, Machine Learning Engineering, Ads QualityPinterest · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA, US; San Francisco, CA, US$315K - $551KLeadMachine LearningAI
- Software Engineer, Applied AI - Frontier EngineeringMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$160K - $500KRustGoPython
- Director, Growth Sales (AI & Digital Natives)Cloudflare · Hybrid$378K - $496KLeadAI
- Senior Staff / Principal Machine Learning Engineer - Autonomy BehaviorsZoox · 🇺🇸Foster City, CA$340K - $492KLeadPythonC++Machine Learning
- Member of Technical Staff (AI Inference Engineer)Perplexity · 🇺🇸San Francisco$220K - $485KRustPythonLLM
- Member of Technical Staff (AI Researcher)Perplexity · 🇺🇸San Francisco$220K - $485KPythonC++Machine Learning
- Principal Product Manager, AI-Native Merchant ExperiencesAdyen · 🇺🇸San Francisco$330K - $462KLeadLLMAI
- Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Data Curation & Dataset StrategyWayve · 🇺🇸Sunnyvale, California USA$390K - $460KLeadPythonMachine LearningAI
- Principal Research Scientist – Multimodal Reasoning & Embodied AIWayve · 🇺🇸Sunnyvale, California USA$407K - $460KLeadPythonMachine LearningLLM
- Distinguished Engineer, Machine Learning - DiscoveryRoblox · 🇺🇸San Mateo, CA, United States$419K - $458KMachine LearningLLMAI
- Distinguished Architect, AIDatadog · 🇺🇸New York, New York, USA; San Francisco, California, USA$330K - $440KLLMAI
- Principal Machine Learning Engineer (AI/Platform)- League of LegendsRiot Games · 🇺🇸Los Angeles, USA$292K - $438KLeadMachine LearningKubernetesAI
- Director of Engineer, AI Developer ExperienceAttentive · 🇺🇸New York, NY (Hybrid)$286K - $428KLeadAI
- Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, GenAI PlatformReddit · 🇺🇸Remote - United States$292K - $410KRemoteLeadGoPythonTerraform
- Senior Staff Machine Learning Systems Engineer, Ads ML PlatformReddit · 🇺🇸Remote - United States$292K - $410KRemoteLeadMachine LearningKafkaAirflow
Questions about AI pay
- What is the average AI salary?
- $236K a year on average and $230K at the median, across 955 open AI postings at tech companies that state pay (November 2026). The median is the better guide: a few very high offers pull the average up.
- What is the typical range?
- The middle half of the postings offer $193K to $275K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.
- Which companies advertise the highest AI pay?
- Wayve ($358K), Mercor ($330K), Roblox ($309K), by the median of their open postings that state pay (three postings or more).
- Where do these figures come from?
- From the pay ranges employers print in their own job postings, read from their careers pages every hour. The midpoint of each range is counted. These are advertised ranges for open roles, mostly in the United States and in US dollars, not what people are actually paid.
Writing about this? A sentence you can quote
The median advertised salary for AI roles at tech companies is $230K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $193K to $275K. Counted from 955 open job postings that state pay, November 2026. Source: Hiring Right Now, https://jobseveryhour.com/salaries/ai/
Free to use with the link.