Data & Research salary: $190K median
From 1,092 open roles that publish a yearly US-dollar range. Advertised ranges, not verified pay.
$190Kmedian advertised salary
$140K – $250Kmiddle half of roles
$204Kaverage advertised salary
1,092roles counted
Data & Research salary by level
Lead roles advertise a median of $234K, 38% more than senior roles ($170K). The level comes from the job title; titles without a level word are counted separately.
| Level | Median salary | Middle half | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | $170K | $136K–$202K | 285 |
| Lead and above | $234K | $202K–$274K | 302 |
| No level in title | $170K | $115K–$264K | 499 |
Data & Research salary by location
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸San Francisco Bay Area | $235K | 440 |
| 🇺🇸California | $228K | 500 |
| 🇺🇸Seattle | $209K | 57 |
| 🇺🇸New York | $202K | 236 |
| 🇺🇸United States | $194K | 1,015 |
| 🇺🇸Boston | $185K | 47 |
| 🇺🇸Denver | $181K | 19 |
| 🇺🇸Washington, DC | $143K | 26 |
| 🇺🇸Chicago | $128K | 42 |
| 🇺🇸Texas | $122K | 24 |
| 🇺🇸Los Angeles | $115K | 26 |
Top-paying companies
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | $396K | 66 |
| Anthropic | $332K | 46 |
| River AI Inc. | $310K | 3 |
| Attentive | $308K | 3 |
| Turing | $300K | 3 |
| Roblox | $294K | 13 |
| Snorkel AI | $284K | 10 |
| Goodfire | $284K | 4 |
| Suno | $270K | 5 |
| $260K | 12 | |
| Perplexity | $252K | 3 |
| Faire | $250K | 17 |
| Pure Storage | $250K | 13 |
| 1X | $250K | 6 |
| Scale AI | $249K | 10 |
| Okta | $248K | 6 |
| Airwallex | $248K | 6 |
| Braze | $242K | 5 |
| Waymo | $238K | 14 |
| Wayve | $235K | 8 |
| Baseten | $230K | 6 |
| Plaid | $227K | 6 |
| GoFundMe | $225K | 3 |
| $224K | 10 | |
| Coinbase | $222K | 3 |
Highest-paying open Data & Research roles
All Data & Research jobs- Research Engineer / Research Scientist, RL FrontiersAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA$500K - $850KRustPythonC++
- Research Engineer / Scientist, Pre-trainingAnthropic · 🇺🇸Remote-Friendly (Travel-Required) | San Francisco, CA | S…$500K - $850KRemotePythonMachine LearningLLM
- Research Scientist / Research Engineer - Foundations, SearchOpenAI · 🇺🇸San Francisco$380K - $850KMachine LearningLLM
- Research Scientist / Research Engineer - Web Understanding and Structured Retrieval, SearchOpenAI · 🇺🇸San Francisco$380K - $850KMachine Learning
- Research Lead, TrainingGoodfire · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA$400K - $600KLead
- VP of Strategy and Corporate DevelopmentDuolingo · 🇺🇸New York, NY; Pittsburgh, PA$330K - $550KLead
- Research Scientist, Robot Foundation ModelsWayve · 🇺🇸Sunnyvale, California USA$370K - $513KMachine LearningPyTorch
- Staff / Principal Research Scientist, Models - USAInworld AI · 🇺🇸Mountain View, California, USA$270K - $500KLeadLLMNLP
- Research Scientist, APEX BenchmarksMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$200K - $500KMachine LearningLLMNLP
- Research Scientist - Environments, Data and Post-TrainingMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$250K - $500KMachine Learning
- VP, ResearchScale AI · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA; New York, NY$397K - $496KLeadLLM
- Principal Research Scientist – Multimodal Reasoning & Embodied AIWayve · 🇺🇸Sunnyvale, California USA$407K - $460KLeadPythonMachine LearningLLM
- Research Engineer / Scientist, Data & EvalsHarvey · 🇺🇸San Francisco$230K - $450KPythonLLM
- Research Engineer / Scientist, Reinforcement LearningHarvey · 🇺🇸New York$230K - $450KPythonLLM
- Research ScientistRoboflow · 🇺🇸San Francisco$250K - $450KMachine LearningComputer Vision
- Head of ResearchAsana · 🇺🇸San Francisco$350K - $425KLead
- Applied ResearcherRiver AI Inc. · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA$200K - $420KMachine LearningPyTorch
- Research Engineer / Research ScientistRiver AI Inc. · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA$200K - $420KMachine LearningPyTorch
- Director / Senior Director, Marketplace Strategy & OperationsGroupon · 🇺🇸Chicago (35 W. Wacker Dr.)$257K - $406KLead
- Vice President, Vertical Strategy & CommercializationOkta · 🇺🇸Bellevue, Washington; Chicago, Illinois; New York, New Yo…$294K - $404KLeadMachine Learning
Questions about Data & Research pay
- What is the average Data & Research salary?
- $204K a year on average and $190K at the median, across 1,092 open Data & Research 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 $140K to $250K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.
- Which companies advertise the highest Data & Research pay?
- OpenAI ($396K), Anthropic ($332K), River AI Inc. ($310K), 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 Data & Research roles at tech companies is $190K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $140K to $250K. Counted from 1,092 open job postings that state pay, November 2026. Source: Hiring Right Now, https://jobseveryhour.com/salaries/data-research/
Free to use with the link.