Machine Learning salary: $229K median
From 1,887 open roles that publish a yearly US-dollar range. Advertised ranges, not verified pay.
$229Kmedian advertised salary
$187K – $280Kmiddle half of roles
$241Kaverage advertised salary
1,887roles counted
Machine Learning salary by level
Lead roles advertise a median of $260K, 27% more than senior roles ($205K). The level comes from the job title; titles without a level word are counted separately.
| Level | Median salary | Middle half | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | $205K | $184K–$238K | 540 |
| Lead and above | $260K | $225K–$298K | 592 |
| No level in title | $220K | $168K–$295K | 739 |
Machine Learning salary by location
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸San Francisco Bay Area | $248K | 1,016 |
| 🇺🇸California | $245K | 1,094 |
| 🇺🇸New York | $241K | 304 |
| 🇺🇸Pittsburgh | $238K | 40 |
| 🇺🇸United States | $230K | 1,798 |
| 🇺🇸Washington, DC | $220K | 75 |
| 🇺🇸Seattle | $214K | 185 |
| 🇺🇸Chicago | $201K | 68 |
| 🇨🇦Canada | $200K | 35 |
| 🇺🇸Boston | $200K | 61 |
| 🇺🇸Texas | $174K | 33 |
| 🇺🇸Austin | $164K | 15 |
| 🇺🇸Los Angeles | $142K | 40 |
Top-paying companies
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $402K | 74 |
| OpenAI | $396K | 54 |
| Wayve | $336K | 20 |
| Mercor | $332K | 8 |
| Garner Health | $321K | 5 |
| River AI Inc. | $310K | 5 |
| Perplexity | $306K | 4 |
| Discord | $306K | 5 |
| Turing | $300K | 11 |
| Goodfire | $300K | 3 |
| Suno | $299K | 4 |
| Roblox | $286K | 43 |
| Harvey | $286K | 3 |
| Lambda | $285K | 88 |
| Adyen | $284K | 4 |
| Samsung Research America | $282K | 4 |
| Character.AI | $281K | 6 |
| $276K | 39 | |
| Datadog | $274K | 7 |
| GoFundMe | $274K | 5 |
| Sigma | $271K | 4 |
| Snorkel AI | $270K | 13 |
| Nextdoor | $268K | 5 |
| Cursor | $266K | 8 |
| Zoox | $265K | 33 |
Highest-paying open Machine Learning roles
All Machine Learning jobs- Engineering Manager, GPU (ML Accelerator)Anthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA$500K - $850KMachine Learning
- Engineering Manager, Research Data PlatformAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY$405K - $850KMachine LearningBigQueryClickHouse
- 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
- VP of Services, Customer Success & SupportCohere · 🇨🇦Toronto$570K - $675KRemoteLeadMachine Learning
- 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
- Area Sales Director, Corporate Sales- New Accounts (Auth0)Okta · 🇺🇸Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco, California; Washington, DC$366K - $547KLeadMachine Learning
- Area Sales Director, Corporate Sales- New Accounts (Okta)Okta · 🇺🇸Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco, California; Washington, DC$366K - $547KLeadMachine Learning
- Chief Technology OfficerGiveDirectly · Remote$366K - $518KRemoteLeadMachine Learning
- Research Scientist, Robot Foundation ModelsWayve · 🇺🇸Sunnyvale, California USA$370K - $513KMachine LearningPyTorch
- Principal Product Manager - Nvidia Technology PartnershipsLambda · Bellevue Office$338K - $500KLeadMachine Learning
- Principal Product Manager - ConsoleLambda · Bellevue Office$338K - $500KLeadMachine LearningKubernetes
- Research Engineer - Environments, Data and Post-TrainingMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$180K - $500KSQLMachine LearningLLM
- Sr. Machine Learning Engineer, AnonymizationMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$180K - $500KSeniorPythonPostgreSQLMachine Learning
- Director, PerceptionZoox · 🇺🇸Foster City, CA$410K - $492KLeadMachine LearningCUDAComputer Vision
- Senior Staff / Principal Machine Learning Engineer - Autonomy BehaviorsZoox · 🇺🇸Foster City, CA$340K - $492KLeadPythonC++Machine Learning
- Member of Technical Staff (AI Researcher)Perplexity · 🇺🇸San Francisco$220K - $485KPythonC++Machine Learning
- Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Data Curation & Dataset StrategyWayve · 🇺🇸Sunnyvale, California USA$390K - $460KLeadPythonMachine LearningAI
Questions about Machine Learning pay
- What is the average Machine Learning salary?
- $241K a year on average and $229K at the median, across 1,887 open Machine Learning 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 $187K to $280K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.
- Which companies advertise the highest Machine Learning pay?
- Anthropic ($402K), OpenAI ($396K), Wayve ($336K), 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 Machine Learning roles at tech companies is $229K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $187K to $280K. Counted from 1,887 open job postings that state pay, November 2026. Source: Hiring Right Now, https://jobseveryhour.com/salaries/machine-learning/
Free to use with the link.