Prompt engineering salary: $208K median
The median advertised Prompt engineering salary is $208K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $165K to $254K: counted from 340 open roles that publish a yearly US-dollar range: about $100 an hour or $17,292 a month. A tenth of the postings offer $285K or more. Advertised ranges, not verified pay.
Check an offer against these figuresAll Prompt engineering jobs
$208Kmedian advertised salary
$165K – $254Kmiddle half of roles
$211Kaverage advertised salary
340roles counted
Prompt engineering salary by level
Lead roles advertise a median of $254K, 27% more than senior roles ($200K). The level comes from the job title; titles without a level word are counted separately.
| Level | Median salary | Middle half | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | $200K | $170K–$235K | 113 |
| Lead and above | $254K | $223K–$280K | 66 |
| No level in the title | $192K | $146K–$245K | 159 |
Prompt engineering salary by location
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸San Francisco Bay Area | $245K | 127 |
| 🇺🇸California | $245K | 143 |
| 🇺🇸New York, NY | $221K | 58 |
| 🇺🇸United States | $210K | 305 |
Skills that pay more for Prompt engineering roles
| Skill | Median with it | Above the median | Postings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | $240K | +$32K | 38 |
| Infrastructure as code | $238K | +$30K | 38 |
| Terraform | $233K | +$26K | 44 |
| LLM evaluation | $221K | +$13K | 80 |
| RAG | $220K | +$12K | 156 |
Top-paying companies
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $402K | 9 |
| OpenAI | $308K | 5 |
| Decagon | $300K | 4 |
| Scale AI | $284K | 7 |
| Harvey | $270K | 5 |
| Cloudflare | $262K | 16 |
| Snorkel AI | $261K | 4 |
| Illumio | $256K | 4 |
| EarnIn | $254K | 5 |
| OKX | $250K | 4 |
| Sierra | $245K | 24 |
| Coinbase | $237K | 7 |
| Trm Labs | $235K | 6 |
| Neo4j | $232K | 3 |
| LangChain | $220K | 5 |
| Cresta | $220K | 8 |
| Glean | $215K | 3 |
| Databricks | $206K | 6 |
| Drata | $205K | 5 |
| Interface Ai | $205K | 5 |
| Anduril Industries | $186K | 3 |
| Metropolis | $185K | 6 |
| Box | $176K | 4 |
| eClinical Solutions | $176K | 4 |
| ClickUp | $162K | 6 |
Highest-paying open Prompt engineering roles
All Prompt engineering jobs- Staff Software Engineer, Claude CodeAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | Seattle, WA$320K - $625KLead and abovePythonTypeScriptJavaScript
- Principal Software Engineer, Full Stack — CodexOpenAI · 🇺🇸San Francisco$459K - $536KLead and abovePrompt engineering
- Staff+ Fullstack Software Engineer, Safeguards EngineeringAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY$405K - $485KLead and abovePythonTypeScriptReact
- Engineering Manager, AgentSierra · 🇺🇸New York, NY$280K - $410KTypeScriptReactLLM
- Full Stack Software Engineer, CodexOpenAI · 🇺🇸San Francisco$255K - $405KHybridRustTypeScriptPrompt engineering
- Senior Software Engineer, ProductDecagon · 🇺🇸San Francisco$200K - $400KSeniorPythonLLMAI agents
- Staff Software Engineer, ProductDecagon · 🇺🇸San Francisco$200K - $400KLead and abovePythonLLMAI agents
- Software Engineer, Applied AIShepherd · 🇺🇸San Francisco$170K - $400KTypeScriptReactNode.js
- Founding Machine Learning EngineerShepherd · 🇺🇸San Francisco$180K - $400KPythonTypeScriptSQL
- Software Engineer, AgentSierra · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA$180K - $390KTypeScriptReactLLM
- Head of LegalInterface Ai · 🇺🇸San Francisco$307K - $383KLead and abovePrompt engineeringLaw degreeGDPR
- AI Applied ScientistFigma · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA • New York, NY • United States$153K - $376KPythonJavaC++
- Forward Deployed EngineerFigma · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA • New York, NY • United States$153K - $376KPythonTypeScriptJavaScript
- Staff Software Engineer, Public SectorScale AI · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA; St. Louis, MO; New York, NY; Washingto…$189K - $362KLead and aboveDockerGCPAzure
- Senior Staff Frontier Agents EngineerScale AI · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA; New York, NY$288K - $360KLead and abovePythonDockerTerraform
- Senior/Staff Applied AI Engineer - Enterprise AI SolutionsSnorkel AI · 🇺🇸New York City, NY (Hybrid); San Francisco, CA (Hybrid); U…$200K - $360KRemoteLead and abovePythonMachine LearningLLM
- Sr. Director of Machine LearningHims & Hers · 🇺🇸US - Remote$330K - $360KRemoteLead and aboveMachine LearningLLMAI
- Cloud AI Engineer (Legal & Compliance)Binance · 🇺🇸United States$186K - $347KLLMAIRAG
- Head of Applied Machine LearningGametime United · 🇺🇸United States - Remote$292K - $344KRemoteLead and aboveMachine LearningLLMAI
- Staff Software Engineer, AgentsHarvey · 🇺🇸San Francisco$231K - $340KHybridLead and abovePythonLLMAI agents
Questions about Prompt engineering pay
- What is the average Prompt engineering salary?
- $211K a year on average and $208K at the median, across 340 open Prompt engineering postings at 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 $165K to $254K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.
- Which companies advertise the highest Prompt engineering pay?
- Anthropic ($402K), OpenAI ($308K), Decagon ($300K), by the median of their open postings that state pay (three postings or more).
- Is a prompt engineering a high-paying job?
- The median Prompt engineering posting advertises $208K a year, more than the median of all 55,899 job postings with pay on Jobs Every Hour ($174K). That is 19% above the middle of the market.
- How much can you earn as a prompt engineering?
- A tenth of the postings offer $285K a year or more; the highest open Prompt engineering role advertises up to $625K. Pay rises with level: see the table by level.
- What is the Prompt engineering salary per hour and per month?
- The median of $208K a year is about $100 an hour (2,080 working hours) and $17,292 a month before tax. The middle half of postings: $79 to $122 an hour.
- Which skills pay more for Prompt engineering roles?
- Postings that ask for Go (+$32K, 38 postings), Infrastructure as code (+$30K, 38 postings), Terraform (+$26K, 44 postings) advertise more than the $208K median of all Prompt engineering postings with pay.
- 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 Prompt engineering roles at companies is $208K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $165K to $254K. Counted from 340 open job postings that state pay, November 2026. Source: Jobs Every Hour, https://jobseveryhour.com/salaries/prompt-engineering/
Free to use with the link.