Research Scientist salary: $299K median
From 256 open roles that publish a yearly US-dollar range. Advertised ranges, not verified pay.
$299Kmedian advertised salary
$225K – $360Kmiddle half of roles
$320Kaverage advertised salary
256roles counted
Research Scientist salary by level
Lead roles advertise a median of $292K, 39% more than senior roles ($210K). The level comes from the job title; titles without a level word are counted separately.
| Level | Median salary | Middle half | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | $210K | $188K–$300K | 29 |
| Lead and above | $292K | $242K–$325K | 55 |
| No level in title | $310K | $232K–$425K | 171 |
Research Scientist salary by location
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸Seattle | $425K | 23 |
| 🇺🇸San Francisco Bay Area | $310K | 170 |
| 🇺🇸California | $310K | 177 |
| 🇺🇸United States | $300K | 242 |
| 🇺🇸New York | $292K | 73 |
Top-paying companies
| Name | Median salary | Roles counted |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $600K | 40 |
| OpenAI | $440K | 31 |
| Datadog | $360K | 4 |
| Mercor | $350K | 5 |
| Harvey | $340K | 12 |
| Character.AI | $312K | 3 |
| Turing | $302K | 10 |
| Decagon | $300K | 6 |
| Scale AI | $292K | 8 |
| Snorkel AI | $288K | 7 |
| Goodfire | $284K | 4 |
| Duolingo | $276K | 3 |
| Garner Health | $268K | 4 |
| 1X | $250K | 6 |
| Samsung Research America | $244K | 4 |
| Nuro | $242K | 5 |
| Braze | $242K | 4 |
| Waymo | $238K | 5 |
| Baseten | $238K | 3 |
| $223K | 3 | |
| Whoop | $210K | 3 |
| Figma | $210K | 5 |
| Crusoe | $178K | 3 |
| KoBold Metals | $170K | 4 |
Highest-paying open Research Scientist roles
All research scientist jobs- Research Engineer, Chip Design RLAnthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA$500K - $850KLLM
- Research Engineer, Code RL (Reinforcement Learning)Anthropic · 🇺🇸San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY$500K - $850KPythonLLMPyTorch
- 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
- 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 Engineer - Environments, Data and Post-TrainingMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$180K - $500KSQLMachine LearningLLM
- Research Engineer, Real EnvironmentsMercor · 🇺🇸San Francisco$160K - $500K
- Member of Technical Staff (AI Researcher)Perplexity · 🇺🇸San Francisco$220K - $485KPythonC++Machine Learning
- 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
- Applied ResearcherRiver AI Inc. · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA$200K - $420KMachine LearningPyTorch
- Research Engineer / Research ScientistRiver AI Inc. · 🇺🇸Palo Alto, CA$200K - $420KMachine LearningPyTorch
- Director, Forward Deployed Researcher - Data as a ServiceSnorkel AI · 🇺🇸New York City, NY (Hybrid); San Francisco, CA (Hybrid); U…$228K - $403KRemoteLeadMachine LearningLLM
- Research Engineer, Post-Training (All Industry Levels)Character.AI · 🇺🇸Redwood City or New York City$225K - $400KDockerMachine LearningKubernetes
- Principal Research Engineer, Post-TrainingCharacter.AI · 🇺🇸Redwood City, CA$275K - $400KLeadDockerMachine LearningLLM
- AI Research Scientist - Datadog AI Research (DAIR)Datadog · 🇺🇸New York, New York, USA; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA$320K - $400KMachine LearningLLMPyTorch
Questions about Research Scientist pay
- What is the average Research Scientist salary?
- $320K a year on average and $299K at the median, across 256 open Research Scientist 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 $225K to $360K a year. A quarter offer less and a quarter offer more.
- Which companies advertise the highest Research Scientist pay?
- Anthropic ($600K), OpenAI ($440K), Datadog ($360K), 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 Research Scientist roles at tech companies is $299K a year, and the middle half of postings offer $225K to $360K. Counted from 256 open job postings that state pay, November 2026. Source: Hiring Right Now, https://jobseveryhour.com/salaries/research-scientist/
Free to use with the link.