ML/AIWork

Salary explorer

AI & ML salary explorer

Median advertised pay for AI, ML, LLM and data-science roles — drill into a specialization, country or seniority and the numbers update from live postings.

As of 2026-07-28, the median advertised salary for Core AI Engineering roles tracked by ML/AI Work is $130,000 – $225,000/yr (USD), across 3,227 postings that disclose pay (ML/AI Work, dataset v2026.06).

Explore salaries

Core AI Engineering roles

$130,000 – $225,000 median / yr (USD)
Advertised floor (salary min) — p25 / median / p75
$0p25 $91K · median $130K · p75 $172K$400K
Advertised ceiling (salary max) — p25 / median / p75
$0p25 $176K · median $225K · p75 $262K$400K

Figures in USD, the most common currency among the 3,227 disclosed-pay postings in this slice.

n=3,227 · as of 2026-07-28 · v2026.06 · methodology ↗

Salary distributionwithin Core AI Engineering roles

$0$100K$200K$300K$400K+

Most common advertised floor: $75K–$100K544 of 3,227 disclosed-pay postings.

Median floor by senioritywithin Core AI Engineering

Intern
$56K
Junior
$51K
Senior
$128K
Staff
$180K
Lead
$197K
Principal
$180K
Director
$161K
Executive
$152K
Unspecified
$113K

Lead-level postings advertise the highest median floor — $197,300 (n=313).

Median floor by specializationwithin all AI roles

ML Systems and Inference pays the highest median floor ($159K); AI Safety and Evaluation the lowest ($105K).

Salary coverage by countryshare of postings with a salary range

United States leads salary coverage at 82.2%; 17 other markets are not yet covered.

Top-paying skillswithin Core AI Engineering roles

NVIDIA NeMo tops skill pay in this slice — $229,900 median floor (n=163).

Remote vs onsitewithin Core AI Engineering roles

$135K
onsite median floor (n=2,535)
$120K
remote median floor (n=692)
$231K
onsite median ceiling
$200K (-13%)
remote median ceiling

Remote postings advertise a comparable median floor but a 13% lower median ceiling than onsite ($200K vs $231K).

Cite this

ML/AI Work, "AI & ML salary benchmarks — Core AI Engineering roles", dataset v2026.06, n=3227, as of 2026-07-28. https://mlai.work/salaries