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 2026-06-11, the median advertised salary for Research and Science roles tracked by ML/AI Work is $142,800 – $222,200/yr (USD), across 1,901 postings that disclose pay (ML/AI Work, dataset v2026.06).
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Research and Science roles
Figures in USD, the most common currency among the 1,901 disclosed-pay postings in this slice.
n=1,901 · as of 2026-06-11 · v2026.06 · methodology ↗
Salary distributionwithin Research and Science roles
Most common advertised floor: $125K–$150K — 484 of 1,901 disclosed-pay postings.
Median floor by senioritywithin Research and Science
Staff-level postings advertise the highest median floor — $180,000 (n=71).
Median floor by specializationwithin all AI roles
AI Design and Conversation pays the highest median floor ($165K); AI Governance Ethics Policy the lowest ($74K).
Pay transparency by countryshare of postings disclosing pay
Only United States postings disclose structured pay (80.9%); the other 11 markets tracked disclose none. The EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) is expected to change this.
Top-paying skillswithin Research and Science roles
JAX tops skill pay in this slice — $169,050 median floor (n=88).
Remote vs onsitewithin Research and Science roles
Remote postings advertise a comparable median floor but a 17% lower median ceiling than onsite ($185K vs $223K).
AI salary premium by seniorityAI vs non-AI postings · US · midpoint medians
AI postings advertise a +27% median premium over non-AI postings in the same corpus — but the premium compresses with seniority: +75% at Intern level down to +3% at Executive level. The AI premium is an entry-level phenomenon.
Control group: non-AI postings collected by the same pipeline (US, USD, disclosed pay). Within-corpus comparison — one methodology on both sides. As of 2026-06-10.
Cite this
ML/AI Work, "AI & ML salary benchmarks — Research and Science roles", dataset v2026.06, n=1901, as of 2026-06-11. https://mlai.work/salaries