Side-by-side distribution
AI Engineer
$200,455
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 38.5%
- Live roles
- 5,105
DevOps
$190,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 36.3%
- Live roles
- 3,666
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI
Senior/Staff Full Stack Engineer, Applied AI
Machine Learning Engineer - Fraud Risk
Backend Engineer, AI
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Senior AI Security Engineer II
Highest-paying jobs
Platform Engineer
Senior Staff+ Software Engineer, Kubernetes Platform
Senior Security Platform Engineer I
Principal .NET Software Engineer - Cloud Payments Platform
Principal .NET Software Engineer- Cloud Payments Platform
Software Engineer, Platform
Infrastructure and Platform Development Engineer
Agent Platform Engineer
Principal Engineer, AI Platform
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Inference & Training Platform)
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
OpenAI
|
$239,000 | 37 |
Mindrift
|
$312,000 | 31 |
Handshake
|
$252,500 | 22 |
Databricks
|
$224,163 | 22 |
Motional
|
$200,500 | 21 |
|
Pinterest
|
$265,928 | 20 |
Reddit
|
$276,000 | 19 |
Applied Intuition
|
$173,500 | 18 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Accenture Federal Services
|
$151,800 | 29 |
Air Apps
|
$65,184 | 22 |
Captivation Software
|
$200,000 | 21 |
|
Reddit
|
$244,500 | 18 |
Anduril Industries
|
$222,000 | 15 |
Coinbase
|
$202,483 | 15 |
Airwallex
|
$162,878 | 13 |
Roblox
|
$265,138 | 12 |
AI Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore | $250,000 | 4 |
| San Francisco | $230,000 | 465 |
| New York | $220,000 | 352 |
| Seattle | $205,500 | 98 |
| Chicago | $205,000 | 35 |
| Los Angeles | $200,000 | 33 |
| Austin | $197,500 | 45 |
| Bangalore | $194,838 | 3 |
| Sydney | $190,000 | 3 |
| Boston | $185,500 | 88 |
DevOps salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $225,500 | 251 |
| Seattle | $212,500 | 62 |
| New York | $210,000 | 209 |
| Los Angeles | $200,650 | 18 |
| Austin | $198,900 | 27 |
| Chicago | $195,000 | 31 |
| Denver | $186,000 | 26 |
| Boston | $182,500 | 59 |
| Toronto | $165,000 | 50 |
| Atlanta | $161,500 | 10 |
AI Engineer vs DevOps: which pays more?
The median for AI Engineer is $200,455 per year (typically $165,350–$243,750), versus $190,000 for DevOps ($151,040–$225,000). That puts AI Engineer about 6% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so AI Engineer and DevOps are compared on equal terms regardless of the currency each role was originally posted in. Only roles that publish a salary range feed the medians; numbers refresh every few hours as new roles post and older ones close, so this comparison reflects the market right now rather than a fixed survey. Use it as a directional benchmark when weighing one path against the other.