Side-by-side distribution
AI Engineer
$200,455
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 38.5%
- Live roles
- 5,105
ML Engineer
$205,841
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 42.4%
- Live roles
- 1,747
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 (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Senior AI Security Engineer II
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
Machine Learning Engineer - Fraud Risk
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Machine Learning Engineer, Integrity
Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Delivery
Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Ad Serving
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 |
|---|---|---|
|
Reddit
|
$276,000 | 18 |
|
Pinterest
|
$260,867 | 18 |
|
Motional
|
$185,500 | 17 |
Roblox
|
$297,743 | 14 |
Airbnb
|
$274,500 | 14 |
Torc Robotics
|
$249,000 | 10 |
Nuro
|
$242,540 | 10 |
|
Applied Intuition
|
$173,500 | 10 |
AI Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore | $250,000 | 4 |
| San Francisco | $229,756 | 466 |
| New York | $220,000 | 350 |
| Seattle | $205,500 | 97 |
| Los Angeles | $200,000 | 33 |
| Chicago | $197,500 | 36 |
| Austin | $196,000 | 44 |
| Bangalore | $194,838 | 3 |
| Sydney | $190,000 | 3 |
| Toronto | $187,500 | 59 |
ML Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $240,000 | 169 |
| Austin | $230,000 | 12 |
| New York | $225,000 | 104 |
| Seattle | $212,872 | 40 |
| Los Angeles | $205,000 | 11 |
| Boston | $200,000 | 42 |
| Toronto | $191,513 | 28 |
| Paris | $185,000 | 6 |
| Denver | $175,000 | 5 |
| Atlanta | $174,825 | 8 |
AI Engineer vs ML Engineer: which pays more?
The median for AI Engineer is $200,455 per year (typically $165,350–$243,750), versus $205,841 for ML Engineer ($175,000–$250,750). That puts ML Engineer about 3% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so AI Engineer and ML Engineer 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.