Side-by-side distribution
AI Engineer
$185,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 33%
- Live roles
- 9,509
MLOps
$163,800
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 26%
- Live roles
- 204
Highest-paying jobs
Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI
Senior/Staff Full Stack Engineer, Applied AI
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Software Engineer - AI
Machine Learning Engineer ($400k - $600k salary)
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning
Highest-paying jobs
Staff Machine Learning Operations Engineer
Machine Learning Engineer/Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Devops, AI for Drug Discovery
Principal Machine Learning Operations Engineer
Lead ML Engineer - Advance AI (applied ML, LLM's, ML Ops)
Senior / Staff ML Ops Engineer
Lead Software Platform Engineer, MLOps
Staff MLOps Engineer
Software Engineer - ML Ops (R37)
Senior Staff ML Ops Engineer
Matterport - Senior ML Ops Engineer
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Speechify
|
$170,000 | 144 |
Mindrift
|
$76,960 | 77 |
Booz Allen Hamilton
|
$162,000 | 76 |
OpenAI
|
$307,500 | 39 |
SpaceX
|
$145,000 | 35 |
General Motors
|
$203,125 | 34 |
Thomson Reuters
|
$204,200 | 30 |
CACI
|
$148,825 | 30 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Weekday AI
|
$202,800 | 2 |
|
Target
|
$197,000 | 2 |
Workday
|
$150,400 | 2 |
RELX
|
$140,450 | 2 |
|
Booz Allen Hamilton
|
$126,300 | 2 |
Shirley Ryan AbilityLab
|
$88,225 | 2 |
|
Garner Health
|
$324,500 | 1 |
|
AiDASH, Inc.
|
$250,000 | 1 |
AI Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $229,800 | 519 |
| New York | $212,500 | 483 |
| Seattle | $204,000 | 187 |
| Los Angeles | $203,625 | 64 |
| Boston | $196,000 | 137 |
| Singapore | $187,200 | 9 |
| Denver | $185,500 | 64 |
| Austin | $180,675 | 98 |
| Atlanta | $174,828 | 70 |
| London | $167,012 | 54 |
AI Engineer vs MLOps: which pays more?
The median for AI Engineer is $185,000 per year (typically $145,000–$228,900), versus $163,800 for MLOps ($137,000–$193,500). That puts AI Engineer about 13% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so AI Engineer and MLOps 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.