Side-by-side distribution
AI Engineer
$201,325
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 36.4%
- Live roles
- 5,240
MLOps
$189,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 19.4%
- Live roles
- 108
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
Senior/Staff Full Stack Engineer, Applied AI
Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Software Engineer, ML Networking
AI Product Engineer
Senior AI Fullstack Engineer
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, DevOps/SRE
Staff Machine Learning Operations Engineer
Staff Engineer - ML Infra / MLOps
Staff ML Ops Engineer
Lead Software Platform Engineer, MLOps
Senior ML Ops Engineer (Machine Learning Infrastructure)
MLOps Engineer
MLOps Engineer (JAX, PyTorch, Pallas/Triton)
ML Ops Infrastructure Engineer
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Operations Research
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
OpenAI
|
$307,500 | 33 |
Databricks
|
$222,325 | 23 |
Anduril Industries
|
$222,000 | 21 |
Nuro
|
$242,540 | 19 |
|
Anthropic
|
$425,000 | 17 |
Torc Robotics
|
$195,050 | 17 |
XPENG
|
$257,688 | 16 |
| SA Scale AI | $232,360 | 16 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
Torc Robotics
|
$142,650 | 2 |
|
Garner Health
|
$324,500 | 1 |
|
Roku
|
$254,875 | 1 |
|
Quince
|
$251,500 | 1 |
|
LVT
|
$242,650 | 1 |
|
TetraScience
|
$235,000 | 1 |
| AM Atomic Machines | $225,000 | 1 |
|
Instacart
|
$212,750 | 1 |
AI Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore | $250,000 | 7 |
| San Francisco | $225,900 | 443 |
| New York | $222,325 | 338 |
| Boston | $215,000 | 71 |
| Seattle | $210,000 | 101 |
| Austin | $208,750 | 30 |
| Los Angeles | $206,300 | 33 |
| Chicago | $200,000 | 29 |
| Atlanta | $183,975 | 13 |
| Denver | $181,908 | 20 |
AI Engineer vs MLOps: which pays more?
The median for AI Engineer is $201,325 per year (typically $163,188–$246,000), versus $189,000 for MLOps ($152,900–$225,000). That puts AI Engineer about 7% 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.