Side-by-side distribution
AI Engineer
$200,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 38.8%
- Live roles
- 5,113
Platform Engineer
$195,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 44.2%
- Live roles
- 4,052
Highest-paying jobs
Senior/Staff Full Stack Engineer, Applied AI
Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
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
Platform Engineer
Senior Staff+ Software Engineer, Kubernetes Platform
Staff+ Infrastructure Engineer, Cluster Infrastructure
Software Engineer, Research Infrastructure
Senior Security Platform Engineer I
Principal .NET Software Engineer- Cloud Payments Platform
Principal .NET Software Engineer - Cloud Payments Platform
Staff+ Software Engineer, Safeguards Infrastructure
Infrastructure and Platform Development Engineer
Machine Learning Infrastructure Engineer, Safeguards Research
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Mindrift
|
$156,000 | 55 |
OpenAI
|
$239,000 | 39 |
Handshake
|
$252,500 | 23 |
| SE Sezzle | $85,000 | 23 |
Databricks
|
$224,163 | 22 |
Motional
|
$200,500 | 21 |
Grafana Labs
|
$145,807 | 20 |
Reddit
|
$276,000 | 19 |
Speechify
Nuro
Palantir
Coinbase
AI Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore | $250,000 | 5 |
| San Francisco | $228,950 | 463 |
| New York | $220,000 | 351 |
| Seattle | $205,500 | 95 |
| Chicago | $205,000 | 37 |
| Los Angeles | $200,000 | 34 |
| Bangalore | $194,838 | 3 |
| Austin | $194,500 | 45 |
| Sydney | $190,000 | 3 |
| Toronto | $187,359 | 61 |
Platform Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $226,000 | 411 |
| Seattle | $212,500 | 108 |
| New York | $210,000 | 317 |
| Austin | $198,900 | 39 |
| Los Angeles | $187,500 | 32 |
| Boston | $187,500 | 64 |
| Toronto | $181,644 | 62 |
| Chicago | $178,500 | 23 |
| Denver | $175,000 | 31 |
| Atlanta | $170,000 | 11 |
AI Engineer vs Platform Engineer: which pays more?
The median for AI Engineer is $200,000 per year (typically $165,000–$243,109), versus $195,000 for Platform Engineer ($166,525–$230,000). That puts AI 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 Platform 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.