Side-by-side distribution
Application Security
$190,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 55.2%
- Live roles
- 317
ML Engineer
$205,841
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 42.4%
- Live roles
- 1,747
Highest-paying jobs
Staff+ Application Security Engineer - M&A
Staff+ Application Security Engineer
Staff Engineer - Product Security
Senior Staff Engineer - Product Security
Product & Application Security Engineer
Senior Security Engineer, Product AppSec
Principal Software Engineer II - Product Security
Security Engineer, Application Security
Staff Engineer - Product Security
Principal Security Software Engineer, Application Security
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
Machine Learning Engineer - Fraud Risk
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
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 |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$204,500 | 8 |
Mozilla
|
$85,751 | 5 |
|
Faire
|
$422,240 | 4 |
|
Veeam Software
|
$315,000 | 4 |
Harvey
|
$275,000 | 3 |
Brex
|
$216,000 | 3 |
Airwallex
|
$205,000 | 3 |
SpaceX
|
$202,500 | 3 |
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 | 11 |
Nuro
|
$242,540 | 10 |
Applied Intuition
|
$173,500 | 10 |
Application Security salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| New York | $237,500 | 27 |
| San Francisco | $232,500 | 47 |
| Chicago | $213,750 | 7 |
| Seattle | $200,000 | 11 |
| Boston | $195,000 | 4 |
| Austin | $187,500 | 5 |
| Toronto | $185,000 | 11 |
| Denver | $177,500 | 5 |
| Los Angeles | $150,000 | 7 |
| London | $131,502 | 3 |
ML Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $240,000 | 168 |
| Austin | $230,000 | 12 |
| New York | $225,000 | 102 |
| Seattle | $212,444 | 41 |
| Los Angeles | $205,000 | 11 |
| Boston | $200,000 | 42 |
| Toronto | $195,000 | 27 |
| Paris | $185,000 | 6 |
| Denver | $175,000 | 5 |
| Atlanta | $174,825 | 8 |
Application Security vs ML Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Application Security is $190,000 per year (typically $159,735–$235,000), versus $205,841 for ML Engineer ($175,000–$250,750). That puts ML Engineer about 8% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Application Security 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.