Side-by-side distribution
Application Security
$190,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 55.2%
- Live roles
- 317
Prompt Engineer
$198,750
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 28.4%
- Live roles
- 88
Highest-paying jobs
Staff+ Application Security Engineer
Staff+ Application Security Engineer - M&A
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
Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco
Principal Machine Learning Engineer- LLM Fine-tuning and Optimization
Machine Learning Engineer, Model Evaluations (Speech LLM) - San Francisco
Machine Learning Engineer, Inference & Serving (Speech LLM) - San Francisco
Machine Learning Engineer, LLM Evals & Observability
Machine Learning Engineer, LLM Evals & Observability
Principal LLM Inference Engineer
Staff Attack Engineer, AI/LLM
Staff ML/LLM Ops Engineer
Software Engineer, Artificial Intelligence/LLM (Multiple Seniority Levels)
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 |
Zscaler
Five9
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 |
Prompt Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $250,000 | 7 |
| New York | $197,500 | 3 |
Application Security vs Prompt Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Application Security is $190,000 per year (typically $159,735–$235,000), versus $198,750 for Prompt Engineer ($180,000–$243,238). That puts Prompt Engineer about 5% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Application Security and Prompt 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.