Side-by-side distribution
Backend Engineer
$187,500
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 34.4%
- Live roles
- 2,364
Prompt Engineer
$194,670
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 30.2%
- Live roles
- 106
Highest-paying jobs
Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI
Senior Backend Engineer, Exchange Infrastructure
Backend Engineer, Markets
Senior Backend Engineer, Payments
Senior Backend Engineer, Trust & Safety
Senior Backend Engineer, Perpetuals
Software Engineer, Backend
Senior Backend Engineer, Markets
Staff+ Software Engineer, Backend
Senior Staff Software Engineer, API
Highest-paying jobs
Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco
Principal Machine Learning Engineer- LLM Fine-tuning and Optimization
Machine Learning Engineer, Inference & Serving (Speech LLM) - San Francisco
Staff Machine Learning Engineer - LLM Quantization & Deployment
Senior Research Engineer, LLM Training & Post-Training
Senior Machine Learning Engineer - LLM Quantization & Deployment
Intermediate/ Senior Software Engineer - Cortex LLM Training Platform
Senior Staff LLM Inference Engineer
Staff Attack Engineer, AI/LLM
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, LLM Inference Optimization
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Affirm
|
$158,000 | 33 |
Air Apps
|
$67,479 | 33 |
Grafana Labs
|
$137,917 | 26 |
OpenAI
|
$339,000 | 14 |
Databricks
|
$195,500 | 13 |
Verkada
|
$220,000 | 12 |
GitLab
|
$187,200 | 10 |
Satispay
|
$57,178 | 10 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Otter.ai
|
$207,500 | 3 |
|
Plaud
|
$280,000 | 2 |
|
XPENG
|
$262,500 | 2 |
Censys
|
$179,000 | 2 |
Accenture Federal Services
|
$151,800 | 2 |
Five9
|
$150,675 | 2 |
|
Airbnb
|
$328,500 | 1 |
|
Horizon3 AI
|
$249,000 | 1 |
Backend Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $215,000 | 161 |
| Seattle | $214,700 | 49 |
| New York | $205,129 | 166 |
| Los Angeles | $198,500 | 13 |
| Boston | $195,750 | 12 |
| Denver | $193,171 | 6 |
| Austin | $185,000 | 5 |
| Chicago | $165,000 | 3 |
| Singapore | $156,000 | 5 |
| Toronto | $144,279 | 29 |
Prompt Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $237,500 | 5 |
| New York | $226,000 | 3 |
Backend Engineer vs Prompt Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Backend Engineer is $187,500 per year (typically $146,042–$225,000), versus $194,670 for Prompt Engineer ($168,300–$237,500). That puts Prompt Engineer about 4% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Backend Engineer 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.