Side-by-side distribution
Chemist
$84,606
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 27.3%
- Live roles
- 231
Research Scientist
$170,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 51.6%
- Live roles
- 819
Highest-paying jobs
Clinical Chemist/Clinical Pathologist - Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Clinical Chemist
Synthetic Chemist
Medicinal Chemist
Computational Medicinal Chemist
Senior / Principal Chemist, AI Safety
Process Chemist
DARPA SETA Physical Chemist/Materials Scientist SME
Clinical Chemist
Computational Chemist - GPU Acceleration
Highest-paying jobs
Staff+ Research Scientist, Multi-Agent
Research Engineer / Research Scientist, RL Frontiers
Research Scientist, Interpretability
Research Scientist / Research Engineer - Foundations, Search
Research Engineer/Research Scientist, Pre-training
[Expression of Interest] Research Engineer / Scientist, Alignment - London
Research Engineer/Research Scientist- Personal AGI, Model Experience
Research Engineer/Research Scientist - Personal AGI, North Stars
Research Engineer / Research Scientist - Personal AGI, Personalization
Research Engineer / Research Scientist, Tokens
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Entegris
|
$91,500 | 6 |
Republic Services
|
$72,020 | 5 |
Abbott
|
$59,488 | 5 |
Cardinal Health
|
$78,260 | 3 |
|
Inductive Bio
|
$230,000 | 2 |
| IT ITW | $109,770 | 2 |
| VT Voyager Technologies, Inc. | $98,750 | 2 |
Church & Dwight
|
$86,050 | 2 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
The University of Texas at Austin
|
$48,000 | 19 |
|
Anthropic
|
$425,000 | 13 |
|
OpenAI
|
$440,000 | 12 |
Astera Institute
|
$177,500 | 11 |
Anduril Industries
|
$221,000 | 10 |
UL Research Institutes
|
$128,747 | 10 |
MSD
|
$329,250 | 9 |
| SA Scale AI | $243,000 | 8 |
Research Scientist salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| London | $275,000 | 9 |
| San Francisco | $267,500 | 85 |
| New York | $243,000 | 55 |
| Seattle | $213,800 | 22 |
| Toronto | $212,000 | 8 |
| Boston | $192,500 | 25 |
| Los Angeles | $187,500 | 3 |
| Chicago | $147,566 | 4 |
| Austin | $49,864 | 10 |
Chemist vs Research Scientist: which pays more?
The median for Chemist is $84,606 per year (typically $66,101–$127,997), versus $170,000 for Research Scientist ($115,000–$242,745). That puts Research Scientist about 101% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Chemist and Research Scientist 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.