Side-by-side distribution
Chief of Staff
$200,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 39.4%
- Live roles
- 289
ML Engineer
$206,250
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 43%
- Live roles
- 1,752
Highest-paying jobs
Chief of Staff
Chief of Staff
Sr. Staff Program Manager & Chief of Staff, Operations
Chief of Staff
Chief of Staff (Executive Office) and VP of Strategy & Operations
Chief of Staff to the CEO
Chief of Staff to the COO & GM of Marketplace
Chief of Staff Director, Product
Chief of Staff, Product
Chief of Staff, CEO
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 (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Machine Learning Engineer, Integrity
Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Delivery
Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Search
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Coursera
|
$212,040 | 3 |
Coursera Sourcing
|
$212,040 | 3 |
|
Flex
|
$301,500 | 2 |
|
Checkr
|
$282,250 | 2 |
Sonatus
|
$244,000 | 2 |
Nuro
|
$231,520 | 2 |
EliseAI
|
$212,500 | 2 |
CHAOS Industries
|
$198,750 | 2 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Reddit
|
$276,000 | 18 |
|
Pinterest
|
$260,867 | 17 |
Motional
|
$185,500 | 17 |
Roblox
|
$286,635 | 15 |
Airbnb
|
$274,500 | 13 |
Torc Robotics
|
$249,000 | 11 |
|
Nuro
|
$242,540 | 11 |
Accenture Federal Services
|
$151,800 | 11 |
Chief of Staff salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Austin | $300,000 | 3 |
| San Francisco | $205,000 | 18 |
| New York | $197,500 | 34 |
| Los Angeles | $192,500 | 4 |
| Toronto | $128,342 | 3 |
ML Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $240,000 | 166 |
| Austin | $235,000 | 11 |
| New York | $225,000 | 99 |
| Seattle | $213,300 | 41 |
| Los Angeles | $205,000 | 11 |
| Boston | $200,000 | 41 |
| Toronto | $195,000 | 29 |
| Paris | $185,000 | 6 |
| Atlanta | $174,825 | 8 |
| Chicago | $173,875 | 12 |
Chief of Staff vs ML Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Chief of Staff is $200,000 per year (typically $161,250–$240,000), versus $206,250 for ML Engineer ($172,688–$250,375). That puts ML Engineer about 3% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Chief of Staff 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.