Side-by-side distribution
Data Engineer
$170,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 34.5%
- Live roles
- 3,152
ML Engineer
$205,841
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 42.4%
- Live roles
- 1,747
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Data Engineer
Senior Data Engineer
Senior Data Engineer
Data Engineer
Staff / Principal Data Engineer
Senior Data Engineer
Senior Data Engineer
Data Center Design Engineer, Electrical - Industrial Compute
Software Engineer, Frontier Data Products
Data Engineer
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, Search
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Speechify
|
$170,000 | 103 |
Mindrift
|
$76,960 | 57 |
Accenture Federal Services
|
$153,850 | 22 |
Esri
|
$134,264 | 16 |
Olsson
|
$122,500 | 14 |
Anduril Industries
|
$174,500 | 13 |
|
OpenAI
|
$312,000 | 12 |
Air Apps
|
$70,422 | 10 |
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 | 10 |
Nuro
|
$242,540 | 10 |
Applied Intuition
|
$173,500 | 10 |
Data Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $216,000 | 165 |
| New York | $200,000 | 159 |
| Seattle | $185,750 | 45 |
| Austin | $177,500 | 25 |
| Chicago | $170,000 | 39 |
| Boston | $170,000 | 32 |
| Atlanta | $170,000 | 11 |
| Los Angeles | $160,000 | 19 |
| Denver | $159,370 | 25 |
| Toronto | $150,000 | 27 |
ML Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $240,000 | 169 |
| Austin | $230,000 | 12 |
| New York | $225,000 | 104 |
| Seattle | $212,872 | 40 |
| Los Angeles | $205,000 | 11 |
| Boston | $200,000 | 42 |
| Toronto | $191,513 | 28 |
| Paris | $185,000 | 6 |
| Denver | $175,000 | 5 |
| Atlanta | $174,825 | 8 |
Data Engineer vs ML Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Data Engineer is $170,000 per year (typically $140,938–$207,500), versus $205,841 for ML Engineer ($175,000–$250,750). That puts ML Engineer about 21% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Data Engineer 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.