Side-by-side distribution
Data Scientist
$190,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 42.4%
- Live roles
- 1,661
Prompt Engineer
$198,750
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 28.4%
- Live roles
- 88
Highest-paying jobs
Data Scientist
Senior Data Scientist (Credit)
Senior Data Scientist (Credit)
Senior Data Scientist (Credit)
Data Scientist, Identity
Applied Scientist, Experimentation
Data Scientist
Data Scientist, Supply
Data Scientist, Developer Productivity
Machine Learning Scientist
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)
Launch Potato
Lyft
Pinterest
Roblox
Reddit
Roku
Zscaler
Five9
Data Scientist salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $211,819 | 161 |
| New York | $190,000 | 138 |
| Seattle | $188,750 | 46 |
| Austin | $187,500 | 9 |
| Denver | $187,500 | 6 |
| Los Angeles | $183,750 | 16 |
| Boston | $181,250 | 30 |
| London | $160,895 | 21 |
| Toronto | $153,600 | 28 |
| Chicago | $153,300 | 21 |
Prompt Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $250,000 | 7 |
| New York | $197,500 | 3 |
Data Scientist vs Prompt Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Data Scientist is $190,000 per year (typically $150,000–$229,900), 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 Data Scientist 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.