Side-by-side distribution
Embedded Engineer
$185,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 52.9%
- Live roles
- 450
Prompt Engineer
$198,750
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 28.4%
- Live roles
- 88
Highest-paying jobs
Helix AI Engineer, Embedded Android Systems
Principal Embedded Security Engineer
Sr. Software Engineer, Embedded Agentic AI
Staff Embedded Firmware Engineer
Principal Embedded Software Engineer
Embedded Software Test Engineer, Onboard Test Automation
Embedded SW Engineer
Staff Embedded Linux Engineer
Embedded Systems Engineer-Federal
Senior Embedded Systems Engineer
Highest-paying jobs
Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco
Machine Learning Engineer, Model Evaluations (Speech LLM) - San Francisco
Principal Machine Learning Engineer- LLM Fine-tuning and Optimization
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
Staff Machine Learning Engineer, CustomerLake (ML/LLM)
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$199,500 | 25 |
Silvus Technologies
|
$170,000 | 10 |
SpaceX
|
$142,500 | 9 |
| AX Axon | $183,300 | 7 |
Verkada
|
$245,000 | 6 |
Applied Intuition
|
$202,000 | 6 |
TP-Link Systems Inc.
|
$140,000 | 6 |
STR
|
$130,500 | 6 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
Plaud
|
$282,500 | 3 |
|
Glean
|
$250,000 | 2 |
Zscaler
|
$167,750 | 2 |
|
Airbnb
|
$328,500 | 1 |
|
Horizon3 AI
|
$249,000 | 1 |
|
LVT
|
$242,650 | 1 |
|
d-Matrix
|
$240,000 | 1 |
|
Databricks
|
$226,000 | 1 |
Embedded Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Toronto | $195,500 | 4 |
| Seattle | $193,000 | 13 |
| San Francisco | $187,500 | 18 |
| Austin | $186,975 | 6 |
| Boston | $183,300 | 11 |
| Los Angeles | $180,000 | 15 |
| Denver | $177,500 | 3 |
| New York | $167,500 | 6 |
Prompt Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $250,000 | 7 |
| New York | $197,500 | 3 |
Embedded Engineer vs Prompt Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Embedded Engineer is $185,000 per year (typically $155,000–$208,938), versus $198,750 for Prompt Engineer ($180,000–$243,238). That puts Prompt Engineer about 7% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Embedded 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.