Side-by-side distribution
ML Engineer
$205,841
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 42.4%
- Live roles
- 1,747
Research Scientist
$219,375
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 53.1%
- Live roles
- 382
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
Highest-paying jobs
Research Engineer/Research Scientist, Pre-training
Research Scientist, Interpretability
Research Engineer / Research Scientist -Personal AGI, Proactivity
Research Engineer/Research Scientist - Personal AGI, North Stars
Research Engineer / Research Scientist - Personal AGI, Personality and Model Behavior
Research Engineer / Research Scientist- Personal AGI (Post Training)
Research Engineer / Research Scientist, Tokens
Staff / Principal Research Scientist - USA
Research Engineer / Scientist, Alignment
[Expression of Interest] Research Engineer / Scientist, Alignment - London
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 | 11 |
Nuro
|
$242,540 | 10 |
Applied Intuition
|
$173,500 | 10 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
Anthropic
|
$402,500 | 11 |
Anduril Industries
|
$221,000 | 8 |
Astera Institute
|
$225,000 | 7 |
Waabi
|
$212,750 | 6 |
|
OpenAI
|
$425,000 | 5 |
| SA Scale AI | $243,000 | 5 |
|
Nuro
|
$229,900 | 5 |
World Labs
|
$300,000 | 4 |
ML Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $240,000 | 168 |
| Austin | $230,000 | 12 |
| New York | $225,000 | 102 |
| Seattle | $212,444 | 41 |
| Los Angeles | $205,000 | 11 |
| Boston | $200,000 | 42 |
| Toronto | $195,000 | 27 |
| Paris | $185,000 | 6 |
| Denver | $175,000 | 5 |
| Atlanta | $174,825 | 8 |
Research Scientist salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Boston | $275,000 | 8 |
| San Francisco | $265,000 | 66 |
| Seattle | $252,725 | 10 |
| New York | $243,000 | 37 |
| Toronto | $212,000 | 8 |
| London | $203,341 | 10 |
| Los Angeles | $125,000 | 4 |
ML Engineer vs Research Scientist: which pays more?
The median for ML Engineer is $205,841 per year (typically $175,000–$250,750), versus $219,375 for Research Scientist ($177,088–$275,000). That puts Research Scientist about 7% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so ML Engineer 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.