Side-by-side distribution
ML Engineer
$205,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 42.3%
- Live roles
- 1,743
Security Engineer
$190,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 47.4%
- Live roles
- 1,974
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, Ad Serving
Highest-paying jobs
Cyber Security Engineer (5462)
Security Engineer
Senior AI Security Engineer II
Senior Security Platform Engineer I
Lead Security Engineer
Offensive Security Engineer, Agent Products
Principal Security Engineer, Infrastructure Security
Principal Software Engineer, Infrastructure Security
Staff+ Application Security Engineer - M&A
Staff+ Application Security Engineer
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Reddit
|
$276,000 | 18 |
|
Pinterest
|
$260,867 | 17 |
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 |
|---|---|---|
Aurora Innovation
|
$222,000 | 22 |
Anduril Industries
|
$202,000 | 20 |
Accenture Federal Services
|
$151,800 | 19 |
SpaceX
|
$142,500 | 16 |
Mozilla
|
$86,043 | 16 |
Palantir
|
$170,000 | 14 |
|
OpenAI
|
$339,000 | 13 |
|
Anthropic
|
$362,500 | 12 |
ML Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $240,000 | 164 |
| Austin | $235,000 | 11 |
| New York | $225,000 | 100 |
| Seattle | $212,444 | 39 |
| 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 |
ML Engineer vs Security Engineer: which pays more?
The median for ML Engineer is $205,000 per year (typically $173,500–$250,000), versus $190,000 for Security Engineer ($153,550–$235,000). That puts ML Engineer about 8% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so ML Engineer and Security 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.