Side-by-side distribution
MLOps
$187,500
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 18.9%
- Live roles
- 127
Principal Engineer
$223,544
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 45.9%
- Live roles
- 1,775
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, DevOps/SRE
Staff Machine Learning Operations Engineer
Senior Data Engineer, MLOps [Remote-US]
Senior, ML Engineer - ML Ops Framework
Senior, ML Engineer - ML Ops Framework
Senior Machine Learning Operations Engineer
Staff ML/LLM Ops Engineer
Sr. Machine Learning Ops Engineer
DoD MLOps Software Engineer
Sr. Machine Learning Ops Engineer
Highest-paying jobs
Principal Software Engineer
Distinguished Engineer
Staff / Principal Data Engineer
Principal Engineer (Payments)
Principal Engineer
Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Delivery
Principal Research Engineer, Model Training & Post-Training
Principal Engineer, Agentic AI Systems
Staff / Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Serving - USA
Principal Engineer, AI Platform
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
Garner Health
|
$297,500 | 2 |
|
Torc Robotics
|
$249,000 | 2 |
|
Quanata
|
$256,500 | 1 |
|
Roku
|
$254,875 | 1 |
|
LVT
|
$242,650 | 1 |
|
Hayden AI
|
$230,000 | 1 |
Instacart
|
$212,750 | 1 |
|
Cimgroup
|
$200,000 | 1 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Roblox
|
$320,145 | 42 |
| AL Astera Labs | $207,500 | 21 |
Motional
|
$285,000 | 19 |
Elastic
|
$134,329 | 18 |
| SE Sezzle | $111,000 | 16 |
Zscaler
|
$210,375 | 14 |
Anduril Industries
|
$256,000 | 13 |
Snowflake
|
$321,750 | 12 |
Principal Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $282,500 | 70 |
| New York | $259,000 | 57 |
| Boston | $250,000 | 45 |
| Austin | $232,000 | 10 |
| Seattle | $231,500 | 33 |
| Chicago | $228,075 | 16 |
| Los Angeles | $225,000 | 31 |
| Toronto | $210,000 | 16 |
| London | $199,724 | 16 |
| Denver | $190,000 | 17 |
MLOps vs Principal Engineer: which pays more?
The median for MLOps is $187,500 per year (typically $147,500–$236,325), versus $223,544 for Principal Engineer ($187,500–$276,000). That puts Principal Engineer about 19% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so MLOps and Principal 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.