Side-by-side distribution
MLOps
$187,500
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 18.8%
- Live roles
- 128
Software Engineer
$191,125
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 44.1%
- Live roles
- 15,329
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
Senior Software Engineer, Growth
Intermediate Backend Software Engineer
Lead Software Engineer (Backend)
Staff Software Engineer (Backend)
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
Software Engineer - Solana
Software Engineer - Stellar
Software Engineer - EVM
Software Engineer - Compliance
Senior Staff+ Software Engineer, Node Infra
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 |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$222,000 | 298 |
OpenAI
|
$309,000 | 113 |
Speechify
|
$170,000 | 103 |
Databricks
|
$214,700 | 98 |
Roblox
|
$269,270 | 83 |
Applied Intuition
|
$180,000 | 83 |
Palantir
|
$167,500 | 74 |
SpaceX
|
$137,500 | 66 |
Software Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $225,000 | 1,400 |
| Sydney | $224,060 | 8 |
| New York | $213,300 | 1,160 |
| Seattle | $212,500 | 419 |
| Austin | $197,000 | 137 |
| Boston | $186,050 | 227 |
| Los Angeles | $182,500 | 164 |
| Bangalore | $181,219 | 4 |
| Chicago | $179,250 | 138 |
| Atlanta | $173,875 | 58 |
MLOps vs Software Engineer: which pays more?
The median for MLOps is $187,500 per year (typically $147,500–$236,325), versus $191,125 for Software Engineer ($152,900–$225,000). That puts Software Engineer about 2% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so MLOps and Software 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.