Side-by-side distribution
Principal Engineer
$223,250
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 46.2%
- Live roles
- 1,771
Research Scientist
$219,375
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 53.1%
- Live roles
- 382
Highest-paying jobs
Principal Software Engineer
Distinguished Engineer
Staff / Principal Data Engineer
Principal Engineer
Principal Engineer (Payments)
Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Delivery
Principal Research Engineer, Model Training & Post-Training
Principal Engineer, Agentic AI Systems
Principal .NET Software Engineer - Cloud Payments Platform
Principal .NET Software Engineer- Cloud Payments Platform
Highest-paying jobs
Research Engineer/Research Scientist, Pre-training
Research Scientist, Interpretability
Research Engineer / Research Scientist - Personal AGI, Personality and Model Behavior
Research Engineer / Research Scientist -Personal AGI, Proactivity
Research Engineer/Research Scientist - Personal AGI, North Stars
Research Engineer / Research Scientist- Personal AGI (Post Training)
Staff / Principal Research Scientist - USA
Research Engineer / Research Scientist, Tokens
Research Engineer / Scientist, Alignment
[Expression of Interest] Research Engineer / Scientist, Alignment - London
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Roblox
|
$320,145 | 42 |
| AL Astera Labs | $207,500 | 21 |
Motional
|
$285,000 | 20 |
Elastic
|
$134,329 | 18 |
| SE Sezzle | $111,000 | 16 |
Zscaler
|
$213,281 | 14 |
Anduril Industries
|
$256,000 | 13 |
Snowflake
|
$321,750 | 12 |
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 |
Principal Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $278,000 | 70 |
| New York | $260,000 | 59 |
| Boston | $250,000 | 45 |
| Chicago | $232,500 | 15 |
| Seattle | $232,175 | 34 |
| Austin | $232,000 | 10 |
| Los Angeles | $225,000 | 31 |
| Toronto | $210,000 | 16 |
| London | $199,724 | 16 |
| Denver | $190,000 | 17 |
Research Scientist salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Boston | $275,000 | 8 |
| San Francisco | $262,500 | 67 |
| Seattle | $252,725 | 10 |
| New York | $243,000 | 37 |
| Toronto | $212,000 | 8 |
| London | $206,683 | 9 |
| Los Angeles | $125,000 | 4 |
Principal Engineer vs Research Scientist: which pays more?
The median for Principal Engineer is $223,250 per year (typically $187,500–$275,639), versus $219,375 for Research Scientist ($177,088–$275,000). That puts Principal Engineer about 2% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Principal 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.