Side-by-side distribution
Prompt Engineer
$180,350
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 13.6%
- Live roles
- 287
Software Engineer
$172,500
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 33.8%
- Live roles
- 33,114
Highest-paying jobs
Software Engineer, Tokens and Prompt Structures
Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco
Machine Learning Engineer, Inference & Serving (Speech LLM) - San Francisco
Principal Machine Learning Engineer- LLM Fine-tuning and Optimization
Staff Machine Learning Engineer - LLM Quantization & Deployment
Senior/Staff System Research Engineer – LLM Inference Optimization
Senior Machine Learning Engineer - LLM Quantization & Deployment
Intermediate/ Senior Software Engineer - Cortex LLM Training Platform
Senior Staff LLM Inference Engineer
Staff Attack Engineer, AI/LLM
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer (Database Reliability)
Staff Software Engineer, Node Infra
Staff Software Engineer, Kubernetes Platform
Staff+ Software Engineer, Developer Productivity
Staff Software Engineer, Code RL
Software Engineer, Research Productivity
Staff Software Engineer, Claude Code
Staff Software Engineer, Environments Infrastructure
CACI
Otter.ai
Censys
Accenture
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$222,000 | 333 |
Northrop Grumman
|
$134,700 | 262 |
Leidos
|
$151,475 | 182 |
SpaceX
|
$145,000 | 173 |
Booz Allen Hamilton
|
$142,400 | 170 |
OpenAI
|
$355,500 | 153 |
Speechify
|
$170,000 | 144 |
Blue Origin
|
$197,582 | 142 |
Prompt Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $213,350 | 8 |
| New York | $161,425 | 4 |
Software Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $227,300 | 1,643 |
| New York | $212,500 | 1,427 |
| Sydney | $212,347 | 4 |
| Seattle | $203,250 | 707 |
| Los Angeles | $196,000 | 259 |
| Austin | $187,000 | 222 |
| Boston | $185,000 | 294 |
| London | $181,500 | 135 |
| Denver | $179,375 | 223 |
| Atlanta | $170,825 | 136 |
Prompt Engineer vs Software Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Prompt Engineer is $180,350 per year (typically $101,826–$235,200), versus $172,500 for Software Engineer ($133,404–$215,000). That puts Prompt Engineer about 5% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Prompt Engineer 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.