Side-by-side distribution
Prompt Engineer
$198,750
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 28.4%
- Live roles
- 88
Staff Engineer
$220,063
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 54.2%
- Live roles
- 4,821
Highest-paying jobs
Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco
Principal Machine Learning Engineer- LLM Fine-tuning and Optimization
Machine Learning Engineer, Model Evaluations (Speech LLM) - San Francisco
Machine Learning Engineer, Inference & Serving (Speech LLM) - San Francisco
Machine Learning Engineer, LLM Evals & Observability
Machine Learning Engineer, LLM Evals & Observability
Principal LLM Inference Engineer
Staff Attack Engineer, AI/LLM
Staff ML/LLM Ops Engineer
Software Engineer, Artificial Intelligence/LLM (Multiple Seniority Levels)
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Staff Backend Engineer ($500k - $1.5m salary)
Senior Staff Frontend Engineer ($500k - $1.5m salary)
Senior Staff Full Stack Engineer ($500k - $1.5m salary)
Senior Staff React Native Engineer ($500k - 1.5m salary)
Staff Software Engineer (Backend)
Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI
Senior/Staff Full Stack Engineer, Applied AI
Research Engineer (Senior Staff+), Safeguards Labs
Staff Research Engineer, Discovery Team
Senior Staff+ Software Engineer, Node Infra
Zscaler
Five9
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$222,000 | 111 |
Databricks
|
$226,000 | 77 |
|
Anthropic
|
$405,000 | 57 |
Crusoe
|
$231,000 | 45 |
Grafana Labs
|
$147,923 | 45 |
Aurora Innovation
|
$231,500 | 40 |
Archer
|
$192,500 | 37 |
Okta
|
$206,000 | 34 |
Prompt Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $250,000 | 7 |
| New York | $197,500 | 3 |
Staff Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Dublin | $257,300 | 5 |
| Seattle | $250,000 | 154 |
| San Francisco | $244,573 | 626 |
| New York | $240,000 | 463 |
| Austin | $229,500 | 51 |
| Chicago | $227,250 | 44 |
| Los Angeles | $221,000 | 64 |
| Denver | $211,250 | 46 |
| Boston | $210,000 | 97 |
| London | $206,683 | 47 |
Prompt Engineer vs Staff Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Prompt Engineer is $198,750 per year (typically $180,000–$243,238), versus $220,063 for Staff Engineer ($188,813–$250,000). That puts Staff Engineer about 11% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Prompt Engineer and Staff 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.