Side-by-side distribution
AI Engineer
$200,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 39.1%
- Live roles
- 5,349
ML Engineer
$203,710
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 41.8%
- Live roles
- 1,944
Highest-paying jobs
Lead Software Engineer, Generative AI
Senior Software Engineer, Generative AI
Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI
Senior/Staff Full Stack Engineer, Applied AI
Backend Engineer, AI
Machine Learning Engineer - Fraud Risk
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Highest-paying jobs
Machine Learning Engineer - Fraud Risk
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning)
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
ML Systems Engineer
Machine Learning Engineer, Integrity
Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Ads Delivery
Machine Learning Engineer, Inference & Serving (Speech LLM) - San Francisco
Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Mindrift
|
$72,800 | 47 |
|
OpenAI
|
$247,000 | 36 |
Unity Technologies
|
$198,550 | 34 |
|
Pinterest
|
$260,867 | 22 |
Motional
|
$200,500 | 22 |
| SE Sezzle | $70,499 | 22 |
Handshake
|
$252,500 | 20 |
Databricks
|
$221,553 | 20 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
Unity Technologies
|
$198,550 | 29 |
|
Pinterest
|
$260,867 | 19 |
|
Motional
|
$200,500 | 18 |
Reddit
|
$276,000 | 16 |
Roblox
|
$277,250 | 14 |
Torc Robotics
|
$227,325 | 12 |
Airbnb
|
$274,500 | 11 |
DoorDash USA
|
$169,350 | 11 |
ML Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | $233,925 | 178 |
| Los Angeles | $221,250 | 8 |
| New York | $214,150 | 126 |
| Seattle | $213,300 | 41 |
| Austin | $203,750 | 12 |
| Boston | $200,500 | 44 |
| Toronto | $195,000 | 27 |
| Singapore | $187,200 | 3 |
| Chicago | $182,500 | 14 |
| London | $175,072 | 16 |
AI Engineer vs ML Engineer: which pays more?
The median for AI Engineer is $200,000 per year (typically $162,000–$237,500), versus $203,710 for ML Engineer ($172,500–$249,038). That puts ML Engineer about 2% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so AI Engineer and ML 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.