Climbing the AI Ladder: Insights into Top AI Jobs Salary and Career Growth

In this article, I will be talking about how much money AI Jobs Salary and machine learning engineers make. If you’re just starting out in tech or thinking about switching into AI engineering, this could really help you out.

I talked about the top software engineering salaries AI Jobs Salary in my last article and one of the questions I got in the comment section was from user Aij Naak. Thank you Aij for the comment where you asked if I can also talk about top AI engineering salaries.

We strongly recommend that you check out our guide on how to take advantage of AI in today’s passive income economy.

Methodology

I’m using the same website called Levels.fyi to categorize a job into different levels and find out how much they pay at various companies. The way this site works is that everyone anonymously submits their own AI Jobs Salary information and we can look at the salaries based on various filters.

By the way, this article is not sponsored by Levels.fyi, I just find it really helpful because it’s been pretty accurate in my experience.

Entry Level AI Jobs Salary

First, let’s dive into the entry level. I have filtered for AI Jobs Salary updated in the past year specifically in the US.

There’s a lot of debate about what qualifies as an entry level, but this filter setting is set to 0 to 1 year of experience.

Highest Paying Entry Level AI Jobs

The highest pay was Vatic Investments at $594,000. I’m just going to be rounding them up to the thousands. I’ve never actually heard of this company Vatic Investment so I had to Google it.

It apparently is a private equity investment company. This person is in New York and despite having zero years of experience still got $250,000 of base AI Jobs Salary and a bonus of $344,000. Whoever you are, kudos to you for securing that high pay as a new junior engineer.

Next in line is Radix Trading. They are also based in New York with an entry level total compensation of $525,000. Same base of $250k as the first company but a slightly less bonus of $275,000.

Third is Jane Street at $518,000 with a slightly higher base pay of $300k.

First Non-Finance Entry Level AI Jobs

The first non-finance company in the entry-level category was Cruise with $465,000. This person is in San Francisco with one year of experience. I’m sure you’re familiar with Cruise, the top autonomous vehicle company.

Fifth place following Cruise is Nuro also a self-driving car company based in Silicon Valley and the total compensation for this person was $460,000.

Mid Level AI Jobs Salary

Now let’s move on to the mid level roles which according to Levels.fyi are levels with 2 to 6 years of experience.

Highest Paying Mid Level AI Jobs

First on the list is Hudson River Trading offering $2.1 million in total compensation. I do want to note that this might be a bit of an exception as the base AI Jobs Salary was only at $200,000 and the bonus was significant at $1.9 million.

The second company was OpenAI with a total compensation of $925,000 with a base salary of $300k.

Next was technically principal SDE at Amazon which appeared on the list but I’m going to exclude that because that’s not a typical mid level engineering role.

So moving on we have L6 at Cruise boasting a total compensation of $886,000. This breaks down into a base salary of $283k, total stock RSUs amounting to $466k, and a bonus of $57,000.

Other Notable Mid Level AI Jobs

Following closely we find Appian securing the fourth spot with a total compensation of $800k, while Grammarly is not too far behind at $780,000 in total AI Jobs Salary compensation.

Senior Level AI Jobs Salary

Now let’s look at senior level which according to Levels.fyi are roles with 7+ years of experience. This is where a lot of the FAANG companies start to show up.

Highest Paying Senior Level AI Jobs

At the top we have Facebook E7 which is pretty damn senior with the total compensation of $1,965,000. This included a base salary of $285,000, stock RSUs totaling $1.6 million and a bonus of $80,000.

To give you a little more context an E7 level at Facebook would be somewhat similar to a principal engineer. That is why I excluded the principal engineer Amazon from the previous list.

The person holding this particular position at Facebook reported 17 years of experience working in tech.

Following closely was an L9 at Google with a total compensation of $1,570,000. This person from Google also is very seasoned with 30 years of experience.

Securing the third place is Cruise L8 at $1,340,000 followed by Pinterest at $1,310,000 and Netflix at $1.2 million. These numbers pretty much show that experienced people in the tech industry really get good AI Jobs Salary as they move up in their careers.

It’s not easy to get to this level but if you can make it, the payout is great.

Global AI Jobs Salary

If I take away the filter that shows jobs only in the US and look at jobs all around the world, the ranking pretty much stays the same. This tells us that the United States is where you can find the jobs that pay the most.

So if you are aiming for those high paying AI Jobs Salary, the US is probably where you would want to be.

Remote AI Jobs Salary

But I know many people want to work remotely. Here is a list of entry level remote jobs all around the world:

Pinterest at $300,000

Amazon at $272,000
Intel at $217,000
Dropbox at $212,000

Twitter at $186,000

As you can see, the pay is significantly less compared to the earlier US-based list but it’s still a good amount especially if you’re looking for that location flexibility.

Conclusion

I hope this AI Jobs Salary breakdown was helpful in navigating your tech career options. Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions!