Unveiling the Top AI Jobs Salary: A Comprehensive Guide for Aspiring Engineers

Exploring AI Jobs Salary: A Personal Journey

Hey there, welcome back to my channel! Today, I’m diving into the fascinating realm of AI jobs salary, specifically focusing on AI and machine learning engineers’ salaries. If you’re just starting out in tech or considering a switch to AI engineering, understanding AI jobs salary could be a game-changer for you. In my last post, I discussed top software engineering salaries, and one of the questions I received was about top AI engineering salaries. So, let’s get into it!

I’m using a website called Levels.fyi to categorize jobs into different levels and find out how much they pay at various companies. The site works by everyone anonymously submitting their own salary information, and we can look at the salaries based on various filters.

First, we’re going to look at US-based AI jobs salaries by levels, then I’ll briefly talk about global salaries, and lastly, a topic that everyone’s always asking me about: the remote engineering salaries for AI engineers. If this topic sounds interesting, let’s dive into it and explore the intriguing world of AI jobs salary!

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Entry-Level AI Jobs Salary

First of all, let’s dive into the entry level. I have filtered for salaries 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 for Levels.fyi is set to 0 to one year of experience, and it’s like the starting point in their world of working.

For this level, the highest pay was at 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. This person is in New York and, despite having zero years of experience, still got $250,000 of base 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 Radex Trading, also based in New York, with an entry-level total compensation of $525,000, same base of $250 as the first company, but a slightly less bonus of $275,000 with one year of experience. Third is Jane Street at $518,000 with a slightly higher base pay of $300K.

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, and I’m sure you’re familiar with Cruise, the top autonomous vehicle company. They’ve been in the news quite a lot recently, for good and bad.

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

Mid-Level AI Jobs Salary

And now, let’s move on to the mid-level roles, which, according to Levels.fyi filter, are levels with two to six years of experience. First on the list is Hudson River Trading, offering $2.1 million in total compensation. But I do want to note that this might be a bit of an exception, as the base salary was only at $200,000, and the bonus was really significant at $1.9 million, which contributed to the overall annual earnings, which is, I guess, not unusual for the finance industry.

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 just exclude that because that’s not really a mid-level engineering role.

So, moving on, we have L6 at Cruise, boasting a total compensation of $860,000. This breaks down into a base salary of $283K, total stock RSUs amounting to $466K, and a bonus of $57,000. Following closely, we find Appen securing the fourth spot with a total compensation of $800K, while Grammarly is not too far behind at $780,000 in total compensation.

Senior-Level AI Jobs Salary

Now, let’s look at the senior level, which, according to Levels.fyi, are roles with seven-plus years of experience. This is where a lot of the FAANG companies start to show up. At the top, we have Facebook E7, which is pretty darn senior, with a 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.

Just to give you a little more context, an E7 level at Facebook would be somewhat similar to a principal engineer, and that is why I excluded the Principal Engineer at 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. These numbers are so high; it’s kind of difficult to speak! Well, this person from Google also is very seasoned; he or she has 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 pay as they move up in their careers. It’s not easy to get to this level, but if you can wing it, the payout is great.

Global and Remote AI Jobs Salary

Now, 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, which tells us that the United States is where you can find the jobs that pay the most. And if you are aiming for those high-paying jobs, the US is probably where you would want to be.

But I know many people want to work remotely. Here is a list of entry-level remote jobs all around the world: ranking at number one is Pinterest at $300,000; number two was Amazon at $272,000; next is Intel at $217,000; number four is Dropbox at $220,000; and lastly, Twitter is at $186,000.

As you can see, the pay is significantly less compared to the earlier list, but it’s still a good amount of money, especially if you’re looking for that flexibility to work from anywhere.

Thank you for tuning in, and I hope this salary breakdown was helpful in navigating your tech careers. See you at the next one!