Data from 1000 live listings

AI Engineer Salary Guide 2026

Real compensation data pulled from active AI engineering job postings — not surveys. Full-time salaries are annual. Contract rates are hourly.

By job type

Full-time salaries are annual. Contract rates are per hour.

Full-time

$148K–$212K

Based on 153 listings

Full-time roles only.

Remote

+premium

$152K–$207K

Based on 27 listings

On-site / Hybrid

$147K–$213K

Based on 126 listings

Full-time roles only, averaged across all seniority levels.

Stack	Range	Avg max	Roles
1Vector DB	$237K – $283K	$283K	3
2Transformers	$155K – $254K	$254K	2
3Rust	$181K – $254K	$254K	3
4PostgreSQL	$164K – $244K	$244K	11
5TypeScript	$158K – $236K	$236K	48
6Java	$128K – $215K	$215K	28
7LLMs	$149K – $214K	$214K	139
8Hugging Face	$123K – $210K	$210K	21
9Python	$148K – $210K	$210K	139
10Go	$146K – $209K	$209K	26
11Spark	$139K – $207K	$207K	5
12GCP	$144K – $206K	$206K	35
13Kafka	$131K – $206K	$206K	11
14LangGraph	$142K – $206K	$206K	51
15Anthropic	$131K – $200K	$200K	44

Salaries are averages across all seniority levels and company sizes from active listings.

Weekly digest with salary data included on every listing.