AI salaries · updated November 3, 2026

Software Engineer at AI Companies salary

Software engineers at AI companies build the products, APIs, infrastructure and internal tools around the models. Across 686 open postings that publish pay, the median is $286K a year, and the middle half pay $226K to $356K.

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Median yearly pay

$286K

10th
$194K
25th
$226K
75th
$356K
90th
$403K

From 686 open postings at 27 companies that publish pay.

  • $286KMedian posted pay
  • $100K–$625KLowest to highest posted
  • 686Postings with pay
  • 1,144Open roles now

Pay breakdown

By experience level

Median of each posting's pay range, grouped by the level in the job title.

  • Entry level 8$145K
  • Mid level 293$308K
  • Senior 385$281K

Remote or in the office

Remote roles often pay by the location you live in; on-site roles here are mostly in high-cost cities.

  • Remote 161$313K
  • On-site or hybrid 525$275K

Top-paying companies

Companies with at least two open Software Engineer at AI Companies postings that show pay, by median.

  • Anthropic 79$403K
  • OpenAI 144$356K
  • Lambda 11$331K
  • Mercor 16$330K
  • Figma 5$317K
  • Perplexity 24$313K
  • Sierra 25$310K
  • Decagon 15$300K

How we calculate this

We read the pay ranges employers publish on their own job postings (US pay-transparency laws require most of them), count each posting once at the middle of its range, and use only yearly US-dollar pay. Equity and bonuses are not included; for sales roles some employers publish on-target earnings (base plus commission) instead of base pay. The data refreshes twice a day from 3,633 AI job postings with pay.

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Software Engineer jobs that show pay.

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