How much does an AI Security Engineer make?

The median AI Security Engineer salary is $178,962 per year, from 226 job postings that disclosed pay across 82 companies in October 2026. Most fall between $137,000 and $202,500.

Which companies pay AI Security Engineers the most?

Of employers with at least three open AI Security Engineer postings, OpenAI posted the highest median range at $307,500.

Do remote AI Security Engineer jobs pay less?

In this sample remote-eligible postings had a median of $180,500 against $160,650 for onsite — 12.4% more.

What skills do AI Security Engineer jobs require?

Across 300 AI Security Engineer posting descriptions read in October 2026, the most frequently required were: Python, AWS, Software Engineering, Azure, Java. The top one appears in 52% of postings.

AI Security Engineer Skills and Job Description (October 2026)

Name: AI Security Engineer salary data, October 2026
Creator: FitToHire

Python is asked for by 52% of AI Security Engineer employers, the most common requirement across 300 live postings read in October 2026. Then AWS, Software Engineering, Azure.

Median posted pay is $178,962, most postings between $137,000 and $202,500 — from 226 postings that disclosed it, across 82 companies.

Posted pay is up 5.7% since 2026-09-27 ($169,268 → $178,962).

Check your résumé against these →

These are ranges employers published in their own job postings — not salaries people typed into a form years ago.

What AI Security Engineer postings actually ask for

Ranked by how many of the 300 posting descriptions mention them.

Python 52%

AWS 38%

Software Engineering 34%

Azure 29%

Java 25%

CI/CD 25%

Kubernetes 22%

SQL 20%

Terraform 20%

Git 20%

LLM 20%

TypeScript 18%

Go 18%

Distributed Systems 16%

Agile 16%

GCP 16%

Postgres 15%

JavaScript 14%

Docker 14%

Jira 14%

Cloud Platforms 14%

Data Science 14%

Data Engineering 13%

Data Modeling 13%

Would your background clear the bar?

These are the requirements AI Security Engineer postings list. Paste one of those postings and your résumé — FitToHire checks you against every requirement and shows the evidence behind each verdict.

15 companies in this sample have AI Security Engineer postings open right now.

Check your fit →

Who is hiring AI Security Engineers

15 companies with open postings in this sample.

OpenAI

$307,500 3

Apple

$247,950 3

NVIDIA

$239,250 3

What AI Security Engineers earn

10th $101K 25th $137K median $179K 75th $202K 90th $248K

$85K $288K

Each bar is a pay band. Height is how many of the 82 employers who published a salary fall in it, counted once each.

Pay bands in numbers

Employer median pay by band
Pay band	Employers
$85,280–$105,502	9
$105,502–$125,724	6
$125,724–$145,946	12
$145,946–$166,168	10
$166,168–$186,390	13
$186,390–$206,612	14
$206,612–$226,834	8
$226,834–$247,056	1
$247,056–$267,278	2
$267,278–$287,500	7
Total	82

AI Security Engineer vs adjacent roles

Roles people compare this one against, taken from what they search.

security engineer
cyber security engineer
cyber security
software engineer
ai security engineer
ml engineer

Remote vs onsite pay

Median of remote-eligible postings against the rest.

Remote-eligible

$180,500

Onsite

$160,650

65 remote-eligible postings against 187 onsite. Remote pays 12.4% more in this sample.

Pay by experience level

Level is taken from the posting title, so only postings that state one are counted.

Mid

$160,650 15

Senior

$156,600 87

Lead / Manager

$188,775 44

Principal / Staff

$200,000 27

Pay by location

Metros with at least three salaried postings.

New York, NY

$200,300 14

Remote, US

$156,749 13

$189,875 12

San Francisco, CA

$200,000 12

Redmond, WA

$190,400 12

Seattle, WA

$180,500 11

McLean, VA

$156,925 10

Arlington, VA

$178,750 7

Santa Clara, CA

$190,000 7

Costa Mesa, CA

$150,000 5

Mountain View, CA

$163,000 5

Boston, MA

$150,000 4

Where this data comes from

300 live postings analysed
226 (75%) published a salary range
76 (25%) were remote-eligible
103 distinct employers
Requirements read from 300 full posting descriptions
Each employer gets one vote in the median, so a company running a large hiring campaign cannot move it
Ranges are converted to annual figures; hourly and contract postings are normalised before comparison

How the requirements were read

Requirements are not keyword counts. Each posting is read by our extraction engine, which works out what the employer is actually asking for and separates a requirement from a section heading or a line of boilerplate. Two postings asking for the same thing in different words are counted once, because our skills graph knows which phrasings mean the same thing and which imply others.

The share beside each requirement is the percentage of distinct EMPLOYERS in that sample who asked for it, counted one vote per company so a firm posting the same role many times cannot inflate its own requirements. Measured, not estimated, and read from the posting text rather than counted as keywords.

Because every reading is dated, the movement figures above are real month-over-month change. Sites built on self-reported salaries cannot produce that number: their data has no posting date.