Microsoft AI Engineer Skills and Job Description (September 2026)

Python is asked for by 35% of Microsoft AI Engineer employers, the most common requirement across 300 live postings read in September 2026. Then Azure, SQL, AWS.

Median posted pay is $130,000, most postings between $105,000 and $165,000 — from 163 postings that disclosed it, across 103 companies.

Posted pay is up 6.1% since 2026-09-07 ($122,500 → $130,000).

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 Microsoft AI Engineer postings actually ask for

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

Python 35%
Azure 35%
SQL 22%
AWS 20%
Terraform 15%
Agile 14%
Software Engineering 14%
CI/CD 13%
Power BI 12%
PowerShell 12%
Azure DevOps 12%
LLM 12%
Project Management 11%
JavaScript 11%
AI Tools 11%
Technical Solutions 10%
Kubernetes 10%
Git 10%
Microsoft Entra ID 10%
Ansible 9%
Data Engineering 9%
Cloud Platforms 9%
Enterprise Applications 8%
Distributed Systems 8%

Would your background clear the bar?

These are the requirements Microsoft AI 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 Microsoft AI Engineer postings open right now.

Check your fit →

Who is hiring Microsoft AI Engineers

15 companies with open postings in this sample.

Wells Fargo
$232,000 4
JPMorganChase
$185,750 5
Monks
$160,000 5
Visa
$148,700 3
The Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, Inc.
$145,567 3
West Monroe
$136,550 5
General Dynamics Information Technology
$129,896 7
Optum
$127,700 3
KLA
$118,400 4
Unissant
$112,500 3

Also hiring: DXC Technology, Jack Henry & Associates, HDR, Mixpanel, Capital One, Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, HII, CBRE.

What Microsoft AI Engineers earn

10th $68K 25th $105K median $130K 75th $165K 90th $186K
$60K $232K

Each bar is a pay band. Height is how many of the 103 employers who published a salary fall in it, counted once each.

Pay bands in numbers
Employer median pay by band
Pay band Employers
$60,000–$77,200 16
$77,200–$94,400 3
$94,400–$111,600 10
$111,600–$128,800 21
$128,800–$146,000 19
$146,000–$163,200 8
$163,200–$180,400 11
$180,400–$197,600 6
$197,600–$214,800 2
$214,800–$232,000 7
Total 103

Microsoft AI Engineer vs adjacent roles

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

Remote vs onsite pay

Median of remote-eligible postings against the rest.

Remote-eligible
$133,750
Onsite
$134,992

58 remote-eligible postings against 110 onsite. Onsite pays 0.9% more in this sample.

Pay by experience level

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

Senior
$142,783 44
Lead / Manager
$168,625 29
Principal / Staff
$190,000 9

Pay by location

Metros with at least three salaried postings.

Remote, US
$145,600 13
New York, NY
$179,250 9
Chicago, IL
$130,000 9
Austin, TX
$121,900 5
Bellevue, WA
$62,500 5
Eden Prairie, MN
$147,300 4
Boston, MA
$120,000 4
Totowa, NJ
$118,400 4
Dallas, TX
$165,000 4
Washington, DC
$141,025 4
San Francisco, CA
$185,750 3
Irving, TX
$157,200 3

Where this data comes from

  • 300 live postings analysed
  • 163 (54%) published a salary range
  • 96 (32%) were remote-eligible
  • 176 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.