Who Is Hiring AI Software Engineers — And What They Pay

AI Software Engineers earn a median of $145,000 per year, with most postings between $115,000 and $190,400. From 281 job postings that disclosed pay, across 107 companies, August 2026.

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

Who is hiring AI Software Engineers

15 companies with open postings in this sample.

Apple
$241,750 22
Vantage Data Centers
$240,000 4
Anthropic
$232,500 4
Akina, Inc.
$223,500 3
Google
$213,000 40
Anduril
$207,500 10
Amazon Web Services
$194,400 3
Walmart
$186,750 4
TikTok
$182,400 3
Cisco
$181,200 3

Also hiring: Google, Oldcastle Infrastructure, Apple, General Dynamics Information Technology, Humana, Anduril, Amazon.com, OnBoard, JPMorganChase, Nebius, Smart Apply Test Company, 540.

Which of these would you get past?

Paste a AI Software Engineer posting from any of these companies with your résumé. FitToHire scores you requirement by requirement and shows what is missing.

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

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What AI Software Engineers earn

10th $82K 25th $115K median $145K 75th $190K 90th $242K
$78K $267K

Each bar is a pay band; height is how many employers post in it.

What AI Software Engineer postings actually ask for

Ranked by how many of the 400 posting descriptions mention them.

Artificial Intelligence 20%
Machine Learning 18%
Code reviews 11%
Distributed Systems 10%
Generative AI 10%
Technical Training 10%
Product Development 9%
Operational Excellence 8%
Data Engineering 8%
Automated Testing 8%
CI/CD Pipelines 8%
Design Development 7%
Electrical Engineering 7%
Production Engineering 7%
Cloud Infrastructure 7%
Software Development Lifecycle 7%
Technology Solutions 7%
Engineering Practices 7%

AI Software Engineer vs adjacent roles

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

  • software engineer
  • data scientist
  • software engineering
  • ml engineer
  • ai software developer
  • ai engineer

Remote vs onsite pay

Median of remote-eligible postings against the rest.

Remote-eligible
$130,500
Onsite
$180,950

70 remote-eligible postings against 211 onsite. Onsite pays 27.9% more in this sample.

Pay by experience level

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

Mid
$102,000 9
Senior
$133,829 70
Lead / Manager
$222,000 59
Principal / Staff
$208,200 25

Pay by location

Metros with at least three salaried postings.

New York, NY
$206,856 32
San Francisco, CA
$232,500 16
Remote, US
$113,610 13
Mountain View, CA
$224,000 10
Seattle, WA
$180,450 10
Washington, DC
$110,975 8
Santa Clara, CA
$229,875 8
Sunnyvale, CA
$230,700 8
Cupertino, CA
$249,175 8
Austin, TX
$167,500 7
Rockford, TN
$126,950 6
Charlotte, NC
$143,000 6

Where this data comes from

  • 400 live postings analysed
  • 281 (70%) published a salary range
  • 111 (28%) were remote-eligible
  • 155 distinct employers
  • Requirements read from 400 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