How to Become a Machine Learning Engineer

Machine Learning Engineers earn a median of $163,455 per year, with most postings between $129,000 and $197,800. From 295 job postings that disclosed pay, across 106 companies, August 2026.

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

What Machine Learning Engineer postings actually ask for

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

Data Science 35%
Data Engineering 28%
Data Pipelines 26%
Artificial Intelligence 22%
Data Governance 21%
Generative AI 15%
Responsible AI 12%
Electrical Engineering 10%
Machine Learning Models 9%
Product Development 9%
Distributed Systems 9%
Deep Learning 8%
Large Language Models 8%
Compensation and Benefits 8%
Design Development 7%
Retrieval Augmented Generation 7%
Advanced Analytics 7%
Prompt Engineering 7%

Would your background clear the bar?

These are the requirements Machine Learning 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 Machine Learning Engineer postings open right now.

Check your fit →

What Machine Learning Engineers earn

10th $110K 25th $129K median $163K 75th $198K 90th $240K
$99K $288K

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

Pay by experience level

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

Senior
$187,210 68
Lead / Manager
$185,875 41
Principal / Staff
$209,175 23

Pay by location

Metros with at least three salaried postings.

New York, NY
$225,000 19
Austin, TX
$169,050 19
Remote, US
$151,000 18
Sunnyvale, CA
$207,000 12
Seattle, WA
$184,000 12
Cupertino, CA
$254,750 9
Aurora, CO
$144,400 8
Washington, DC
$146,765 7
Irving, TX
$168,620 7
Mountain View, CA
$224,000 6
Redmond, WA
$201,000 6
US
$179,587 6

Who is hiring Machine Learning Engineers

15 companies with open postings in this sample.

Anduril
$222,000 5
Apple
$219,650 27
Amazon Web Services
$213,550 3
Google
$213,000 11
TikTok
$202,400 4
Meta
$201,000 12
Accenture
$190,600 5
Microsoft
$190,400 3
JPMorganChase
$185,875 9
Amazon.com
$182,500 9

Also hiring: CVS Health, Apple, JPMorganChase, Meta, Google, AMD, Synopsys, Amazon.com, Booz Allen Hamilton, CrowdStrike, TikTok, Anduril.

Remote vs onsite pay

Median of remote-eligible postings against the rest.

Remote-eligible
$120,732
Onsite
$185,875

116 remote-eligible postings against 181 onsite. Onsite pays 35.0% more in this sample.

Where this data comes from

  • 400 live postings analysed
  • 295 (74%) published a salary range
  • 140 (35%) were remote-eligible
  • 159 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