AI engineer salary in the US
Employers across the US offered AI engineers a median of $141,866 a year on approved H-1B applications. That is 2.1% below offers to all software engineers.
Median offer
$141,866
All software engineer offers: $144,928
The middle half
$111,578 – $185,000
25th to 75th percentile
H-1B applications
1,688
From 1,009 employers
Open AI engineer jobs
1,722
In the US, from over 800 companies
Pay range
The top 10% of AI engineer offers across the US were above $226,138 a year. The bottom 10% were below $91,416.
10th percentile $91,416, 25th $111,578, 75th $185,000, 90th $226,138.
10th percentile $82,460, 25th $105,210, 75th $171,980, 90th $214,670.
Line: 10th to 90th percentile. Box: the middle half (25th to 75th). Dark mark: the median. AI engineers: salaries offered on H-1B applications. All software engineers: salaries paid, from the BLS.
AI engineer offers by city
Median salary offered to AI engineers on approved H-1B applications in each metro area with at least 30 of them.
| City | Applications | Median offer |
|---|---|---|
| Seattle, WA | 76 | $206,679 |
| San Jose, CA | 182 | $200,000 |
| San Francisco, CA | 191 | $195,000 |
| New York, NY | 181 | $161,000 |
| Boston, MA | 43 | $154,606 |
| Los Angeles, CA | 32 | $133,166 |
| Chicago, IL | 47 | $131,000 |
| Austin, TX | 54 | $127,893 |
| Washington, DC | 46 | $126,750 |
| Atlanta, GA | 76 | $114,754 |
| Dallas, TX | 245 | $113,000 |
| Charlotte, NC | 34 | $113,000 |
AI engineers and other engineering jobs in the US
Median salary offered on approved H-1B applications across the US, for every engineering job type with at least 30 applications.
| Job | Applications | Median offer |
|---|---|---|
| Machine learning engineers | 2,801 | $178,350 |
| Engineering managers | 9,838 | $162,951 |
| Forward deployed engineers | 280 | $160,000 |
| Infrastructure engineers | 895 | $159,594 |
| Site reliability engineers | 1,122 | $146,758 |
| All software engineers | 118,728 | $144,928 |
| AI engineers | 1,688 | $141,866 |
| Platform engineers | 411 | $140,046 |
| Android engineers | 411 | $135,699 |
| iOS engineers | 351 | $134,550 |
| Frontend engineers | 945 | $130,000 |
| Cloud engineers | 1,357 | $129,055 |
| Data engineers | 8,762 | $123,974 |
| Support engineers | 1,577 | $117,749 |
| DevOps engineers | 2,192 | $115,731 |
All software engineers: every application filed under the BLS software developer job code, whatever its title. Backend and full-stack engineers: left out, since a plain "Software Engineer" title counts as both.
Experience level of these offers
From October 2025 to June 2026, the Department of Labor approved 1,688 H-1B applications for AI engineers across the US, from 1,009 employers. Level II offers were the most common.
Applications
1,688
Employers
1,009
Most experienced (Level IV)
23.9%
Applications by wage level
- Level I (entry): 250
- Level II: 649
- Level III: 311
- Level IV (most experienced): 404
- Not stated: 74
These are salaries offered on approved applications, not salaries paid. Each application lists only its main work site.
1,722 open AI engineer jobs in the US right now
From over 800 companies. 141 were posted in the past week.
AI engineer salaries by city: San Francisco, New York, San Jose, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, Austin
What counts as an AI engineer
The BLS has no AI engineer category, so these figures come from job titles. An H-1B application or a job on hiredaemon counts as an AI engineer job when its title names AI work, such as "AI Engineer", "Generative AI Developer" or "LLM Engineer". Machine learning engineers are counted separately.
Sources and notes
- AI engineer offers: US Department of Labor, H-1B application data, October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. Approved H-1B applications whose job title names AI work and whose work site is in the US.
- Software engineer pay: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (published May 15, 2026), whole US.
- Open jobs: counted on hiredaemon as this page loads.