The three AI engineering postings checked here advertise annual salary ranges of $130K–$200K, $200K–$250K, and $200K–$300K. Two roles are titled AI Engineer and one Applied AI Engineer. They are selected examples of published pay, not a single benchmark for all AI work.
AI engineer salary examples
Sample: three distinct postings from three employers, two in San Francisco and one in New York City. Sources checked September 15, 2026.
| Employer and source | Role and location | Annual salary, USD | Other compensation disclosure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mintlify | Applied AI Engineer, San Francisco | $130K–$200K | Equity and bonus offered; amounts not specified |
| LiteLLM | AI Engineer, San Francisco | $200K–$250K | No additional amount specified in the structured compensation fields |
| Farsight AI | AI Engineer, New York City | $200K–$300K | Base salary based on experience; equity amount not specified |
These are the employer sources checked on the date above. We use the current public range when an older stored job record differs. Missing bonus or equity amounts should remain missing; they are not zero.
Separate four different hiring needs
| Primary work | Evidence to seek |
|---|---|
| Applied AI product engineering | A useful workflow shipped to users, evaluation, and failure handling |
| Model research | Evidence relevant to the research problem and experimental methods |
| AI infrastructure | Serving, performance, observability, and reliability at the required scale |
| Customer deployment | Integration, customer discovery, and production ownership |
The three examples above are not separate benchmarks for these four categories. Use the categories to define your search before expanding the comparison set.
Set a budget for an outcome
Define the user task, the existing baseline, the data the engineer can use, and the constraints on latency and cost. Agree how the team will decide whether the system is good enough to release and what should happen when it fails.
Then identify the software engineering experience needed to ship and operate that workflow. A company building a customer-facing integration may need a different profile from a team conducting model research, even when both use the AI Engineer title.
Questions for the hiring meeting
- What must this hire ship in the first months?
- Who owns evaluation data and release approval?
- Does the person need model training experience, or mainly integration and product engineering?
- What are the location and working arrangement requirements?
- Which part of the package is salary, which is variable, and which is equity?
- Which public roles are comparable on responsibilities as well as title?
Record the answers in a hiring brief. Keep unknowns visible so a broad salary band does not hide an undecided role.
What the range cannot tell you
An advertised maximum is not an offer, and a minimum is not evidence of the lowest amount every candidate will accept. These examples do not measure an AI salary premium, a city premium, or compensation by funding stage.
Sources and limits
Checked September 15, 2026. We used Refery’s job library to find relevant listings, then checked the public employer postings and their published compensation fields. These are selected examples, not a random or comprehensive sample. One listing counts once, and every row links to its source. They are not placement outcomes, accepted offers, or evidence that these employers are Refery clients.
Amounts are annual USD unless labeled otherwise. Company stage is not used to calculate a benchmark. Postings can change or close after our check. Read the selection and verification method or download the source table.
Discuss an AI engineer search with Refery.
For who runs these searches, and what each provider publishes, see recruiters and platforms that specialize in AI startups.