High paying jobs in artificial intelligence are all the rage these days, but roles offering $300k+ salaries are few and far between. An industry like financial services, which has reiterated its commitment to AI countless times, should be paying top dollar for talent, and yet is outshone by contemporaries across the tech sector. Among them all, however, who pays the most?
We've examined salary data from the H1B Visa Salary Database since the start of 2023. It's worth noting that salary data is not wholly reflective of total compensation (it's only salary), and nor is the database wholly reflective of a global company's pay habits (it only applies to H1B visa recipients), but that it still provides some interesting insights. The two top payers, however, may not be too surprising.
The H1B database suggests that generative AI research firms OpenAI and Anthropic, the names behind ChatGPT and Claude, pay the highest salaries for AI talent. Both companies keep job titles vague, referring to their technologists as 'members of technical staff.' Anthropic, considerably the smaller of the two, actually pays more on average, $337k.
OpenAI appears to have the higher ceiling, however. One technologist there earned a salary of $650k as of last October, while another is set to start on a salary of $440k in August.
Salaries at industry stalwart NVIDIA don't seem so competitive in comparison, but distinguished engineering roles prove $300k salaries are possible there. Besides, many NVIDIA employees receive stock pay, and the company's stock price has septupled in the past year.
There are also companies not necessarily known as 'AI companies' paying top dollar. Cruise is a company in the self-driving car space, an oft-overlooked area of AI engineering. Applied research scientists there earn almost $220k salaries on average. TikTok, and its parent company ByteDance, have a cripplingly addictive TikTok algorithm; the fact that machine learning engineers are paid over $250k on average there explains that. Mark Zuckerberg has been personally emailing top AI talent to convince them to join Meta, but the company's AI scientists seem to be hovering around the mid-range for pay.
What are the top paying companies for AI in finance?
High paying AI jobs in finance are much more scarce, but applied AI research seems to be the most generous field. One hedge fund, Balyasny, is paying $275k to one AI researcher, while another, Two Sigma, is paying $250k. Hedge funds don't always pay spectacularly, however; one Point72 AI researcher earns a salary of "just" $180k.
JPMorgan, meanwhile, seems like the bank of choice for AI advocates. VPs in applied AI there earn $188k on average, almost the same as average total compensation for engineering VPs at the bank.
Stripe is one of fintech's most generous payers, but it doesn't stand out for AI salaries. This may be because much of Stripe's compensation package comes in the form of stock, especially at higher seniority levels.
Are AI jobs in finance competitive?
One financial services headhunter told us they see "remarkably little demand for AI/ML skills" in finance; "it surprises me not to see more demand." When looking at the pay you can earn elsewhere working in AI, it's no wonder so few are joining the industry. The headhunter said these massive figures are "being paid to a few, not most," and that "financial firms hiring these folks are competing with the rest of the world for them."
If the pay isn't too competitive, then the work itself would need to be exciting too. This doesn't always appear to be the case. Sure, Balyasny might be able to hire Google researchers to work on its proprietary AI bot, but the average AI job is much less fun. One engineer at a US bank told us they're looking to change industry; "financial services has too many regulations." Another criticized banks' tendencies to keep staff in the office and the expectations of long hours.
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