Research Engineer Salary

Based on 296 Research listings with published compensation (765 total jobs)

$276k
Average
$200k
25th %ile
$243k
Median
$306k
75th %ile

Research engineer salaries span a wide range depending on experience level, company size, and location. Roles at the 75th percentile ($306k) typically go to senior and lead engineers at frontier AI labs, well-funded startups, and FAANG-tier teams shipping Research features in production. Entry-level and mid-level Research roles cluster around the 25th percentile ($200k).

Compensation figures below are computed from 296 AI Dev Jobs listings with published salary ranges — a subset of the 765 total open Research roles. Ranges reflect base salary in USD/year; total comp (equity, bonus, signing) is typically 1.3–2× base at top-paying companies. Remote roles increasingly match in-office rates for this skill.

By Experience Level

mid
256 jobs
$175k avg
senior
239 jobs
$231k avg
lead
143 jobs
$305k avg
junior
69 jobs
$272k avg
principal
58 jobs
$446k avg

Top Paying Companies for Research

Research Jobs by City

San Francisco, CA
271 jobs
$329k avg
New York, NY
53 jobs
$246k avg
London, UK
43 jobs
$208k avg
Boston, MA
42 jobs
$187k avg
Remote
25 jobs
$211k avg
Sunnyvale, CA
25 jobs
$281k avg
Mountain View, CA
23 jobs
$247k avg
Palo Alto, CA
19 jobs
$220k avg
Remote (US)
16 jobs
$201k avg
Paris, France
15 jobs

How this data is collected

AI Dev Jobs scrapes curated job feeds (Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever) from 538 ATS sources across 489 AI companies daily. Listings are filtered for AI/ML relevance; generalist roles are excluded. Salary figures come directly from the publicly posted compensation ranges on each listing — we do not estimate or impute. If a role doesn't publish a salary, it is excluded from these statistics but still appears in the job listings.

Data is refreshed every 24 hours. The percentile breakdowns above (p25, p50 median, p75) are computed over the midpoint of each published range. Experience level percentiles use the same midpoint method, grouped by the experience_level field on the listing. City-level figures require at least 3 open roles in that city for Research.

Raw data available via the REST API or MCP server.

Browse 765 Research Jobs

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