The median AI engineer base salary is $200,000. That is the midpoint of 3,702 certified US labor condition applications filed by 11 AI companies between October 1, 2024 and June 30, 2026, as of the FY2026 Q3 disclosure file. The middle half of those filings runs from $178,928 to $232,000.
Key takeaways
- Across 11 companies with enough filings to report, the pooled median filed base is $200,000, with a p25 to p75 range of $178,928 to $232,000 (Visionary Talks analysis of DOL LCA disclosure data, FY2026 Q3).
- Mistral AI posts the highest median filed base at $280,000 on 62 filings. Databricks posts the lowest at $160,805 on 809 filings.
- The league table is shaped as much by paperwork as by pay. Anthropic files the legal prevailing wage floor in 46.7% of its filings; Waymo and Meta file an exact salary every time.
- Thinking Machines Lab files the highest ceiling in the set. Its median top of filed range is $475,000, above OpenAI's $310,000.
- DeepMind filed nothing. Across all five source files there is not one labor condition application under any DeepMind legal name.
This article is based on primary sources: the US Department of Labor Office of Foreign Labor Certification LCA disclosure files for FY2025 Q1 through Q4 and FY2026 Q3, processed in full by us rather than read from a summary. Every figure below traces to those five workbooks. Full source list at the bottom.
The Table: What 12 AI Companies Actually Filed
Every row comes from certified filings only. Withdrawn, denied and certified-withdrawn cases are excluded. Company names link to the full breakdown for that employer.
| Company | Filings | Median base | p25 to p75 | Median top of range | Top-paying title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral AI | 62 | $280,000 | $205,000 to $314,250 | $300,000 | AI Researcher, $348,000 |
| xAI | 79 | $275,000 | $205,000 to $335,000 | $320,000 | Principal ML Engineer, $320,000 |
| OpenAI | 311 | $270,000 | $245,000 to $340,000 | $310,000 | MTS Hardware Engineering, $380,000 |
| Scale AI | 135 | $210,000 | $175,000 to $245,000 | $250,000 | Software Engineering Manager, $270,000 |
| Anthropic | 291 | $209,082 | $169,541 to $240,000 | $340,000 | MTS Manager, $307,228 |
| Perplexity AI | 26 | $206,315 | $168,626 to $213,512 | $295,000 | Head of Search, $274,456 |
| Waymo | 506 | $205,000 | $193,250 to $240,000 | $205,000 | Product Manager, $242,500 |
| Meta AI | 1,411 | $204,598 | $182,000 to $223,579 | $204,598 | AI Research Scientist, $232,000 |
| Thinking Machines Lab | 33 | $194,834 | $187,574 to $213,512 | $475,000 | Member of Technical Staff, $194,834 |
| Anysphere (Cursor) | 39 | $187,574 | $158,164 to $209,082 | $300,000 | Research Scientist, $209,082 |
| Databricks | 809 | $160,805 | $140,100 to $187,741 | $210,100 | Staff Software Engineer, $224,571 |
| DeepMind | 0 | No US filings under its own name |
All figures are annualised base salary from the WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_FROM field, as of the FY2026 Q3 disclosure file covering decisions through June 30, 2026 (Visionary Talks analysis of DOL LCA disclosure data, FY2026 Q3).
How We Built This
We downloaded five disclosure workbooks from the Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification: FY2025 Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4, plus FY2026 Q3. We processed all 1.03 million rows of the FY2026 file and 596,552 decided cases across FY2025 ourselves. The pipeline that does it is a committed script, rerun each quarter.
The limits matter more than the headline, so here they are plainly.
This is base salary only. Equity and bonus sit on top and are not disclosed anywhere in this data. At a company like OpenAI or Anthropic, equity is very often the larger number. A $270,000 filed base is not a $270,000 package.
These are H-1B roles only. We kept visa class H-1B and dropped H-1B1 and E-3 cases. Any company's sponsored population skews technical and skews toward people the company chose to sponsor, which is not the same as its whole payroll. Meta filed 11,568 certified H-1B cases in the period; only 1,411 carried an AI research title, and those 1,411 are what the Meta AI row measures.
Certified only. A certified LCA means the Department of Labor approved the filing. It does not prove the person was hired, and it does not prove they were paid the filed figure rather than more.
The wage field is a floor, not always an offer. This is the single most important caveat on the page, and it is the subject of the next section.
Excluded for thin data. Hugging Face (3 certified filings) and Safe Superintelligence (4) fall below our 8-filing threshold and are not reported. Publishing a median from four numbers would be noise dressed as research.
Four Things The Data Shows
1. Filing style moves the table more than pay does
An employer filling in a labor condition application can enter one exact salary, or a range with a bottom and a top. Companies that file a range often set the bottom at the legally required prevailing wage, which is the government's floor for that job in that county, not what they intend to pay.
The split across these 12 companies is stark. Waymo files one exact number on 100% of its filings. Meta does the same. At the other end, Databricks files a range on 99.8% of filings and sets the bottom at the prevailing wage floor on 54.5% of them. Perplexity sets the bottom at the floor on 88.5% of filings, Anysphere on 82.1%, Thinking Machines on 72.7%, Anthropic on 46.7%.
This is why Anthropic looks mid-table on median base at $209,082 and near the top on median filed ceiling at $340,000. Its filed floor is frequently the government's number. Its filed top is its own. Anyone ranking these companies on the base column alone is partly ranking their compliance departments.
2. The highest ceiling is not OpenAI
On median filed base, OpenAI sits third at $270,000. On the top of the filed range, Thinking Machines Lab leads the entire set at $475,000, against OpenAI's $310,000 and Anthropic's $340,000.
Thinking Machines is a 33-filing company, all 33 in California, and 30 of those 33 carry a single job title: Member of Technical Staff. Its filed bands run as wide as $96,678 to $550,000. That is a company writing one very broad band for one very broad role, which is what a lab does when it is hiring a small number of senior people and does not want to disclose the spread.
3. Databricks is the enterprise outlier, by $39,195
Databricks files more than any company here except Meta, and pays a median filed base of $160,805, which is $39,195 below the pooled median of $200,000. The title mix explains it. Of its 809 certified filings, 247 are Software Engineer and another 133 are some flavour of Solutions Architect or Solutions Engineer, which are customer-facing delivery roles.
Databricks is also the least geographically concentrated company in the set. California accounts for 56.0% of its filings, against 85.2% at OpenAI, 89.7% at Waymo and 100% at Thinking Machines. A company hiring into Texas (10.9%) and Illinois (2.2%) is paying Texas and Illinois prevailing wages.
4. DeepMind does not exist in this data
There is no labor condition application filed by DeepMind Technologies, Google DeepMind, or any DeepMind entity in any of the five workbooks. Google LLC filed 15,994 certified H-1B cases in the same period. The 17 filings that carry a GDM job title prefix, which is Google's internal shorthand for Google DeepMind, are Google LLC filings.
That is a structural fact about who employs whom, and it is covered on the DeepMind salary page.
What This Is Not
It is not a total compensation database, it is not a survey, and it is not self-reported. Levels.fyi and Blind collect what people say they earn. This collects what employers swore to the federal government under penalty of perjury. Both have failure modes. This one's failure mode is that it undercounts total pay and overcounts the legal floor, and it only sees people on visas.
The update cadence is quarterly, following the OFLC release schedule.
FAQ
How much do AI engineers make?
The median filed base salary across the 11 AI companies tracked here is $200,000, with the middle half between $178,928 and $232,000, as of the FY2026 Q3 disclosure file covering decisions through June 30, 2026. Individual filings run from $75,962 at the low end up to $685,000 at OpenAI, setting aside a single Waymo filing of $2,000,000 that we flag as a likely employer entry error rather than a real offer. Equity and bonus are on top and are not in this data.
Which AI company pays the most?
On median filed base salary, Mistral AI at $280,000, ahead of xAI at $275,000 and OpenAI at $270,000. On the top of the filed salary range, Thinking Machines Lab leads at $475,000. The two answers differ because companies file differently, which is covered above.
Are these salaries base or total comp?
Base only. The labor condition application discloses a wage rate. It does not disclose equity, signing bonuses, annual bonuses or refreshers. At frontier labs the equity component is frequently larger than the base, so these figures are a floor on total compensation, not an estimate of it.
Where does this data come from?
The US Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification publishes every labor condition application quarterly. We processed the FY2025 Q1 to Q4 files and the FY2026 Q3 file directly, filtered to certified H-1B cases, matched employers by legal name, and annualised the wage fields. The source files are linked below.
Sources
1. LCA Disclosure Data, FY2026 Q3, US Department of Labor OFLC: dol.gov performance data. Cumulative file covering decisions from October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. 437,496 decided cases.
2. LCA Disclosure Data, FY2025 Q1 to Q4, US Department of Labor OFLC: dol.gov performance data. Four single-quarter files covering decisions from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025. 596,552 decided cases.
3. LCA Record Layout, FY2026 Q3, US Department of Labor OFLC: dol.gov performance data. Field definitions for WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_FROM, WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_TO, WAGE_UNIT_OF_PAY and PREVAILING_WAGE.