Top Data Science & AI Jobs

Compensation for AI/ML roles has decoupled from the rest of tech. Senior+ ML researcher and applied scientist positions at frontier-AI companies routinely clear $500K total comp, with staff and principal levels reaching $1M+ in cash and liquid equity. Even applied-ML engineering at non-frontier companies pays a measurable premium over generic SWE.

The roles split roughly into three families: research (publication-track, novel-architecture work), applied (taking research and shipping it as product), and platform (training infrastructure, eval pipelines, model serving). Most candidates fit cleanly into one bucket; check the role descriptions carefully because compensation, day-to-day, and career arcs differ substantially.

If you're transitioning in from a non-ML background, applied-ML and platform roles are the more accessible doors. Production ML engineering experience matters more than publication count for those tracks.