The Modern Gold Rush: How Much Does AI Engineers Make?

Onikle Inc.
The Startup
Published in
4 min readJan 31, 2021
Image by Atsutaka Odaira

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a fast-growing sector and the talent pool is highly desired. Due to this demand, the incomes of AI engineers continue to rise. According to the LinkedIn report, AI Intelligence Specialist, a title given to various AI-specific roles, was named one of the top 15 emerging occupations in 2020 with an annual growth rate of 74%. Not only is this an on-demand position, but AI engineers can command top pay and record high levels of work satisfaction, making it a highly attractive career choice. If you’re considering joining the AI market, it’s helpful to know what you should expect from this modern Gold Rush.

Over the last decade, substantial progress has been made in refining AI and its real-life implementations. Most recent technological developments are based at least to some degree on AI. Whether it’s top-level genetics analysis or your mobile camera; there’s artificial intelligence everywhere. Popularly referred to as AI engineers, these specialists are typically computer science students who have a postgraduate degree in artificial intelligence. However, none of the above is mandatory. There are a variety of detailed guides on the Internet that offer in-depth information on how to become an AI engineer. In addition, you can study AI and become an AI programmer by taking artificial intelligence courses online.

Before we get to the point, we need to realize that there are several types of AI engineers. ML Engineers, Data Scientists, and Algorithm Engineers are just some of the very distinct occupations that fall into the category of AI Engineering. These positions have a different work description, however, broadly speaking, most AI engineers are interested in developing and producing AI models. Anything from maintenance to supervision of the AI can be duty of the AI engineer. Apart from programming, an AI engineer with specialist in a range of fields, such as robotics, physics and mathematics can increase their salary. Mathematical expertise is highly important as linear algebra and statistics play a crucial role in the design of AI models.

The average wages earned by AI engineers are dependent on three factors: experience, location and skill set/role. AI occupations’ wage ranges dramatically: Infosys, for example, will pay $20,000 per year in India, while Microsoft will pay up to $40,000 per year for experienced AI scientists in the US. In general, however, the ML/AI developer in India receives a very respectable wage in terms of local buying force, ranging from $25000 to $80000 per year.

These fantastic figures are not limited to handful of countries. The average annual salary of AI engineers in the US is over $110,000. As shown in the table below, the annual salary of the AI engineer in Canada is more than C$85,000 on average. AI developers’ opportunities are almost as bright in the UK of more than £60,000 per year. On the other hand, the average wage of the AI engineer in Germany is around €84,574. As for other big AI markets, the salaries of AI engineers in Australia can be as high as $110,000 per year. And the average annual salary of AI engineers in Singapore is S$74,943.

Table 1: Average Salary of AI Engineers around the World

Even as you read this post, market for AI is growing all over the world. AI engineer salaries will continue to grow as sectors such as technology, financial services and medical research shift to artificial intelligence. If more multinational brands like Google and Amazon invest into AI, demand and wages for AI engineers will only increase in 2021 and decades to come. Government agencies in many developed and emerging countries will also open up vacancies for AI engineers as they understand the tremendous effect AI will have on the security and governance field. Onikle will continue to support AI researchers in their search for gold.

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Written by Wanonno Iqtyider

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Onikle Inc.
The Startup

Parent compant of NapAnt. NapAnt is a service that helps improve development efficiency, man-hour estimation accuracy, and unleashes the potential of your team.