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AI Engineer Salary vs ML Engineer Salary: ML Pays $37,741 More on H-1B Filings, Until You Compare the Same City

AI engineer salary vs ML engineer salary, as of the Labor Department’s newest file (decisions through 30 June 2026): the median offered base wage on certified H-1B filings was $150,000 for AI engineer titles and $187,741 for machine learning engineer titles, a $37,741 gap. In the same metro and wage level it shrinks to about 3%. These are H-1B offers, not all engineers’ pay.

$150,000AI engineer titles, median of 1,452 filings from 874 employers
vs
$187,741ML engineer titles, median of 2,768 filings from 746 employers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no occupation code for either job. Not one of the 6,520 titles in its 2018 Standard Occupational Classification direct-match file contains “machine learning” or “artificial intelligence”, so its wage tables cannot answer this query, and the top results we checked rely on postings, job boards or unnamed internal data. Labor Condition Applications can: employers must state the job title, worksite, wage level and offered wage. We downloaded 21 Department of Labor quarterly files and classified every H-1B job title decided since October 2020.

The gap is mostly where the filings are, not the title

ML engineer titles lead by $37,741 as filed (95% interval $30,710 to $44,017, resampling employers). Comparing the same wage level barely moves it, from 18.6% to 17.1%. Comparing the same metro cuts it to 4.5%, and the same metro and level to 2.8% (95% interval 0.1% to 5.1%). The title families sit in different places: 36.5% of ML filings are in San Jose against 13.7% of AI filings, while Dallas holds 11.9% of AI filings and 2.1% of ML filings. Employer overlaps with location here: holding employer fixed alone cuts the gap to 0.8%, and the filings cannot separate the two. Nor can they test duties, because the form has no job description, so none of this shows the two jobs are the same work.

As filed: AI engineer titles 18.6% below ML engineer titlesAs filed$150,000 vs $187,741 at the median18.6%Same wage level: AI engineer titles 17.1% below ML engineer titlesSame wage levelcompares Level I with Level I, and so on17.1%Same metro: AI engineer titles 4.5% below ML engineer titlesSame metrocompares San Jose with San Jose, Dallas with Dallas4.5%Same metro and level: AI engineer titles 2.8% below ML engineer titlesSame metro and levelboth held fixed2.8%Same metro, level and employer: AI engineer titles 0.6% above ML engineer titlesSame metro, level and employeronly employers filing both titles count0.6% (AI higher)

Percent by which AI engineer titles sit below ML engineer titles in log offered wage, after removing the average of each cell. Newest 12 months, 4,220 filings. The first bar is the mean log gap, which is why it differs from the 20.1% gap between the two medians. The last bar rests on the few employers that file both titles. Offers are lumpy: 32 AI filings are at exactly $150,000 and 45 ML filings at exactly $187,741, so the headline dollar figures are less exact than they look.

Title family Filings Employers 10th 25th Median 75th 90th
AI engineer titles 1,452 874 $96,034 $114,000 $150,000 $190,000 $240,000
ML engineer titles 2,768 746 $126,814 $155,000 $187,741 $225,208 $264,514
Titles naming both (AI/ML engineer) 416 250 $90,000 $105,976 $135,360 $173,242 $226,138

Certified, full-time H-1B filings decided 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026. Annualized wage-rate-of-pay “from” value.

Who files which title

The two titles come from different kinds of employer. The ten largest filers hold 38% of ML engineer filings but 10% of AI engineer filings. 42% of AI engineer filings come from an employer that filed only one, against 18% for ML. Computer systems design firms (NAICS 5415, which includes IT consultancies and MSPs) account for 47% of AI engineer filings and 27% of ML filings. Titles naming both, such as AI/ML Engineer, sit lower still at $135,360, with 54% from those firms.

Only 7 employers file enough of both to compare directly

7 employers filed at least five of each title in the 12 months. ML pays more at 5 of them. That is too few to generalize from, and each row mixes levels and cities, but it is the only same-company view the data allows.

Employer AI filings AI median ML filings ML median ML minus AI
TikTok / ByteDance 19 $240,000 184 $228,500 -11,500
Tesla 11 $230,000 55 $250,000 +20,000
Zoom 13 $187,741 20 $180,710 -7,031
ServiceNow 5 $143,417 18 $194,460 +51,043
Capital One 15 $173,900 5 $191,300 +17,400
Agility Robotics 7 $180,000 8 $225,000 +45,000
Scale AI 5 $216,200 6 $247,500 +31,300
What these numbers are not.

  • H-1B positions only, not U.S.-wide pay. Citizens, green card holders and other visa classes do not appear.
  • Base wage only. Equity, bonus and benefits are not on the form, so these figures cannot show total pay at any employer.
  • An offer on an application is not proof of the wage paid.
  • Employers file for positions they may not fill. Filings are not hires.
  • This is never the average pay of all AI engineers. For the pay of all workers in the nearest federal code, see the BLS table below.

Wage-level staircase: AI vs ML engineer

The Labor Department’s four wage levels are its proxy for experience. Its guidance says Level I is for “beginning level employees who have only a basic understanding of the occupation” and Level IV for “competent employees who have sufficient experience in the occupation to plan and conduct work requiring judgment”. The levels are not years of service, and the file does not record years. At every level the ML median is higher as filed, by $54,304 at Level II and $24,506 at Level IV.

$100K$150K$200K$250KAI engineer titles, Level I: median $107,557, middle half $85,821 to $149,365, 201 filings$107,557AI engineer titles, Level II: median $120,000, middle half $109,000 to $170,000, 549 filings$120,000AI engineer titles, Level III: median $160,000, middle half $132,793 to $190,000, 272 filings$160,000AI engineer titles, Level IV: median $200,000, middle half $160,000 to $250,000, 362 filings$200,000ML engineer titles, Level I: median $146,671, middle half $123,531 to $176,000, 291 filings$146,671ML engineer titles, Level II: median $174,304, middle half $135,200 to $193,000, 839 filings$174,304ML engineer titles, Level III: median $195,000, middle half $163,322 to $230,000, 640 filings$195,000ML engineer titles, Level IV: median $224,506, middle half $191,000 to $264,514, 613 filings$224,506Level IentryLevel IIqualifiedLevel IIIexperiencedLevel IVfully competentML engineer titlesAI engineer titlesShaded: middle half of offers
DOL wage level AI filings AI median ML filings ML median ML minus AI Difference
Level I 201 $107,557 291 $146,671 $39,114 +36%
Level II 549 $120,000 839 $174,304 $54,304 +45%
Level III 272 $160,000 640 $195,000 $35,000 +22%
Level IV 362 $200,000 613 $224,506 $24,506 +12%

4.7% of AI filings and 13.9% of ML filings list no OEWS wage level (the wage came from a survey or agreement) and are left out of this table.

AI engineer vs ML engineer salary by metro

In the 11 metros with at least 25 filings of each title, the AI median equals or beats the ML median in 1. San Jose is $200,000 vs $205,000, San Francisco $200,000 vs $201,500, Seattle $187,500 vs $196,000, and New York $175,000 vs $170,000. Dallas shows $113,000 vs $135,000 on 173 AI filings and 57 ML filings, and the widest gap of the 11 is Washington, $128,500 vs $166,325, on just 34 and 30. A national median therefore compares an ML sample weighted to San Jose with an AI sample that reaches much further into Dallas.

$100K$125K$150K$175K$200K$225KAI engineer medianML engineer medianSan Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA: AI $200,000 on 199 filings, ML $205,000 on 1010 filingsSan Jose+5,000San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA: AI $200,000 on 183 filings, ML $201,500 on 474 filingsSan Francisco+1,500New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ: AI $175,000 on 165 filings, ML $170,000 on 274 filingsNew York-5,000Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA: AI $187,500 on 74 filings, ML $196,000 on 309 filingsSeattle+8,500Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX: AI $113,000 on 173 filings, ML $135,000 on 57 filingsDallas+22,000Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH: AI $157,303 on 32 filings, ML $165,000 on 99 filingsBoston+7,697Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX: AI $133,000 on 50 filings, ML $150,000 on 66 filingsAustin+17,000Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA: AI $160,818 on 38 filings, ML $172,022 on 61 filingsLos Angeles+11,204Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN: AI $132,964 on 48 filings, ML $133,150 on 40 filingsChicago+186Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA: AI $130,707 on 43 filings, ML $146,400 on 32 filingsAtlanta+15,693Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV: AI $128,500 on 34 filings, ML $166,325 on 30 filingsWashington+37,825
Metro (worksite) AI filings AI median ML filings ML median ML minus AI BLS software developer median, same metro
San Jose, CA 199 $200,000 1010 $205,000 +5,000 $213,110
San Francisco, CA 183 $200,000 474 $201,500 +1,500 $186,640
New York, NY 165 $175,000 274 $170,000 -5,000 $166,830
Seattle, WA 74 $187,500 309 $196,000 +8,500 $167,280
Dallas, TX 173 $113,000 57 $135,000 +22,000 $133,290
Boston, MA 32 $157,303 99 $165,000 +7,697 $166,090
Austin, TX 50 $133,000 66 $150,000 +17,000 $134,120
Los Angeles, CA 38 $160,818 61 $172,022 +11,204 $160,920
Chicago, IL 48 $132,964 40 $133,150 +186 $134,380
Atlanta, GA 43 $130,707 32 $146,400 +15,693 $132,960
Washington, DC 34 $128,500 30 $166,325 +37,825 $154,930

Worksite county mapped to BLS May 2025 metro areas, with ZIP code as a fallback (99.9% of filings mapped).

By state

State AI filings AI median ML filings ML median
CA 434 $197,871 1602 $200,000
TX 257 $114,754 135 $140,800
WA 77 $185,000 312 $195,500
NY 145 $180,000 229 $174,557
MA 34 $157,303 102 $166,082
NJ 50 $128,721 59 $155,000
IL 51 $131,000 43 $130,707
GA 43 $130,707 32 $146,400
NC 44 $113,547 26 $150,300
MI 30 $113,727 34 $133,270
FL 37 $110,947 24 $120,000
PA 29 $122,573 27 $121,472

Employer leaderboard: who files, and what they offer

Ranked by filings across AI, ML and AI/ML engineer titles in the 12 months to June 2026. TikTok / ByteDance leads with 205, at a $235,000 median, followed by LinkedIn (201, $185,112) and Adobe (167, $187,741). The right-hand column shows how many of each employer’s filings sit at Levels I and II, because a low median can reflect a junior mix rather than low pay for the same job.

# Employer Filings AI ML Median offer Middle half Level I or II
1 TikTok / ByteDance 205 19 184 $235,000 $182K to $310K 61%
2 LinkedIn 201 0 201 $185,112 $174K to $197K 25%
3 Adobe 167 0 167 $187,741 $150K to $228K 58%
4 Meta 113 3 110 $220,000 $193K to $233K 34%
5 Pinterest 107 0 107 $180,710 $159K to $212K 43%
6 Tesla 66 11 55 $246,500 $207K to $300K 29%
7 Apple 64 2 58 $193,978 $185K to $224K 5%
8 Snap 61 0 61 $174,015 $170K to $202K 7%
9 PayPal 56 2 54 $189,245 $172K to $216K 14%
10 Qualcomm 43 0 43 $158,400 $141K to $185K 60%
11 Boston Consulting Group 33 33 0 $190,000 $149K to $190K 79%
12 Zoom 33 13 20 $180,710 $163K to $197K 27%
13 Uber 29 0 29 $228,700 $199K to $239K 10%
14 Atlassian 27 2 25 $210,000 $200K to $230K 56%
15 Reddit 26 0 26 $262,838 $256K to $300K 12%
16 ServiceNow 26 5 18 $187,741 $155K to $218K 19%
17 Torc Robotics 25 0 25 $174,591 $158K to $200K 48%
18 Roblox 24 0 24 $266,685 $227K to $294K 29%
19 DoorDash 24 0 23 $187,870 $166K to $197K 54%
20 Netflix 22 0 22 $237,786 $195K to $265K 5%
21 Workday 22 0 22 $187,574 $167K to $228K 55%
22 Government Employee Insurance (Geico) 21 0 21 $240,000 $225K to $275K 19%
23 Waymo 21 0 21 $240,000 $205K to $250K 43%
24 Cruise 21 0 8 $234,600 $207K to $265K 10%
25 Capital One 20 15 5 $178,203 $158K to $201K 55%

AI/ML titles count toward Filings only. Legal entities are merged only where listed in the methodology; subsidiaries otherwise stay separate.

The largest filers of the AI engineer title itself

  • Boston Consulting Group 33 filings, $190,000
  • TikTok / ByteDance 19 filings, $240,000
  • Capital One 15 filings, $173,900
  • Zoom 13 filings, $187,741
  • Tesla 11 filings, $230,000
  • NVIDIA 10 filings, $195,599
  • Distyl Ai 10 filings, $207,500
  • Maruthi Technologies 10 filings, $134,971
  • Gainwell Technologies 9 filings, $152,131
  • Pmg Worldwide 8 filings, $112,923

AI engineer salary at Google, Amazon, Anthropic and others

Employer searches hit a wall in this data, because many of these companies do not use the title. Amazon filed 23,755 certified full-time H-1Bs in the 12 months and 0 carried an AI or ML engineer title; Microsoft filed 6,873 and 0 did. Google filed 8,207 and 5 did. Anthropic filed 237 and OpenAI 233, and Member of Technical Staff variants are the most common title at both (171 and 129 filings). So this table also shows what each employer calls the job. The title columns show the most-filed non-manager title, which may or may not be AI work: a filing titled Software Engineer does not say what the engineer builds.

Employer All H-1B filings AI ML AI/ML Median of those titles Largest software title Largest research or staff title
Google 8,207 2 3 0 $222,000 Software Engineer: 4,904 filings, $193,000 Research Scientist: 199 filings, $205,000
Amazon 23,755 0 0 0 none Software Dev Engineer II: 3,765 filings, $174,400 Applied Scientist II: 835 filings, $180,000
Microsoft 6,873 0 0 0 none Software Engineering: 4,300 filings, $178,000 none
Meta 5,998 3 111 0 $220,120 Software Engineer: 2,672 filings, $217,528 Research Scientist: 644 filings, $207,502
Apple 6,264 2 58 4 $193,978 Software Engineering Applications: 661 filings, $181,100 Machine Learning: 323 filings, $193,978
NVIDIA 2,813 10 3 2 $185,749 Software Engineer: 392 filings, $192,072 Research Scientist: 79 filings, $168,000
Anthropic 237 1 0 0 under 5 Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineering): 10 filings, $189,592 Member of Technical Staff: 73 filings, $187,574
OpenAI 233 6 0 0 $250,000 Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer): 38 filings, $255,000 same as software title
xAI 52 1 0 0 under 5 none Member of Technical Staff: 35 filings, $318,781
Boston Consulting Group 685 33 0 0 $190,000 Global IT Software Engineer Senior Specialist: 1 filing, $131,082 Forward Deployed AI Scientist: 33 filings, $145,000
Deloitte 5,628 2 0 0 under 5 Software Engineer: 10 filings, $100,805 none
EY 6,496 0 0 0 none Software Developers: 846 filings, $172,335 none
KPMG 310 0 0 0 none none none
Accenture 2,089 0 0 0 none Custom Software Engineering Team Lead: 3 filings, $115,900 none
Tata Consultancy Services 4,181 0 0 0 none Software Developer: 218 filings, $115,000 none
IBM 1,121 0 0 0 none Software Developer: 62 filings, $187,916 Research Scientist: 14 filings, $203,910
Mastercard 409 0 0 0 none Senior Software Engineer: 90 filings, $115,000 none

Certified, full-time, decided 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, all job titles. “under 5” means too few filings to quote. Employer names matched by the patterns in the methodology. All figures are base offers without equity.

Title variants, and what the rule leaves out

The rule requires an AI or ML term and the word ENGINEER in the same title, and drops managers, hardware, sales and security roles. One choice worth flagging: 325 filings use the bare title MACHINE LEARNING, nearly all from Apple. The title never says engineer, so they are out; adding them leaves the ML median at $187,741. We individually read 200 random AI-family titles and 200 random ML-family titles: 197 of 200 (98.5%) and 200 of 200 (100.0%) named AI or ML engineering work. The misses were titles such as AI Civil Engineer. Another 7 AI-family titles named both data and AI work (Data and AI Engineer) and were counted as matches.

Title variant Treatment Filings Median offer
Exactly AI ENGINEER AI family 382 $120,994
GenAI or generative AI engineer AI family 94 $138,996
Forward deployed AI engineer AI family 22 $160,000
Software engineer naming AI AI family 234 $166,000
Exactly MACHINE LEARNING ENGINEER ML family 917 $174,304
Software engineer naming machine learning ML family 370 $193,978
MLOps or ML operations engineer ML family 44 $152,587
AI/ML, AI and ML, or both named Reported apart 403 $135,200
Bare title MACHINE LEARNING (Apple’s title) Excluded 325 $193,978
AI or ML scientist Excluded 602 $180,000
AI hardware engineer Excluded 34 $256,300
AI architect Excluded 158 $152,131
AI or ML developer, no ENGINEER in the title Excluded 115 $112,950
Member of Technical Staff Excluded unless it says AI or ML engineer 1,422 $200,000
Applied Scientist (Amazon’s main title) Excluded 1,419 $184,400

How these titles compare with BLS codes

Employers must pick a federal code, and the choice shows how poorly the codes fit. 66% of AI engineer filings and 52% of ML filings use 15-1252 Software Developers; 36% of ML filings and 17% of AI filings use 15-2051 Data Scientists. Set against the BLS medians, the ML title runs $51,761 above software developers and the AI title $14,020 above. Do not read that as a premium for the skill: BLS counts all workers in the code nationwide, 36% of ML filings are in one metro, and BLS wages include some incentive pay while filings state base pay. Our software engineer salary atlas and data scientist salary report give those two codes in full.

BLS occupation, May 2025 Jobs 10th 25th Median 75th 90th
Software developers BLS 15-1252 1,687,890 $82,460 $105,210 $135,980 $171,980 $214,670
Computer and information research scientists BLS 15-1221 37,200 $82,200 $103,570 $140,300 $188,700 $230,630
Database architects BLS 15-1243 67,140 $86,240 $109,370 $139,500 $169,290 $204,000
Data scientists BLS 15-2051 262,440 $67,240 $85,660 $120,230 $158,880 $199,130

Filings with AI engineer titles rose 13-fold in four years

AI engineer filings went from 109 in the year ending June 2022 to 1,452 in the year ending June 2026, while ML filings went from 1,675 to 2,768. In the latest year AI titles grew +172% and ML titles +3%, against -7% for all certified H-1B filings. The AI median rose +12.2% on the year and the ML median +4.3%. A new title on a filing does not prove a new job, since engineers can be retitled and the data cannot tell the difference. Our H-1B statistics report covers the lottery and the $100,000 payment that sit behind these filings, and our ledger of AI-attributed layoffs tracks the employers citing AI for cuts.

YE Jun 2022: 109 AI engineer filings, 1,675 ML engineer filings1,675109YE Jun 2022YE Jun 2023: 110 AI engineer filings, 1,416 ML engineer filings1,416110YE Jun 2023YE Jun 2024: 225 AI engineer filings, 1,913 ML engineer filings1,913225YE Jun 2024YE Jun 2025: 533 AI engineer filings, 2,698 ML engineer filings2,698533YE Jun 2025YE Jun 2026: 1,452 AI engineer filings, 2,768 ML engineer filings2,7681,452YE Jun 2026
12 months ending AI filings AI median AI Level II median ML filings ML median ML Level II median All certified H-1B cases
YE Jun 2022 109 $131,220 $130,447 1,675 $160,000 $130,894 547,350
YE Jun 2023 110 $140,534 $140,000 1,416 $170,000 $133,000 456,825
YE Jun 2024 225 $145,000 $131,144 1,913 $171,720 $150,000 492,352
YE Jun 2025 533 $133,658 $120,000 2,698 $180,000 $153,000 531,668
YE Jun 2026 1,452 $150,000 $120,000 2,768 $187,741 $174,304 493,658

Dated tracker, by Labor Department release

Decisions through DOL file AI filings AI median ML filings ML median
2026-06-30 FY2026 Q3 file 916 $141,044 1266 $178,729
2026-03-31 FY2026 Q3 file 249 $168,340 712 $187,437
2025-12-31 FY2026 Q3 file 151 $175,000 373 $197,000
2025-09-30 FY2025 Q4 136 $155,000 417 $200,000
2025-06-30 FY2025 Q3 339 $121,600 1170 $165,000
2025-03-31 FY2025 Q2 82 $155,657 618 $178,400
2024-12-31 FY2025 Q1 62 $150,000 456 $193,000
2024-09-30 FY2024 Q4 50 $165,305 454 $188,558
2024-06-30 FY2024 Q3 114 $135,500 774 $170,186
2024-03-31 FY2024 Q2 46 $170,000 487 $177,000
2023-12-31 FY2024 Q1 28 $142,831 301 $184,000
2023-09-30 FY2023 Q4 37 $148,260 351 $165,750

DOL’s FY2026 Q3 file (LCA_Disclosure_Data_FY2026_Q3.xlsx) was the newest listed when we checked on 2 November 2026. It covers 1 October 2025 to 30 June 2026. A case decided in a later file replaces the same case number in an earlier one.

What this means for MSPs

Budget by city and level, not by title. Level II AI engineer filings in Dallas have a $112,923 median (84 filings). The national Level II median for ML titles is $174,304, which reflects 36% of those filings being in San Jose. An MSP outside the Bay Area should not budget from the national ML figure.

Expect competition from IT services, not only big tech. 47% of AI engineer filings already come from NAICS 5415 firms, the group that includes MSPs. 37% of AI engineer filings and 34% of ML filings offer no more than the prevailing wage, and employers must pay at least the higher of the prevailing wage or their own actual wage, so a filing’s number is often a legal minimum, not a market price. If a contractor justifies a rate with these medians, ask which level and which metro.

Check the work before you pay for the title. The form records no duties, and 42% of AI engineer filings come from employers with a single filing, so the title alone says little about the job. Write the duties for a client pilot first, then price them.

Frequently asked questions

Do ML engineers make more than AI engineers?

On certified H-1B filings decided from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, yes as filed: $187,741 for machine learning engineer titles against $150,000 for AI engineer titles. Inside the same metro and wage level the difference falls to 2.8%. ML engineer filings cluster in San Jose (36%, against 14% of AI filings).

What is the AI engineer salary at Google?

Google’s filings barely use the title. Of 8,207 certified full-time H-1B filings in the 12 months to June 2026, 2 had an AI engineer title and 3 an ML engineer title. Those 5 have a $222,000 median, too few to lean on. Its main title is Software Engineer, with 4,904 filings at a $193,000 median base offer.

What is the AI engineer salary at Anthropic or OpenAI?

Their filings rarely say AI engineer. Anthropic had 1 such filing out of 237 and OpenAI 6 out of 233. Their most common titles are Member of Technical Staff variants: Anthropic’s plain version shows a $187,574 median on 73 filings, and OpenAI’s software version $255,000 on 38. These are base offers and leave out equity.

What is the entry-level AI engineer salary vs ML engineer salary?

At Labor Department wage Level I (entry), AI engineer titles show a $107,557 median on 201 filings and ML engineer titles $146,671 on 291. Level I is the Department’s proxy for experience, not a count of years.

Why do other sites disagree on which title pays more?

They measure different things. JobsRadar uses live postings that publish a range and shows ML ahead; Recruiting from Scratch shows ML ahead on its own data; Codecademy’s table shows AI ahead and names no source. None of them can separate title from location the way a filing with a worksite and wage level can.

Is this the average pay of all AI engineers?

No. It is the median offered base wage on 1,452 and 2,768 H-1B filings. It leaves out U.S. citizens and other workers not on these filings, leaves out equity and bonus, and an offer on a filing is not proof of the wage paid or that the position was filled.

Download the data. ai-ml-engineer-h1b-lca-filings.csv (CSV). Licensed under CC BY 4.0: free to reuse with attribution to The Uptime Report.

Methodology

Source. Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification, LCA disclosure data (Form ETA-9035), 21 quarterly xlsx files from FY2021 Q1 to FY2026 Q3. FY2025 and FY2026 files were downloaded 15 October 2026 and the rest on 2 November 2026, when FY2026 Q3 was still the newest file listed. The BLS May 2025 OEWS and 2018 SOC direct-match files supply the comparison figures.

Filters. VISA_CLASS H-1B, deduplicated by CASE_NUMBER (the later file wins), CASE_STATUS Certified (Certified-Withdrawn excluded), FULL_TIME_POSITION Y. Windows run on DECISION_DATE. The headline window is 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, so it holds one full cap season. A certified case later withdrawn shows as Certified-Withdrawn in a later file and leaves the count, so the newest quarters can shrink slightly on refresh. 225 rows of the 275,966 full-time certified rows in the broad title extract, across all years, were dropped for an annualized wage outside $20,000 to $1,000,000 or no wage.

Title rule. JOB_TITLE, uppercased. A title must match the engineer term and an AI or ML term, and must not match the exclusions. AI term only is the AI family, ML term only is the ML family, both is AI/ML.

ENGINEER: \bENGINEERS?\bAI: \b(AI|A\.I\.?|AIML|ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE|GEN ?AI|GENERATIVE AI)\bML: \b(ML|AIML|MACHINE LEARNING|MLOPS|ML OPS|MLE)\bEXCLUDE: \b(MANAGER|MGR|MANAGEMENT|DIRECTOR|VP|VICE PRESIDENT|PRESIDENT|HEAD OF|HEAD|CHIEF|CTO|INTERN|RECRUITER|PROFESSOR|POSTDOC\w*|POST-DOC\w*)\b | \b(HARDWARE|HW|ASIC|SILICON|SALES|PRE-?SALES|SUPPORT|SCIENTISTS?|RESEARCHER|DATA ENGINEERS?|QA|QUALITY|SOLUTIONS?|FIELD|CUSTOMER|VERIFICATION|VALIDATION|DESIGN|PHYSICAL|RTL|CHIP|PACKAGING|NETWORK|TEST|FIRMWARE|EMBEDDED|SECURITY|CYBERSECURITY|PROCESS|FACILITIES|APPLICATIONS? ENGINEER|AUTOMATION ENGINEER|CLOUD ENGINEER)\b

Precision. Random samples of the newest 12 months (seeds 261102, 261103, 261104), every title read individually: AI family 197 of 200, ML family 200 of 200, AI/ML 99 of 100. We did not measure recall by reading non-matching titles at random. Employers using generic titles such as Software Engineer or Member of Technical Staff are missed by design, and the table of variants sizes the largest of those groups.

Wages. WAGE_RATE_OF_PAY_FROM annualized (hour x 2,080, week x 52, bi-weekly x 26, month x 12). Where a filing gives a range we use the bottom of it. Offers apply to the first worksite. 36% of AI filings and 45% of ML filings state a range.

Sensitivity. ML stays ahead on every check, but one nearly closes the gap. Range midpoints: $159,216 vs $203,175. Median of employer medians: $142,151 vs $164,403. Only plain titles such as Senior AI Engineer: $137,950 (609) vs $180,710 (1,834). Weighted by positions requested: $160,000 vs $165,021, because Qualcomm’s 43 ML filings request 3,607 of the 8,569 ML positions; without Qualcomm the weighted ML median is $180,000. We count filings because positions requested are ceilings, not hires.

Controls. The gap ladder regresses log wage on the title within cells of wage level, metro and employer. It describes the filings and is not a causal estimate. The 95% interval resamples employers 500 times.

Employer names. Merged by name pattern only (for example Amazon.com Services and Amazon Web Services; TikTok and ByteDance). Other legal entities stay separate after dropping suffixes such as Inc and LLC.

Limits. H-1B positions only. Base wage only. An offer is not necessarily the wage paid. Employers may not fill the positions they file for. The form records no years of experience and no job duties. Wage levels are entered by the employer or its representative.

Not advice. These are public filing statistics, not a salary benchmark for any one role.

Cite as:The Uptime Report. "AI Engineer Salary vs ML Engineer Salary: ML Pays $37,741 More on H-1B Filings, Until You Compare the Same City." November 2026. https://theuptimereport.com/ai-engineer-vs-ml-engineer-salary/

References

  1. U.S. Department of Labor, OFLC Performance Data, LCA disclosure files FY2021 to FY2026. Accessed November 2026.
  2. DOL OFLC, LCA_Disclosure_Data_FY2026_Q3.xlsx. Accessed November 2026.
  3. DOL OFLC, LCA record layout, FY2025 Q4. Accessed November 2026.
  4. DOL Employment and Training Administration, Prevailing Wage Determination Policy Guidance, revised November 2009. Accessed November 2026.
  5. DOL Wage and Hour Division, Fact Sheet 62G: required wage for H-1B workers. Accessed November 2026.
  6. BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Accessed November 2026.
  7. BLS, 2018 SOC direct match title file. Accessed November 2026.
  8. JobsRadar, AI Engineer vs ML Engineer (method and direction only). Accessed November 2026.
  9. Recruiting from Scratch, AI Engineer vs ML Engineer (method and direction only). Accessed November 2026.
  10. Codecademy, How much does an AI engineer make (method and direction only). Accessed November 2026.

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