Machine learning engineers who know their stuff can pull down extraordinary compensation. It’s a highly specialized profession, and more companies are happy to pay top dollar for the best talent. With that in mind, which metro areas pay machine learning engineers the most?
For an answer, we can turn to Blind, which surveys anonymous technologists on a range of issues. Over the past few months, the website has also broken down salaries for specialized tech professions such as data scientist and data engineer. Here are the top-paying metro areas for machine learning engineers; as you can see from the chart, many of these cities are (surprise, surprise) also major tech hubs such as Silicon Valley and Seattle:
The reason behind this concentration is a simple one: Companies like Meta and Apple need lots of artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning talent, and they’re willing to pay out extraordinary compensation in order to secure it. As these tech giants launch huge (and costly) A.I. initiatives, this competition for talent will drive up benefits such as stock options even higher.
Even if you don’t want to become a machine learning engineer, learning artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine-learning skills can make you an essential player within your organization. According to Emsi Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country, the number of job postings requesting A.I. skills will increase 297 percent over the next two years; the median salary for jobs with a heavy A.I. component stands at $103,168.
The need for machine-learning skills may only increase in coming years, driven by companies’ rising need for “smarter” digital assistants, cybersecurity threat detection, marketing automation, predictive sales, and so much more.
