2026 data · New York City
AI engineer salaries in New York City
The headline numbers — and why they disagree
On November 14, 2026, the median posted base salary for an engineering role at the New York AI companies we track was $215,000. The middle half of the 154 distinct posted ranges ran from $187,500 to $252,500. We read these from company job boards for the NYC AI Hiring Index, and the figures on this page change when the postings do.
Salary aggregators give other answers. When we checked in August 2026, Built In reported an average base of $223,464 and total compensation of $242,021 for AI engineers in New York, Glassdoor showed roughly $178,000, and ZipRecruiter put the 25th to 75th percentile at $138,110 to $230,864. Built In and Glassdoor were about $45,000 apart on the same job title in the same city.
The sources disagree because each one counts something different. An aggregator pools pay reported by users, and its own estimates, across every kind of employer that uses the title, from trading firms to enterprise IT departments, and some of its figures include bonus and equity. Ours counts one thing: the base range an employer wrote on its own posting, at a named set of AI companies, on a dated morning. Neither is the salary anyone was actually paid.
So match the source to the employer. For an offer from a New York AI company, the posted bands below are the closest comparison. For the national picture, see Neuronify’s national AI engineer salary guide.
NYC bands by level
| Level | Ranges (n) | 25th pct | Median | 75th pct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry level | too few postings | |||
| Mid-level | 62 | $175,000 | $200,000 | $237,500 |
| Senior | 43 | $190,000 | $207,500 | $223,000 |
| Staff / principal | 30 | $230,000 | $250,000 | $265,000 |
| Engineering manager | 9 | $251,000 | $262,500 | $275,000 |
| All engineering, pooled | 154 | $187,500 | $215,000 | $252,500 |
Engineering roles tagged to New York, annual base salary, reading of November 14, 2026. Each posting counts as the midpoint of its range, and a range repeated across one company’s postings counts once. We print no figure for entry-level roles: fewer than 8 posted ranges on this reading.
The senior median ($207,500, 43 ranges) is $7,500 above the mid-level median ($200,000, 62 ranges). The staff and principal median ($250,000, 30 ranges) is $42,500 above the senior median ($207,500, 43 ranges). We read the level from the job title, so the distance between two levels reflects how employers title their roles as well as how they pay them: a company that calls most of its engineers senior pulls that band toward the one beneath it.
These are base figures for the AI companies in the index. Equity, bonus and sign-on are not in a posted range, and neither is anything a finance firm or a big technology company pays. To work the bands by level, employer type and specialization, use the NYC salary calculator.
How much room a band leaves
The distance between the 25th and 75th percentile says how far apart employers are for the same kind of role. For engineering as a whole it is $65,000, or 30% of the median (154 ranges). By level: $62,500 for mid-level roles (31% of their median, 62 ranges), $33,000 for senior roles (16% of their median, 43 ranges), $35,000 for staff and principal roles (14% of their median, 30 ranges) and $24,000 for engineering manager roles (9% of their median, 9 ranges). The widest of those is the mid-level band and the narrowest is the engineering manager band.
This is the spread between postings, not the width of any one posting’s range. Each posting enters as a single midpoint, so the gap measures how much one employer’s midpoint differs from another’s at the same level. Company stage, the specialization and how a company uses the title all move a posting inside it. A wide band means the title alone tells you little about the pay; a narrow one means employers at that level are posting close to each other.
For a candidate, the practical reading is that the 25th and 75th percentile are both drawn from live postings, so an offer near either end is inside the market and not outside it. What the data cannot show is where inside its own posted range an employer finally lands.
How the engineering median has moved since August 17, 2026
The series began on August 17, 2026. Between then and November 14, 2026, the engineering median fell $2,500 to $215,000. Over the same period the 25th percentile rose $2,500 to $187,500 and the 75th percentile fell $1,000 to $252,500, with 134 posted ranges behind the first reading and 154 behind the latest. Across all 90 daily readings, the median was never below $215,000 or above $220,000.
| Reading | Ranges (n) | 25th pct | Median | 75th pct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| first reading | 134 | $185,000 | $217,500 | $253,500 |
| 143 | $180,000 | $217,500 | $253,500 | |
| 163 | $180,000 | $215,000 | $253,500 | |
| 157 | $187,500 | $216,000 | $253,500 | |
| latest reading | 154 | $187,500 | $215,000 | $252,500 |
All engineering levels pooled, New York postings, annual base. The first reading, then the last reading of each month.
Read a move in this table with care. Each row is the set of postings open that morning, not a set of people who were paid. The median can shift because the mix of open roles changed, with more staff roles open one month and more mid-level ones the next, without any employer changing a band. A posting also stays in the reading for as long as it stays up, so one company’s slow search counts every day until it closes.
That is why we print the number of ranges beside each row and do not describe a small change as a raise or a cut. The weekly Hiring Index issues report pay alongside the roles that opened and came down that week, which is the context a single median lacks.
Engineering against the other functions
On November 14, 2026, engineering had the highest median posted base of the 8 functions with at least 8 posted ranges. The lowest was People at $133,000 (21 ranges).
| Function | Ranges (n) | 25th pct | Median | 75th pct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | 154 | $187,500 | $215,000 | $252,500 |
| Design | 19 | $185,000 | $210,000 | $240,000 |
| Product | 31 | $165,000 | $200,000 | $240,000 |
| Research | 17 | $160,500 | $195,000 | $221,500 |
| Finance & Legal | 31 | $148,000 | $185,000 | $217,500 |
| Go-to-market | 157 | $140,000 | $175,000 | $217,000 |
| Operations | 37 | $130,000 | $155,000 | $180,000 |
| People | 21 | $110,000 | $133,000 | $185,000 |
New York postings, annual base, all levels pooled within each function, reading of November 14, 2026. Functions with fewer than 8 posted ranges are left out, and so are roles the classifier could not place in a function. Go-to-market figures are base only: postings that quote on-target earnings are excluded.
Functions are not level-matched in this table. A function whose open roles are mostly senior will show a higher median than one hiring at entry level, whatever each pays for comparable work, and the functions with the fewest ranges move the most from one reading to the next. Compare the number of ranges before comparing the medians.
Pay is one half of the picture and volume is the other. On November 14, 2026, engineering accounted for 435 of the 1,487 roles open at the 47 companies in the index, in every location, or 29%. The function with the most roles open was Go-to-market, with 501. The open roles themselves are on the jobs index.
How many postings carry a range
New York City’s pay transparency law requires a good-faith salary range on a posting for a role performed in the city. On November 14, 2026, 711 of the 782 New York postings we read carried a base range our parser could use, or 91%. At the first reading on August 17, 2026 the share was 85%, so it is 6.3 percentage points higher now. Across 90 daily readings it has not been below 84% or above 92%.
| Reading | NYC postings | With a base range | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 734 | 621 | 85% | |
| 730 | 668 | 92% | |
| 786 | 719 | 92% | |
| 781 | 709 | 91% | |
| 782 | 711 | 91% |
The share matters because every band on this page is built only from postings that carry a range. If the employers that leave the range off pay differently from the ones that print it, these figures cannot show it. The share also depends on our parser as well as on employers: a range written in an unusual format is missed until the parser is taught to read it, so a change in this number is not always a change in what companies disclose.
The counts above are postings. The bands elsewhere on this page rest on fewer ranges than that, because an identical range repeated across one company’s postings is counted once. On November 14, 2026, 30 New York postings quoted on-target earnings in place of a base salary and were kept out of every base figure. The full rules are in the methodology.
Skills and tools on the highest-paid postings
We also record which tools and skills each job description names, and the posted pay on the New York roles that name them. On November 14, 2026, 32 tools and skills had at least 8 distinct posted ranges. 17 of 32 have a median above the engineering median of $215,000 (154 ranges). The table lists the 10 with the highest median.
| Tool or skill | Companies naming it | Ranges (n) | Median | 25th to 75th pct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Java | 16 | 21 | $246,500 | $212,500–$260,000 |
| RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) | 14 | 14 | $240,000 | $217,500–$259,500 |
| Observability | 32 | 39 | $237,500 | $207,500–$255,000 |
| Inference | 14 | 16 | $237,500 | $215,000–$275,000 |
| Rust | 13 | 12 | $237,500 | $205,000–$260,000 |
| GPUs | 7 | 8 | $237,500 | $215,000–$250,000 |
| Go | 27 | 34 | $235,000 | $208,050–$251,000 |
| Apache Kafka | 9 | 11 | $230,625 | $202,500–$255,000 |
| AWS | 36 | 70 | $230,000 | $205,000–$255,000 |
| Azure | 15 | 22 | $230,000 | $202,500–$250,000 |
New York postings naming the term in the role’s own text, any function and level, annual base, reading of November 14, 2026. Tools and skills are counted by company, so one employer with a large board cannot set the list. No pay figure is shown below 8 distinct ranges.
This table is not a list of premiums. A posting that names one term usually names several, and a term named mostly on senior roles shows a high median for that reason alone, so part of what each figure shows is the level of the role and not the skill. Naming is also not using: a nice-to-have counts the same as a requirement. What the table does show is which terms turn up on the better-paid postings, with enough ranges behind each to be worth printing.
Every term, with the companies naming it, its trend and example open roles, is in the skills glossary.
The sector spread — what these figures cover
Four kinds of employer hire AI engineers in New York, and they do not pay alike. The posted data on this page measures one of them, the 47 New York AI companies whose job boards we read. A salary figure is only useful if you know whose salaries it describes.
AI companies in the Hiring Index
The one market measured on this page: New York companies that build AI as their product, from startups to scale-ups. Every figure above comes from their own postings. Base is posted; equity is usually part of the offer and almost never part of the posting.
Finance and quant funds
Not in our data. Trading firms and funds hire the same engineers and are widely reported to pay more in cash, with a bonus on top. We have no posted ranges from them, so we print no premium.
Big tech, New York offices
Not in our data. The large technology companies run national pay bands and pay much of the upside in stock that can be sold when it vests, which a base range does not show.
Enterprise and mid-market
Not in our data. Banks, insurers, hospitals and other large employers hire under the same titles, some on technology pay scales and some on older IT ones.
The salary calculator has a setting for each of the other three. Those settings are modeled adjustments to the posted band and are labeled as modeled wherever they appear. They are not readings, and we do not print them here as if they were.
What this means if you’re the one paying
Base salary is not the cost of the hire. Payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and software sit on top, and we use a multiplier of 1.3 across these pages to account for them. At the current posted median of $207,500, a senior engineer costs about $270,000 a year, and a staff or principal engineer about $325,000, before equity and before the search. On the search itself, Futureproofing’s 2026 analysis of AI engineer demand counts 3+ open roles per qualified candidate. A permanent seat makes sense when the problem will need someone full time for years.
For a build with a defined end, an independent engineer or a small firm delivers the system without the permanent seat, and some teams sequence it on purpose: consultants ship the first version, then a hired engineer maintains and extends it. Neuronify’s hiring guide covers the full-time path.
If you’re the engineer reading this, the same bands are the starting point for pricing independent work, since a day rate has to cover what a salary and its benefits would have. Run the math in Neuronify’s rate calculator, and see the NYC events circuit for where people in this market meet.
NYC AI salaries — common questions
What is the average AI engineer salary in NYC?
The median posted base salary for engineering roles at the New York AI companies we track was $215,000 on November 14, 2026, and the middle half of the 154 distinct posted ranges ran from $187,500 to $252,500. That is a median of the ranges employers post, not an average of salaries paid. Salary aggregators report other figures because they sample other employers: when we checked in August 2026, Built In reported an average base of $223,464 for New York AI engineers and Glassdoor roughly $178,000.
How much do AI engineers make at each level in NYC?
On November 14, 2026, the median posted base for engineering roles at New York AI companies was $200,000 for mid-level roles (62 ranges), $207,500 for senior roles (43 ranges), $250,000 for staff and principal roles (30 ranges) and $262,500 for engineering manager roles (9 ranges). We print no figure for entry-level roles, which had fewer than 8 posted ranges. Levels are read from the job title, and the figures are base salary only.
Which AI skills and tools carry the highest posted pay in NYC?
On November 14, 2026, the highest median posted base among the tools and skills named in New York AI postings was Java at $246,500 (21 ranges), RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) at $240,000 (14 ranges) and Observability at $237,500 (39 ranges). A figure is published only where at least 8 distinct ranges exist. It describes the roles that name the term, at whatever level they are, and is not a premium for the skill alone.
How many NYC AI job postings include a salary range?
On November 14, 2026, 711 of the 782 New York postings we read carried a usable base salary range, or 91%. New York City's pay transparency law requires a good-faith range on roles performed in the city. Postings without a range are left out of every figure on this page.
Do AI engineers at NYC finance firms really earn more?
Our data cannot say by how much. The figures on this page come from the job boards of the AI companies in our Hiring Index, and no trading firm, fund or bank is among them. Finance firms are widely reported to pay more in cash than technology companies, with bonuses on top, but we publish no figure for that premium because we have no posted ranges behind one. The finance setting in our salary calculator is a modeled adjustment and is labeled as one.
Should NYC companies hire a full-time AI engineer or use consultants?
It depends on whether the work is permanent. At the current posted median of $207,500, a senior engineer costs about $270,000 a year once payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and software are added (base times 1.3), before equity and before the search. A permanent hire suits a problem that will need someone full time for years. For a build with a defined end, an independent engineer or a small firm avoids the permanent seat, and some teams have consultants build the first version and then hire someone to maintain it.