Anthropic ranks first in median base salary for engineers.
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The job listing site workatailab.com compiled publicly disclosed base salaries for AI lab engineer positions in October 2026. Anthropic ranked highest among 49 labs with a median of $402,500, based on 154 positions; MatX ranked second at $380,000, and OpenAI ranked third at $339,000. Seven of the top ten are frontier model or infrastructure companies. The statistics only use the midpoint of the annual base salary ranges publicly disclosed by employers, excluding equity, bonuses, and actual offer amounts; a lab must have at least ten open engineer positions disclosing usable ranges to be ranked, and at companies such as xAI and Wayve, fewer than half of positions disclose ranges.
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- Hacker News AIWhich AI labs pay the most for engineers? Disclosed base pay, October 2026
Anthropic had the highest median disclosed base pay for engineer roles among 49 AI labs tracked in October 2026, at $402,500 across 154 roles, followed by MatX at $380,000 and OpenAI at $339,000. The figures are midpoints of posted base salary ranges in US dollars, excluding equity, bonuses and offers, and labs are ranked only where at least ten open engineer roles disclosed a usable range. Frontier labs had the highest median by kind at $330,000, while defense companies were lowest at $190,000, a figure driven almost entirely by Anduril and Shield AI.
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