Prompt engineer highest-paying AI job

Prospective prompt engineers can expect an annual salary of $300,000 on average, an analysis of job listings has shown.

Prompt engineer tops the list of 10 in-demand AI careers in terms of salary offered to successful hires, according to new research from Velents AI, a recruitment platform.

The substantial income was a key factor behind a significant interest in this career, with as many as 45,000 prospective professionals vying for just over 2,000 available vacancies on Glassdoor, a job search engine, experts said.

However, it ranks only 6th on the list of the most in-demand AI careers based on the number of available positions on Glassdoor, research showed. According to another study, prompt engineering was the most in-demand new job last year.

The AI research scientist position now takes the top spot, with almost 18,000 positions available on Glassdoor, with an average salary of $132,000. “This might be the reason for the 42% interest rise in this AI career,” Velents said.

After identifying the most in-demand AI careers based on the number of available job listings, experts used Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends to analyze the interest in them.

Machine learning engineer is another sought-after AI professional, with just over 6,800 vacancies on Glassdoor and the average yearly salary of $160,000. Velents attributes the high pay as a “driving force” behind a significant online interest from some 20,000 people.

AI engineer is third on the 3rd spot on the list, with more than 4,300 positions on offer, and almost 40,000 individuals showing interest in a career that could pay $105,000 annually.

Big data engineer is next with more than 3,300 job offers available on Glassdoor. Despite an average salary of $180,000, only 2,000 people were searching for this job online, according to Velents.

Only 400 people were considering taking a path of a human integration specialist role, which is 5th on the list. The lower interest in the career could be explained by a lower average salary for this profession which currently stands at $91,000 per year.

AI developer follows prompt engineer as the 7th most in-demand career to pursue in the field, with over 2,000 available job offers and an annual salary of $130,000. Researchers said that some 26,000 people were considering this career option.

The API integration expert positions holds the 8th place on the list with almost 1,600 available vacancies on Glassdoor. It is also the worst paid position on the list, with an average annual salary of $80,000. There were only 20 people searching for this “in-demand and underappreciated” career online, according to Velents.

NLP engineer and AI product manager roles round up the top 10. The former has 820 available vacancies on Glassdoor with an annual salary of $109,000, while there are 518 job offers for the latter at an average salary of $135,000.