AI evals engineers' real pay: median band $216k–$337k across 220 postings, Redwood tops at $850k
aryaman2020 · x · 2026-09-04
- Aggregated from 220 live job postings with published salary bands across 48 companies: the overall median band is $216k–$337k, with a full range of $55k–$850k, and two-thirds of listings publish no salary at all.
- By track, post-training & RL pays the most ($250k–$440k), a $157k gap above human data ($133k–$215k); evals & benchmarks sit at $220k–$350k, red team & safeguards at $198k–$270k.
- By company: Redwood Research has the highest ceiling ($350k–$850k), xAI $180k–$600k, OpenAI $295k–$555k, Mercor $220k–$600k, Thinking Machines $350k–$475k, Perplexity $220k–$485k, Character AI $275k–$400k.
- Figures are base only — at frontier labs equity and bonus are often the larger half; nonprofit bands represent the entire offer.
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