High-paying jobs in artificial intelligence are all the rage these days, but very few positions offer salaries above $300,000. Industries like financial services, which have made multiple iterations of their AI efforts, should be paying the highest prices for talent, but they still lose out to their contemporaries across the tech sector. But who is paying the most?
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We examined salary data from the H1B Visa salary database for 14 companies, including hedge funds, banks, startups, and tech giants. It's worth noting that while the salary data doesn't fully reflect total compensation (just salary), nor does the database fully reflect the pay habits of global companies (applies only to H1B visa recipients), it still provides some interesting insights. You might be surprised which companies pay the highest salaries on average.
The H1B database suggests that generative AI research companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, the names behind ChatGPT and Claude, pay the highest salaries for AI talent. Another AI lab called Thinking Machines, a top company, is less well known to the public, but was founded by Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI. Murati turned down a $1 billion (yes, $1 billion) offer to join Meta when he founded the company. She said none of the subordinates Mehta tried to recruit similarly left the company. Chances are, the total compensation will be just as impressive.
Thinking Machines pays the highest on average, but also has a smaller sample size compared to the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. Looking at the highest salaries, the aforementioned AI Labs and Quantitative Hedge Fund DE shows finish above it, dropping to fourth place.
Which companies in finance are paying the most for AI?
DE Shaw appears to be the best-paying place to work as a “Member of Technical Staff” (a new position for AI specialists), but with a salary of $300,000 or more, options beyond that appear to be limited.
The majority of AI roles at these companies paid an average of $180,000 to $220,000. The two companies that fell short of this standard were both in the financial industry, with investment bank JP Morgan and hedge fund scoring 72 points.
The seniority of Point72s' AI staff is not clear, but AI hires at JP Morgan's H1B were primarily associates. Their average income was $155,000, while vice presidents earned $182,000 and one executive director earned $300,000.
Despite its growth, Baryasny, which has one of the most prominent AI research teams in the hedge fund industry, hasn't made any H1B hires this year. According to H1B listings from past years, a senior researcher can earn a salary of $275,000 there.
Are AI jobs in the financial industry competitive?
One financial services headhunter said that “AI/ML skills are in extremely low demand” in the financial industry. “I’m surprised there isn’t more demand.”But given the salaries available elsewhere in AI, it’s no wonder so few people are entering the industry. The headhunter said these huge fees “are being paid to a few, not many.”The financial companies that employ these people are competing for them with other companies around the world. ”
If the pay isn't very competitive, the job itself needs to be exciting as well. This doesn't seem to always be the case. An engineer at a major bank criticized the financial company's policies. tendency to keep staff in the office and expectations for long working hours. another engineer said the highly regulated nature of banking prevents companies from implementing the most effective AI tools and leads executives to overcommit to AI without understanding how it works.
Not all jobs are like that. Ann AI Engineers in the Banking Industry We recently held an AMA The Bubble, our new anonymous community;sheIt helps banks to shift their focus away from LLMs to smaller language models, where they believe they can get “better value for money.” [those language models are] It can be tailored to suit domain-specific use cases, especially when regulatory requirements are important. ”
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