Salary data revealed: Here’s how much 16 top US and European AI startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face are paying staffers

Cloud-based data and AI startup Databricks was founded in 2013 out of a project at the University of Berkeley, California.

Ten years later, the company touts a $43 billion valuation — and is anticipated to go public in the coming years. It has raised around $4 billion in funding from investment heavyweights such as Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, Nvidia, and Blackrock.

Databricks makes data management more simple for businesses and enterprises. Its platform is used to test and deploy machine learning and AI applications, and it has a cohort of high-profile clients such as Shell and Microsoft.

Amy Reichanadter, chief people officer, told BI that the company’s compensation philosophy is “centered on fair and consistent pay practices and anchored by compensation ranges that are globally aligned and locally competitive.”

“Transparency is a core element of our culture at Databricks and that applies to how we think about sharing compensation data,” she said.

“Internally, employees have access to their own job level and compensation ranges. Externally, we post on all US and Canadian job postings the base salary range for all non-sales roles and the on-target earning range for sales positions.”

Here’s what Databricks is offering talent in its US offices:

Engineering

• Backend engineer: $134,992
• Engineering manager: $180,000 – $207,800
• Manager, security engineering: $190,000
• Principal software engineer: $285,500
• Senior cloud infrastructure engineer: $126,500
• Senior developer advocate: $145,246
• Senior incident response engineer: $187,000
• Senior IT application engineer: $168,000
• Senior manager – Identity: $185,000
• Senior manager, engineering: $237,000
• Senior manager, incident response: $200,000
• Senior security engineer: $137,100
• Senior software engineer: $163,250 – $210,000
• Senior staff software engineer: $215,800
• Software engineer: $121,000 – $175,000
• Software engineer – platform: $146,000
• Software engineer – serverless: $150,000
• Software engineer III: $130,000 – $150,000
• Software engineer IV: $133,100 – $160,000
• Software engineer L3: $138,000 – $147,000
• Software engineer L4: $148,013 – $150,000
• Sr. Devops engineer: $127,150
• Sr. Manager, security software engineering: $222,000
• Staff security engineer: $170,300 – $192,729
• Staff security engineer, detection: $201,402
• Staff site reliability engineer: $150,000
• Staff software engineer: $180,000 – $202,000
• Systems engineer: $142,000
• Technical escalation manager: $129,200 – $135,000
• Technical lead backline escalations: $130,000 – $172,425
• Trust and safety engineer: $130,000

Product

• Senior it product manager – Salesforce: $130,500
• Product security engineer: $138,000
• Product security engineer II: $136,600
• Senior manager, product management: $240,000
• Senior product manager: $160,000
• Senior staff product manager, pricing: $220,000
• Staff product manager: $180,000 – $197,600
• Staff product manager, revenue: $193,000
• Staff product security architect: $170,300
• Staff product security engineer: $200,000

Architecture

• Competitive intelligence architect: $165,000
• Senior cloud infrastructure architect: $145,000
• Staff integration architect: $214,200
• Delivery solutions architect: $125,000 – $140,000
• Lead resident solutions architect: $200,300
• Partner solutions architect: $145,000
• Resident solutions architect: $120,000 – $150,000
• Resident solutions architect, regional lead: $199,800 – $201,968
• Senior delivery solutions architect: $156,700 – $165,000
• Senior partner solutions architect: $127,596
• Senior solutions architect: $136,000 – $196,200
• Senior solutions architect, digital native business: $145,454
• Senior specialist solutions architect: $155,000 – $170,000
• Solutions architect: $117,000 – $180,400
• Specialist solutions architect: $135,000 – $185,000
• Sr. specialist solution architect: $162,510

Data

• Data scientist: $135,000.00 – $171,300
• Data analyst: $96,500
• IT data engineer: $104,000
• Senior data engineer: $133,300 – $169,562
• Senior data infrastructure engineer: $195,000
• Senior data scientist: $158,000 – $183,310
• Senior revenue data and business intelligence analyst: $135,500
• Staff data engineer: $160,000
• Staff data infrastructure engineer: $200,300
• Staff data scientist: $160,700

Revenue and finance

• Manager, revenue analytics: $188,200
• Revenue transformation and strategy manager: $147,800
• Senior financial analyst: $115,000
• Senior financial analyst – Revenue: $115,000
• Senior revenue accountant: $107,700

Solutions engineering

• Associate technical solutions engineer: $95,000
• Backline technical solutions engineer: $100,000 – $135,000
• Senior delivery solutions engineer: $126,000 – $138,500
• Senior industry solutions manager: $201,000
• Senior resident solutions engineer: $138,000 – $160,000
• Senior solutions consultant: $123,838 – $158,000
• Senior solutions engineer: $108,500 – $150,000
• Senior specialist solutions engineer: $130,000 – $159,200
• Senior technical solutions engineer: $130,000 – $149,153
• Solutions consultant: $120,000
• Sr. backline technical solutions engineer: $153,300
• Sr. technical solutions engineer: $134,000
• Staff technical solutions engineer: $157,477
• Staff technical solutions engineer, practice lead: $127,150
• Technical solutions engineer: $100,000 – $104,500

Salesforce

• Senior salesforce engineer: $168,000
• Salesforce architect: $158,300

Operations

• Senior IT business systems analyst: $120,000
• Senior manager, operations: $160,000
• Staff people analyst: $150,000
• Strategy and operations manager, customer success: $154,700
• Strategy and operations manager, field engineering: $154,700

Sales

• Senior staff commercial operations: $210,000

Customer success

• Associate customer success engineer: $98,000
• Customer success engineer: $122,700 – $143,936
• Customer success strategy and operations manager: $112,500
• Enterprise account executive, geo accts – financial services: $160,000
• Enterprise account executive, HLS: $160,000
• Manager, customer success: $145,454
• Senior customer success engineer: $128,500 – $155,000
• Staff customer success engineer: $150,384
• Staff digital customer success engineer: $160,000

Marketing

• Principal engagement manager: $158,600
• Principal industry solutions marketing manager: $185,000
• Senior engagement manager: $169,300
• Senior product marketing manager: $170,000 – $171,600
• Sr. product marketing manager: $200,000

User experience

• Senior UX designer: $167,200

Recruitment

• Senior staff recruiter: $200,000
• Staff recruiter: $189,696

Leadership

• Director, engineering: $250,286
• Director, product finance: $235,581
• Director, technical solutions: $187,200
• Industry solutions director: $158,371
• Senior director IT product management, order to cash: $272,700
• Senior director, business value consulting: $170,130

Program

• Senior program manager: $145,000
• Senior technical program manager: $155,000 – $176,800
• Technical program manager: $150,000 – $160,000

Launched in 2015, OpenAI catapulted to prominence after releasing its AI tool ChatGPT-3 in November 2022. The startup, which is currently estimated to be valued around $80 billion, conducts research into AI and develops large language models (LLMs).

It raised a mammoth $10 billion round from Microsoft in 2023, with Bloomberg reporting that the startup is fundraising another round that will boost its valuation up to $100 billion.

OpenAI has been reported to pay hefty salary packages to employees that total up to $900,000, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Here’s what OpenAI is offering talent in its US offices:

Product:

Member of product staff: $135,990

HR:

Technical HR specialist: $110,000

Cloud provider Coreweave, which launched in 2017, has soared to prominence as demand for cloud computing power and graphics processing units (GPUs) heats up.

The startup initially offered GPUs and cloud computing resources for blockchain-related projects. Its cofounder Brian Venturo has been able to tap into a bundle of cheap GPUs sold by a now-insolvent cryptocurrency farm. Now, Coreweave has pivoted beyond the blockchain market, and offers its services to generative AI companies as well.

The startup also has an unusual financial structure: backed by Nvidia, it has bagged a $2.3 billion debt facility using Nvidia’s coveted H100 GPU chips as collateral.

Here’s what Coreweave is offering talent in its US offices:

Engineering:

Senior infrastructure engineer: $230,000

Founded in 2012, AI drug discovery company Exscientia emerged as a spinout from the University of Dundee. It uses AI in a bid to develop medicine and drugs more efficiently. It is also the first company to have an AI-designed molecule reach the clinical trials phase, according to its website.

In 2021, the company went public on the NASDAQ market with a $510 million IPO — the largest for any European biotech up to that point. It employs over 400 employees, per PitchBook estimates, across global markets from the US to Japan.

Here’s what it was offering to those joining its research team in 2023:

AI research scientist: $147, 987

Quantum mechanics research scientist: $141,300

Founded in 2011, Celonis sells software to analyse and optimize the processes of production, human resources, and logistics companies.

The Munich-based company, which opened a second HQ in New York in 2016, is valued at $13 billion after a series of rounds backed by investors such as Blackstone and investment firm T. Rowe Price.

Essentially an automated management consultancy, Celonis has moved to capitalize on the buzzy generative AI space with its acquisition of AI business process management startup Symbio. The integration allows companies to assess processes holistically rather than individually and cut out unnecessary steps, the company claims.

A Celonis spokesperson said that it doesn’t publish salary structure information externally but that it offers market-“benchmarked salaries as part of competitive total rewards packages.”

It considers a number of factors, including the role, its location, and the applicant’s qualifications, skills, and experiences when deciding compensation.

Here’s what Celonis is offering its staffers in the US:

Engineering

• Senior software engineer: $170,000 – $200,000
• Software engineer: $140,000 – $180,000
• Solution engineer: $90,000
• Solution engineer – innovation expert: $123,000
• Application product engineer: $135,000
• Senior ecosystem technology consultant: $130,000

Product

• Senior product analytics engineer: $214,000
• Senior product designer: $200,000
• Senior product manager: $109,200 – $147,600
• Product manager: $140,000
• Lead product designer: $250,000

Leadership

• Chief of staff: $220,000
• Director, customer transformation: $230,000
• Director, customer value architects: $229,600
• Finance manager: $180,000
• VP Corporate development: $270,000

Founded in 2013 in Paris, Dataiku developed a centralized data platform to help businesses manage and scale their data and enterprise AI.

The now New York-headquartered company was valued at $3.7 billion after a $200 million raise in December 2022 for what it dubs “everyday AI.” It targets a range of industries as customers, from finance and pharmaceuticals to utilities and healthcare, to help them incorporate AI into their processes and operations.

Here’s what the firm offered staffers in the US for different roles:

Engineering

• Partner solutions architect: $175,000

Sales

• Sales engineer: $176,000 – $200,000
• Senior sales engineer: $184,000

Customer

• Enterprise customer success engineering manager: $136,000
• Technical account managers: $210,000

Founded in 2014, Tractable works at the intersection of AI and insurance. It uses customer photos of damaged properties or cars to accelerate assessment, repair, and settle claims more quickly.

The London-based company, which also has an office in New York, raised $65 million from SoftBank, Silicon Valley Venture Group, and Insight Partners in July. It didn’t specify its valuation at the time, but PitchBook recorded a $500 million price tag.

It had open roles across customer success.

• Customer solutions engineer: $110,000
• Principal customer success manager: $161,000

Canadian AI business Cohere has been on the radar in a big way recently after raising a major funding round in 2023.

Based in Toronto, Cohere is an AI business aimed at enterprise users and its cloud-agnostic platform means it can be used inside public clouds plus new and existing private clouds.

The company’s LLMs come in multiple languages, trained on data from native speakers, and hope to stand out due to its focus on enterprises.

Investors seem to agree, with the startup bringing in $270 million at a more than $2 billion valuation last June, with fresh talks over a higher valuation though to be in the pipeline.

Here’s what Cohere is offering talent in its US offices:

Engineering:

Machine learning engineer $160,000

Technical:

Member of technical staff $300,000

Product:

Senior product engineer $240,000

Senior product manager, foundation models $275,000

Business Operations:

Strategy & Business Operations Associate $270,000

London-based Wayve is an AI company for autonomous vehicles.

Founded in 2017, the startup took a different approach to much of the rest of the market by focusing on AI rather than radars and cameras to create autonomous vehicles.

Backed by Microsoft, the company uses a computer vision system known as “semantic segmentation,” a process developed by CEO and founder Alex Kendall as part of his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge.

The development of Wayve’s AI-powered self-driving technology has seen it raise more than $250 million in venture capital funding from Balderton Capital, Richard Branson, and Baillie Gifford at a more than $1 billion valuation.

Here’s what the company offered its engineering staff in the US:

Applied scientist: $200,000- $215,000

Machine learning engineer: $240,000

San Francisco-based Adept AI, which launched in 2021, is a research lab that is developing machine learning and AI models to automate software services.

The startup raised a $350 million Series B in February 2023, led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital. The round catapulted its valuation to at least $1 billion, Forbes reported.

Adept wants to go beyond developing chatbots and use AI to construct digital assistants that can actually “turn text commands into verbal actions,” according to Forbes.

Here’s how much its member of technical staff made in 2023:

Member of technical staff: $183,000 – $210,000

British startup Graphcore — which positioned itself as a go-to industry giant for providing GPUs — was once worth $3 billion. Backed by the likes of Sequoia, Balderton, and Microsoft, the startup expanded to over seven global markets at the peak of its growth. In 2022, BI first reported that Sequoia had slashed its stake in the startup, culling its valuation.

Its recent financial results also indicated that the startup needs more money to stay afloat. BI reported that VCs are speculating about the company’s potential sale, although the news has not yet been confirmed.

Here’s how much staff made at the company between 2021 to 2023:

AI application specialist: $214,760

AI applications engineer: $195,000

Founded in 2016, machine learning startup Hugging Face aims to allow companies to implement AI into their own products and workflows.

The New York-based startup offers clients free and paid functions, the latter including AutoTrain, a platform that helps them to train AI models, and Infinity, a tool that speeds up the rate at which a model processes data.

In August 2023, the company raised a $235 million Series C from the likes of Nvidia, Salesforce, Amazon, and Google. This catapulted it to a $4.5 billion valuation. It aims to increase its headcount with the fresh funds, TechCrunch reported.

Here’s how much its engineering staff made in 2023:

Machine learning engineers: $100,000 – $166,046

Jasper bills itself as an AI copilot for marketers, offering a host of tools such as generating content using AI and providing companies with marketing analytics.

Founded in 2018, the Texas-based startup secured $140 million in Series A funding in October 2022, pushing its valuation to $1.5 billion. The Information since reported that the startup has slashed its internal valuation as its growth stymied in 2023. It also reportedly cut an unknown number of employees in July 2023.

Here’s how much its staff made in 2022 and 2023:

Engineering:

DevX engineer: $300,000

Staff data engineer: $166,000

Staff machine learning engineers: $190,000 – $215,000

Product:

Senior product analytics manager: $160,000

Founded by a cohort of former OpenAI staffers, Anthropic was set up in 2021 with the goal of creating AI models that are more “steerable and reliable.” It bills itself as a public benefit corporation, which means that it operates with the goals of generating profit and having a positive societal impact.

The startup, which secured $750 million in December 2023, has a slew of high-profile backers, including Amazon, Alphabet, Salesforce, and Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency group run by FTX’s former, disgraced CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Its current valuation stands at around $7.25 billion — still a way away from its rival OpenAI.

Here’s how much its staff made from 2021 to 2023:

Chief of Staff: $278,840

Member of technical staff: $210,000 – $270,000

Operations staff: $90,000 – $135,000

Engineering:

Research engineer: $235,000

Software engineer: $235,000

Systems engineer: $225,000

AI image generator Midjourney benefited from the AI frenzy that followed after the launch of ChatGPT-3. Launched in 2020, the startup is bootstrapped, reportedly raking in an annual recurring revenue of $200 million.

The company has also been at the center of a copyright controversy, with independent artists accusing the platform of illegally using their work to train its datasets — while offering them no compensation.

Here’s how much the company paid its engineering talent in 2023:

Senior software engineer: $200,000

Senior software development engineer, machine learning: $155,000

Generative AI startup Runway is a New York City-based business that uses AI models to power image and video editing tools. The company was founded in 2018 by then-students at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and allows creators to generate full videos from mere text prompts.

The company has been in investor’s sights, having raised $236.5 million across rounds from funds like Coatue, Salesforce Ventures, and AI chip giant Nvidia. Runway’s tech was used in the Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once and is valued at $1.5 billion following a recent investment by Google, among other firms.

Here’s what the company offered its engineering staff in 2023:

Principal research scientist: $130,000

Senior software engineer: $115,000-$190,000

Software engineer: $180,000