The median research engineer posting at a tech startup offers $303K base, with the middle half between $258K and $440K — from 99 live pay ranges at 26 companies.
| Level | Postings | Median | Middle 50% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level not stated | 78 | $349K | $265K–$440K |
| Senior | 8 | $269K | $223K–$300K |
| Staff+ | 12 | $315K | $279K–$506K |
| City | Postings | Median | Middle 50% |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 69 | $425K | $300K–$600K |
| New York | 25 | $600K | $363K–$675K |
| Seattle | 15 | $600K | $394K–$675K |
| Sunnyvale | 6 | $275K | $275K–$275K |
| Company | Postings | Median | Middle 50% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | 26 | $600K | $428K–$675K |
| OpenAI | 15 | $440K | $440K–$440K |
| Cohere | 3 | $393K | $393K–$393K |
| Mercor | 3 | $340K | $335K–$345K |
| Scale AI | 3 | $300K | $257K–$313K |
| Decagon | 6 | $300K | $300K–$300K |
| Etched | 4 | $275K | $275K–$275K |
| Applied Intuition | 6 | $275K | $275K–$275K |
| Exa | 3 | $265K | $265K–$265K |
| Standard Bots | 2 | $256K | $247K–$266K |
| Together AI | 3 | $245K | $245K–$248K |
| Deepgram | 2 | $239K | $219K–$258K |
| Lila Sciences | 4 | $217K | $194K–$249K |
| Waabi | 6 | $212K | $191K–$212K |
| Allen Institute for AI | 2 | $201K | $192K–$209K |
| Research Scientist / Research Engineer - Foundations, Search OpenAI |
$380K–$850K |
| Research Engineer, Code RL (Reinforcement Learning) Anthropic |
$500K–$850K |
| Research Engineer, Computer Use Anthropic |
$500K–$850K |
| Research Engineer, Cybersecurity RL (Reinforcement Learning) Anthropic |
$500K–$850K |
| Research Engineer, Discovery Anthropic |
$350K–$850K |
| Research Engineer, Machine Learning (Reinforcement Learning) Anthropic |
$500K–$850K |
| Research Engineer, Post-Training Model Evaluations Anthropic |
$500K–$850K |
| Research Engineer, Pretraining Scaling Anthropic |
$350K–$850K |
Figures are the midpoint of each pay range published in a job posting (US$, base salary as posted), across open roles at the startups we track, recalculated daily. Postings without a range, interns and contractors are excluded. Updated Oct 27, 2026.