The median research engineer posting in San Francisco at a tech startup offers $425K base, with the middle half between $300K and $600K — from 69 live pay ranges at 14 companies.
| Level | Postings | Median | Middle 50% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level not stated | 59 | $425K | $293K–$600K |
| Senior | 4 | $300K | $274K–$300K |
| Staff+ | 6 | $463K | $307K–$656K |
| Company | Postings | Median | Middle 50% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | 26 | $600K | $428K–$675K |
| OpenAI | 15 | $440K | $440K–$440K |
| Mercor | 3 | $340K | $335K–$345K |
| Scale AI | 3 | $300K | $257K–$313K |
| Decagon | 6 | $300K | $300K–$300K |
| Exa | 3 | $265K | $265K–$265K |
| Together AI | 3 | $245K | $245K–$248K |
| Lila Sciences | 4 | $217K | $194K–$249K |
| 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.