AI Safety Engineer Salary

How much does a AI Safety Engineer earn across different locations, education levels, & career stages?

An AI Safety Engineer is responsible for designing and testing the protective systems to ensure that AI technologies function dependably by avoiding any possible harm. They develop various methods to ensure the AI systems are honest, secure, and aligned with humanity.
For instance, they build monitoring tools that track and respond to behavioral changes of AI, ensuring any possible exploitation of the AI is controlled. According to the 2024 AI Industry Report, In the previous year alone, there was a reported 65% surge in AI safety engineering roles from the previous year.
In 2021, only 30% of AI corporations conducted unregulated testing. In contrast, now roughly 78% of leading AI companies require safety evaluations, before launching new AI systems into the market.

AI safety engineer roles and skills

What is the average base salary?

**This data is based on the salaries of jobs we post and is updated every five months.**
 Location
 Full-Time
 Part-Time
 Remote
 Entry - Senior
Massachusetts
125000
80000
100000
$84,000 - $140,000
New York
135000
87000
110000
$90,000 - $150,000
California
145000
90000
115000
$92,000 - $160,000
Washington
130000
85000
105000
$88,000 - $145,000

Min. Qualifications

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or Engineering; experience with safety-critical systems or AI infrastructure.

What You Need to Know

What's the difference between an AI Safety Engineer and an AI Safety Research Scientist?

AI Safety Engineers design practical security measures for stopping potential threats in AI systems. Their roles mean more involvement in programming, coding, execution of test protocols, and safety measures applications. Research Scientists intricately investigate and draft papers based on AI theories. These roles are symbiotic, albeit with a division of labor on aspects of the problem.

What tools and frameworks do AI Safety Engineers use daily?

They often use Weights & Biases to track model behavior over time. Testing model reliability comes from tools such as TrojanAI and Robustness Gym. RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) is also frequently used within these systems.

Is this a growing career field, and what industries hire AI Safety Engineers?

Yes. From 2022 to 2024, the rate of job openings for AI safety engineers grew by 130%. There is a demand for AI safety engineers in technology, healthcare, finance, and other industries. Even government agencies employ them now to assist in drafting regulations for AI. Over 60% of Fortune 500 companies expect to make new hires in that area by 2026.

More AI Safety Job Salaries

AI Safety Research Scientist

Conducts research on safe & aligned AI development, earning $115,000–180,000.

View Salary
arrow