Skills › genai
LLMs jobs: demand and pay (October 2026)
4,616 open data & AI postings at 1,791 companies mention LLMs, or 35.1% of all data & AI postings we track (as of October 18, 2026).
35.1%share of data & AI postings
1,791companies hiring
$210Kmedian pay, US (n=1619)
—week over week (needs more history)
LLMs pay by level
| Level (from title) | Median pay | Postings with pay (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Intern | — | 5 |
| Entry / junior | $130K | 12 |
| Mid (II) | $164K | 24 |
| Senior | $198K | 411 |
| Staff / lead | $238K | 339 |
| Principal | $234K | 87 |
| Manager | $238K | 69 |
| Director+ | $252K | 64 |
| Level not stated | $200K | 608 |
Median of the published range midpoint, US postings in USD, annualized. Shown only when n ≥ 10; “—” means fewer.
Roles that ask for LLMs
| Role | Postings | % of that role |
|---|---|---|
| AI Engineer | 2,260 | 59.8% |
| Machine Learning Engineer | 810 | 41.0% |
| Data Scientist | 417 | 27.1% |
| Data & AI leadership | 262 | 24.6% |
| Data Engineer | 248 | 13.9% |
| AI Research Scientist | 223 | 51.1% |
| Data Architect | 167 | 42.1% |
| Data Analyst | 114 | 10.1% |
| Analytics Engineer | 80 | 21.6% |
| Database Engineer / DBA | 12 | 3.9% |
| BI Developer / Analyst | 12 | 8.0% |
| Data Governance & Quality | 11 | 5.0% |
The weekly Data Skills Index
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How it's measured: a posting counts if its title or description matches the LLMs patterns in our taxonomy. Postings by the vendor itself are excluded. See the methodology.