Skills › mlops
MLOps jobs: demand and pay (October 2026)
1,628 open data & AI postings at 851 companies mention MLOps, or 12.4% of all data & AI postings we track (as of October 18, 2026).
12.4%share of data & AI postings
851companies hiring
$205Kmedian pay, US (n=546)
—week over week (needs more history)
MLOps pay by level
| Level (from title) | Median pay | Postings with pay (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Intern | — | 1 |
| Entry / junior | — | 4 |
| Mid (II) | — | 8 |
| Senior | $195K | 144 |
| Staff / lead | $235K | 120 |
| Principal | $240K | 34 |
| Manager | $230K | 25 |
| Director+ | $238K | 28 |
| Level not stated | $178K | 182 |
Median of the published range midpoint, US postings in USD, annualized. Shown only when n ≥ 10; “—” means fewer.
Roles that ask for MLOps
| Role | Postings | % of that role |
|---|---|---|
| Machine Learning Engineer | 659 | 33.3% |
| AI Engineer | 371 | 9.8% |
| Data Scientist | 258 | 16.8% |
| Data & AI leadership | 120 | 11.3% |
| Data Engineer | 112 | 6.3% |
| Data Architect | 71 | 17.9% |
| AI Research Scientist | 23 | 5.3% |
| Analytics Engineer | 7 | 1.9% |
| Data Analyst | 4 | 0.4% |
| Database Engineer / DBA | 3 | 1.0% |
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How it's measured: a posting counts if its title or description matches the MLOps patterns in our taxonomy. Postings by the vendor itself are excluded. See the methodology.