Skills › ml
NLP jobs: demand and pay (October 2026)
758 open data & AI postings at 421 companies mention NLP, or 5.8% of all data & AI postings we track (as of October 18, 2026).
5.8%share of data & AI postings
421companies hiring
$200Kmedian pay, US (n=265)
—week over week (needs more history)
NLP pay by level
| Level (from title) | Median pay | Postings with pay (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Entry / junior | — | 3 |
| Senior | $196K | 73 |
| Staff / lead | $237K | 49 |
| Principal | — | 7 |
| Manager | $234K | 11 |
| Director+ | — | 4 |
| Level not stated | $178K | 118 |
Median of the published range midpoint, US postings in USD, annualized. Shown only when n ≥ 10; “—” means fewer.
Roles that ask for NLP
| Role | Postings | % of that role |
|---|---|---|
| Machine Learning Engineer | 242 | 12.2% |
| AI Engineer | 187 | 5.0% |
| Data Scientist | 165 | 10.7% |
| AI Research Scientist | 65 | 14.9% |
| Data & AI leadership | 34 | 3.2% |
| Data Engineer | 23 | 1.3% |
| Data Analyst | 15 | 1.3% |
| Data Architect | 15 | 3.8% |
| Data Governance & Quality | 7 | 3.2% |
| Analytics Engineer | 2 | 0.5% |
| BI Developer / Analyst | 2 | 1.3% |
| Database Engineer / DBA | 1 | 0.3% |
The weekly Data Skills Index
What moved this week: rising and falling skills, pay by skill and level, new vs closed data & AI roles. Free, one email a week.
One email a week. Double opt-in, one-click unsubscribe. Privacy
How it's measured: a posting counts if its title or description matches the NLP patterns in our taxonomy. Postings by the vendor itself are excluded. See the methodology.