Pave + Nua Group
The State of AI Talent: A Compensation & Workforce Report
Base salaries for AI talent look almost identical to the broader market. The rest of the package does not. Pave and Nua Group break down what this talent actually costs, where it sits, and how to build pay structures that hold in a market moving this fast.

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The AI Talent Premium Hiding in Plain Sight

Most teams benchmark AI talent the way they benchmark everything else: pull the base salary range, check the percentile, build the band. Do that here and the market looks almost unremarkable. The real competition for this talent is happening in a different part of the package—and the distance between a typical offer and a winning one is far wider than base salary would suggest.

Pave and Nua Group analyzed real-time compensation data across AI Engineering, ML Engineering, and AI Research Scientist roles to find where the premium actually sits, how fast it’s moving, and how far the top of the market has pulled away from the median.

What's Inside

Download the full report to learn:

  • Base salary and new hire equity benchmarks by level for AI Engineering, ML Engineering, and AI Research Scientist—including where each job family leads and where they converge
  • Why competitive pressure at the point of hire is not showing up in base pay, and what that means for your offer strategy
  • The senior-junior split reshaping AI hiring: entry-level offers softening while senior levels keep climbing
  • How band width drives adherence, and why narrow ranges break down fastest in a market moving this quickly
  • Turnover benchmarks for AI and ML talent compared to software engineering—and the geographic concentration limiting your addressable pool
  • Nua Group's framework for identifying which kind of AI company you are, and how that should shape your job architecture and pay structure

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