AI-skilled ai research roles are growing faster than the broader market. Here's what's hiring right now, who's hiring most, and what they're paying.
AI-skilled ai research roles are growing as a share of total ai research hiring in every quarter we've measured. The hiring is concentrated at four kinds of companies, and the candidates who stand out share a small set of traits.
The bigger picture: The path is paper-quality output. Either through a PhD program with strong publication track, an internship at a major lab, or paper reproduction work that demonstrates research engineering fluency. The labs hire on demonstrated research output more than credentials, and the path through internships is the most reliable.
Live Listings
AI Pulse tracks 3,897 job postings across all functions. Of those, 75% of ai research postings mention AI as a required or preferred skill. We refresh the dataset weekly.
The listings below are live and AI-skilled. Click through for the full description, salary band, and apply link.
Hiring Trends
The companies hiring most aggressively for AI-skilled ai research roles fall into four buckets:
What They're Asking For
The most-cited requirements in AI-skilled ai research postings, in order of frequency:
What's notably absent from most ai research postings: ML PhD, Python expertise, deep math. AI roles outside engineering rarely require those.
Pay Bands
Based on AI Pulse's salary data, AI-skilled ai research roles pay 126% more than non-AI ai research roles. Median total compensation:
For the full salary breakdown including geo cuts and top-paying companies, see the salary page.
How To Apply
For AI-skilled ai research roles, three things move you up the stack:
For the full transition path including comp at each level, see the career path page.
A Worked Example
Here's the kind of shipped work that gets an AI-skilled ai research pro to the top of the application stack:
A research engineer at a major lab reproduced a published frontier post-training paper from scratch in two weeks, including the full distributed training setup, eval suite, and ablations. The reproduction surfaced a subtle bug in the original paper's eval methodology that the original authors confirmed and corrected. The engineer's writeup drew a senior research scientist offer at a different lab at +60% total comp.
The pattern matters more than the specific tools or numbers. Documented work, measurable outcomes, and a story you can tell externally are the three things that move ai research pros from median to top quartile in 2026.
Putting It Together
Jobs is one piece of the AI-for-ai research story. The full picture covers what AI is changing about the work (the risk page), the skills employers want (the skills page), the tools AI-fluent pros use (the tools page), what the work pays (the salary page), where the hiring is happening (the jobs page), the curriculum to close any gaps (the learn page), and the career path that connects them (the career page).
Most ai research pros end up reading three or four of these pages before they make a move, because the questions are connected. The skills you need depend on the role you're targeting; the salary band depends on the seniority and company type; the curriculum that gets you there depends on what you're starting from. The hub at /ai-for-research/ ties the pieces together with the strategic synthesis: what's actually happening in ai research, what to do about it, and how to think about your next move.
If you're early in the process, start with the risk page for the honest read on what AI is and isn't changing in ai research. If you're closer to a job move, the jobs page and career page are the highest-impact reads. If you're trying to grow inside your current role, the learn page is the practical sequence.
Common Questions
The questions below come from ai research pros at every stage, junior to executive. If you don't see yours, the related pages link out to the deeper coverage on each topic.
AI Pulse tracks roughly 2,922 live AI-skilled ai research postings at any given time, drawn from a 3,897-job dataset that refreshes weekly. The trendline is up across every quarter we've measured.
Browse the AI Pulse job board for live AI-skilled ai research postings. AI labs, AI-native scale-ups, big tech AI orgs, and public companies retooling around AI are the four buckets hiring most actively.
Usually no. Outside of AI engineering specifically, most AI roles want working fluency with AI tools, not ML credentials. Domain expertise plus AI literacy is the winning combination.
It depends on the company type. AI labs lean hybrid in SF, NYC, or London. AI-native scale-ups lean remote. Public companies vary. Remote AI-native is often the best pay-per-hour option.
Pick one AI tool from the tools page, build a workflow that maps to your existing job, document the result, and add it to your resume. Most candidates skip this step. The few who don't move ahead fast.
Keep Going
The pages below cover the rest of the picture. Each one is a self-contained answer to a different long-tail question. Most ai research pros end up reading three or four before they apply somewhere or make their next move.
Methodology
Every number on this page comes from a continuously updated dataset of 22,351 weekly job postings across 42 roles and 14 industries. Salary figures are derived from postings that disclose compensation and weighted by seniority, location, and remote status. AI penetration percentages reflect the share of postings in each function that explicitly require or prefer AI skills. Premium calculations compare median compensation for postings tagged AI-skilled against postings in the same function and seniority without AI requirements. The dataset refreshes every Sunday; the snapshot used for this page is dated the week shown above.
Sources & notes. Source dataset: AI Pulse weekly job posting index (n=22,351). Salary disclosure rate: 6.4% of postings include compensation. Premium calculations require minimum n=20 postings per role-seniority cell. Updated weekly. For methodology questions, see the About page.
Last updated: 2026-05-23.
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