AI hardware & chip salaries (2026)
Updated Oct 19, 2026 · computed from 16,379 live job posts
623 open chip and ASIC design roles and 465 inference/GPU roles across the 235 AI companies we track. Chip design roles that post pay have a median midpoint of $216K (p25 $177K, p75 $258K, 232 postings). Data comes from the posted ranges of NVIDIA, Micron, Intel, Marvell, Broadcom and 17 other AI hardware companies, including Cerebras, Etched, Tenstorrent and MatX.
By role
| Role | p25 | Median | p75 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chip / ASIC design (all companies) | $177K | $216K | $258K |
| Inference / GPU engineer (all companies) | $197K | $236K | $285K |
| All roles at AI hardware companies | $197K | $220K | $252K |
| ML engineer at AI hardware companies | $197K | $236K | $236K |
| Research scientist at AI hardware companies | $220K | $248K | $275K |
USD, annual base. Midpoint of each posted range; p25/p75 = 25th/75th percentile.
By chip discipline
| Discipline | p25 | Median | p75 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design verification | $177K | $179K | $220K |
| Physical design / timing | $177K | $216K | $288K |
| RTL / logic design | $160K | $186K | $218K |
| Architecture | $216K | $236K | $300K |
| Analog / mixed-signal / SerDes | $188K | $205K | $218K |
| Photonics | $208K | $236K | $272K |
USD, annual base. Midpoint of each posted range; p25/p75 = 25th/75th percentile.
Who pays chip designers the most
| Company | p25 | Median | p75 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | $400K | $402K | $675K |
| OpenAI | $336K | $356K | $386K |
| Normal Computing | $300K | $300K | $300K |
| Etched | $250K | $260K | $288K |
| Lightmatter | $205K | $225K | $248K |
| SambaNova | $160K | $218K | $218K |
| NVIDIA | $177K | $215K | $236K |
| Astera Labs | $188K | $212K | $232K |
| D-Matrix | $202K | $202K | $202K |
| Waymo | $195K | $195K | $280K |
USD, annual base. Midpoint of each posted range; p25/p75 = 25th/75th percentile.
All roles, by AI hardware company
| Company | p25 | Median | p75 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal Computing | $180K | $300K | $300K |
| Etched | $250K | $255K | $275K |
| NVIDIA | $197K | $236K | $261K |
| D-Matrix | $215K | $222K | $240K |
| SambaNova | $186K | $218K | $245K |
| Lightmatter | $184K | $216K | $245K |
| Astera Labs | $185K | $212K | $228K |
| Extropic | $145K | $200K | $200K |
| Neuralink | $111K | $156K | $176K |
USD, annual base. Midpoint of each posted range; p25/p75 = 25th/75th percentile.
888 of 2,660 open roles at AI hardware companies list a US pay range. Big-company figures cover AI-relevant roles only (we filter by title: AI, GPU, HBM, inference and so on; NVIDIA also includes ASIC/architecture roles). Ranges often span several levels, so we use each range's midpoint.
Roles behind the numbers
Live tables: salary benchmarks · AI hardware hiring this week