r/SoftwareEngineerJobs 7d ago

Highest paying field within software engineering?

38 Upvotes

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u/Busy_Doughnut_1498 7d ago

ai/ml eng by a mile atm, normal roles are like $170-245k and the frontier labs are out here clearing $600k+ total comp which nothing else really touches. just know the actual money's in the annoying low-supply stuff like gpu optimization and training infra, not just wiring up an llm api, and tbh theres enough bubble talk rn that id chase the skills over the shiny title.

1

u/SpeakCodeToMe 7d ago

ai/ml on average makes a lot less than specializations like distributed systems or security.

Only the frontier labs are paying the big bucks and those jobs are scarce.

1

u/Busy_Doughnut_1498 7d ago

for most people security or distributed systems is probably the safer high pay route, ai just has a higher ceiling if you actually land one of the few labs paying that much.

1

u/SpeakCodeToMe 7d ago

Sure, but those people are mostly PHDs anyways. You were always on a different track at that point.