{"slug": "levels-fyi-tells-lds-the-ai-pay-premium-has-stopped-growing", "title": "Levels.fyi tells LDS the AI pay premium has stopped growing", "summary": "Levels.fyi's compensation analysis for Lets Data Science found that the median AI pay premium over non-AI peers has stopped growing, with an L3 ML/AI engineer earning 1.34 times a non-AI peer in late 2024 and 1.29 times by mid-2026. The 90th-percentile-to-median ratio for ML/AI engineers widened from 2.06 to 2.23, indicating growing concentration, while the median recruiter at OpenAI earns about $580,000 on a sample of seven, versus $155,000 in the broad market.", "body_md": "Levels.fyi prepared a compensation analysis for Lets Data Science from its US salary submissions, and the findings cut against the prevailing story. The median AI premium is real but has stopped growing: an L3 ML/AI engineer earned about 1.34 times a non-AI peer in late 2024 and about 1.29 times by mid 2026. ML engineers have held a stable gap of roughly 40 percent over data scientists for two years, with no convergence. What is growing is concentration: the 90th-percentile-to-median ratio for ML/AI engineers widened from 2.06 to 2.23 while the broad software population barely moved, and the extreme numbers are employer effects. The median recruiter at OpenAI earns about 580,000 dollars on a sample of seven, which Levels.fyi flags as directional, against 155,000 dollars in the broad market.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/levels-fyi-tells-lds-the-ai-pay-premium-has-stopped-growing", "canonical_source": "https://letsdatascience.com/news/levelsfyi-tells-lds-the-ai-pay-premium-has-stopped-growing-a893d96e", "published_at": "2026-08-26 15:14:50+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-26 15:46:20.718487+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "machine-learning", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Levels.fyi", "Lets Data Science", "OpenAI"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/levels-fyi-tells-lds-the-ai-pay-premium-has-stopped-growing", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/levels-fyi-tells-lds-the-ai-pay-premium-has-stopped-growing.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/levels-fyi-tells-lds-the-ai-pay-premium-has-stopped-growing.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/levels-fyi-tells-lds-the-ai-pay-premium-has-stopped-growing.jsonld"}}