AI engineers earn over $3,000 a month

AI or machine learning engineers’ salaries are more than twice that of backend engineers ($1,300) and game developers ($1,215), according to a recent report by recruitment company TopDev.

In the industry hierarchy, they rank only behind architects, managers and chief technology officers and chief information officers. CTOs and CIOs are at the top with a salary of $5,776.

AI engineers are mostly recruited in security, high-tech and fintech.

Others for whom there is rising demand amid the Covid-19 pandemic are engineers in cloud ($3,121) and DevOps ($2,057), a combination of software development and IT operations.

TopDev estimated the number of IT hires to increase by 36.5 percent this year to 117,180.

The growth last year had been a mere 1.9 percent.

Demand for IT staff is rising, while Covid-19 impacts have only had a minor effect on their income, the report said. Nearly 43 percent of companies TopDev surveyed plan to recruit 11-50 IT workers this year.

Nearly 73 percent of IT employees said they were happy with their jobs and are not looking for a new one, the survey said.

Rising demand for online shopping is set boost the development of AI, cloud, fintech, payments, e-commerce, and retail, it said.