Generative AI Salary: Your 2025 Guide

The potential salary you can earn in a generative AI career will depend on what role best fits your career goals and what aspect of generative AI you’re most excited to work within. Three potential careers you can explore in generative AI include AI engineer, prompt engineer, and AI writer. Learn more about the average generative AI salary in each of these careers and how factors like where you live, the industry and company you work for, and your level of experience can impact how much you earn. 

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Generative AI for Everyone

Instructed by AI pioneer Andrew Ng, Generative AI for Everyone offers his unique perspective on empowering you and your work with generative AI. Andrew will ...

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What is generative AI?

Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence models with the ability to create unique text, images, video, audio, or code. You can interact with these models with prompts, which are written instructions that tell the model what you’d like it to accomplish. 

Generative AI models use deep neural networks, which learn the underlying patterns of data like text or images. After studying the underlying patterns and characteristics of a huge amount of training data, generative AI models can predict your prompt’s objective. They create an output with the same underlying patterns or characteristics as the item you’re looking for. They then generate the rest of the details randomly using characteristics or traits from other similar items the model observed in training. 

You can use generative AI for a wide variety of use cases, including solving business problems and conducting more effective research in industries like finance, health care, manufacturing, and more. 

Careers in generative AI

If you want to explore a career in generative AI, you can choose from many job titles working with this technology. You could become an AI engineer or research scientist to find new ways to improve generative AI models or to apply generative AI models to solve problems. You could work as a prompt engineer to find creative ways to get great responses from generative AI models. Another potential generative AI career is to become an AI content writer or content reviewer and work with generative AI to create new content or review user-submitted or AI-generated work. 

Generative AI job outlook

Generative AI is a potentially transformative technology that could change the way companies and organizations work forever. Some experts believe that generative AI could be as transformative to the economy as the invention of the steam engine or personal computer. According to a report from MarketsandMarkets, the generative AI market is predicted to grow from $20.9 billion in 2024 to $136.7 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36.7 percent [1]. These factors imply that generative AI will see job growth for the foreseeable future. 

*All salary data as of January 2025

Generative AI salary: AI engineer

As a generative AI engineer, you will use AI principles to design solutions to problems, focusing on the use of generative AI. The average base salary for a generative AI engineer in the United States ranges from $112,693 to $155,695, according to three salary aggregate websites. Explore how the data breaks down from each source [2, 3, 4]:

Factors that impact salary

The exact amount you can earn as a generative AI engineer will depend on factors like how much experience you have in the field, where you live, and the company you work for. Explore how much these variables can affect your salary. 

Experience

As you gain experience working with artificial intelligence, you may qualify for higher-paying work. Glassdoor offers insight into how much your salary can vary depending on your experience in the industry [2]. 

• 0–1 years: $91,096

• 1–3 years: $104,327 

• 4–6 years: $117,680

• 7–9 years: $127,781

• 10–14 years: $146,030

• 15+ years: $164,070

Location

Where you live can also make a big difference in how much you earn. ZipRecruiter lists the top highest-paying cities for generative AI engineers [3]: 

• Portola Valley, CA: $161,492

• Nome, AK: $143,729

• Cupertino, CA: $142,947

• Sacramento, CA: $142,267 

• Berkeley, CA: $141,869

• Sitka, AK: $139,580

• Sunnyvale, CA: $138,097

• Menlo Park, CA: $136,541

• San Francisco, CA: $136,341

• Santa Clara, CA: $136,076

Company

You will find that the company you work for is another reason your salary will vary. Glassdoor lists the top five highest-paying companies for AI engineers as [2]: 

• NVIDIA: $2489,000 to $362,000

• Google: $240,000 to $360,000

• Apple: $233,000 to $343,000

• Meta: $231,000 to $336,000

• X: $221,000 to $319,000

AI prompt engineer average salary 

As a prompt engineer, you will be an expert in writing and creating prompts for generative AI algorithms to get meaningful responses. The average AI prompt engineer salary ranges from $62,977 to $135,507, according to ZipRecruiter and Glassdoor, respectively [5, 6]. The exact salary you can expect to earn will vary based on factors like what company you work for, where you live, and how much education you have in the field. 

Company

One large variable in how much you can earn as a prompt engineer is what company you work for. Glassdoor lists some of the highest-paying companies for prompt engineers as [6]: 

• Google: $230,000 to $348,000

• Soul AI: $145,000 to $217,000

• Srima Tech: $118,000 to $173,000

• Outlier AI: $110,000 to $166,000

Experience

Earning more experience in the field is one way to qualify for a higher-paying job. Glassdoor also offers insight into how experience can impact the average prompt engineer salary [6]: 

• 0–1 years: $98,057

• 1–3 years: $111,244 

• 4–6 years: $122,309

• 7–9 years: $127,692

• 10–14 years: $137,368

• 15+ years: $154,951

Location

The place where you live or work can have an impact on how much you earn due to factors like where top-paying companies are located and how competitive the job market is for prompt engineers. ZipRecruiter reports some of the highest-paying cities for prompt engineers as [5]: 

• Cupertino, CA: $77,698

• Berkeley, CA: $77,112 

• Redwood City, CA: $77,106

• Berlin Corners, VT: $76,971

• San Carlos, CA: $76,044

• Fremont, CA: $74,630

• Mountain View, CA: $74,293

• East Palo Alto, CA: $74,208

AI writer or content reviewer salary

As an AI writer or content reviewer, you will be responsible for creating content with the help of generative AI models. The average salary for an AI writer or content reviewer ranges from $44,378 to $84,151 a year, according to Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter, respectively [7, 8]. As with other careers, the exact amount you’ll earn in the positions depends on several variables. 

Company

Among the variables that impact how much you earn, the company you work for is influential. Below is the total pay for the top 10 highest-paying companies for a content reviewer in the United States, per Glassdoor [7]. Employers include X, JJK, and GoodRx.

• X: $133,000 to $207,000

• JJK: $57,000 to $104,000

• GoodRx: $60,000 to $97,000

• Meta: $52,000 to $91,000

• US Department of Defense: $52,000 to $83,000

Experience

Additionally, you can explore Glassdoor’s data to see how your salary might vary based on experience [7]:

• 0–1 years: $42,954

• 1–3 years: $44,608

• 4–6 years: $46,189

• 7–9 years: $48,104

• 10–14 years: $51,551

• 15+ years: $59,204

Location

Where you live and work also makes a big difference in how much you can earn as an AI writer. According to ZipRecruiter, the top ten highest-paying cities for AI writers are [8]: 

• Barrow, AK: $104,834

• Nome, AK: $104,390

• Hettinger, ND: $104,014

• Berkeley, CA: $103,038

• Sitka, AK: $101,375

• San Bruno, CA: $100,535

• Wyoming, WY: $100,361

• Mountain View, CA: $99,2213

Learn generative AI on Coursera

You can begin a career in generative AI by developing generative AI skills and learning more about what you can do with this technology. To get started, explore programs and courses to help you learn the skills you need on Coursera. For example, you could enroll in Generative AI with Large Language Models offered by Deep Learning.AI and AWS to learn about generative AI, large language models, and machine learning. 

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Generative AI with Large Language Models

In Generative AI with Large Language Models (LLMs), you’ll learn the fundamentals of how generative AI works, and how to deploy it in real-world ...

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