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  1. Home/
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  4. AI Security Roles

Industry vertical.

AI Security Roles.

Where AI meets adversaries.

26

Tracked roles

$175K

Median salary

$85K - $421K

Full range

By Justin Bartak, Founder & Chief AI Officer·Updated May 2026·Q2 2026 benchmarks

Adversaries are getting better at breaking AI systems faster than most teams can defend them. Red teamers, threat modelers, content safety engineers, AI penetration testers, cybersecurity engineers fluent in ML pipelines. Two scarce specialties stacked. Compensation runs above general AI engineering and above general cybersecurity, because the candidate pool is the intersection of both. Roles below are sorted by base salary.

Roles in ai security roles.

AI Security Roles ranked by base median salary, sourced from Orbyt Intelligence Q2 2026.
RoleLowMedianHigh
Principal AI Safety Engineer$253K$324K$421K
Staff AI Safety Engineer$224K$287K$373K
AI Safety Director$195K$250K$325K
Senior AI Safety Engineer$185K$237K$308K
AI Threat Detection Engineer$164K$210K$273K
AI Security Operations Specialist$160K$205K$267K
AI Red Team Lead$156K$200K$260K
AI Safety Researcher$145K$195K$255K
AI Security & Red Teaming Specialist$145K$195K$255K
AI Red Teamer$140K$188K$248K
AI Safety Engineer$140K$185K$240K
AI Threat Modeler$135K$180K$235K
AI Cybersecurity Specialist$130K$175K$228K
Red Team AI Engineer$137K$175K$228K
AI Agent Security Engineer$137K$175K$228K
Generative AI Safety Engineer$137K$175K$228K
AI Penetration Tester$130K$172K$228K
AI Security Engineer$133K$170K$221K
AI Safety Program Manager$133K$170K$221K
Model Vulnerability Analyst$120K$160K$210K
AI Safety Monitoring Engineer$117K$150K$195K
AI Content Safety Engineer$110K$145K$185K
Junior AI Safety Engineer$113K$144K$188K
AI Food Safety Analyst$101K$130K$169K
AI Cybersecurity Analyst$95K$128K$165K
AI Bias Auditor$85K$115K$148K

Top cities.

Median ai security roles salary across the top U.S. metros for AI compensation. Multiplier reflects local cost of living relative to the national median.

San Francisco, CA

$236K

+35% vs. national

New York, NY

$224K

+28% vs. national

Seattle, WA

$217K

+24% vs. national

Boston, MA

$214K

+22% vs. national

Austin, TX

$180K

+3% vs. national

Denver, CO

$189K

+8% vs. national

Los Angeles, CA

$207K

+18% vs. national

Chicago, IL

$187K

+7% vs. national

Atlanta, GA

$179K

+2% vs. national

Washington DC, DC

$219K

+25% vs. national

Common questions.

Traditional pen testing finds bugs in software. AI red teaming finds failure modes in models: prompt injections, jailbreaks, training data extraction, model inversion, content safety bypasses. The skill overlap is meaningful but not identical, and hiring managers want both.

Both, but mostly attacks. The threat landscape changed faster than regulation can catch up. Real exploits in production systems drove most of the 2025 to 2026 hiring. Regulation will accelerate hiring further as it lands.

Most hires have CS or related, but the highest-paid people in AI security came in through cybersecurity (OSCP, OSEP, CISSP) and learned ML on the job. Adversarial mindset matters more than ML academic credentials.

Related AI hubs.

AI Healthcare Roles

Where AI meets medicine.

AI Finance Roles

Where AI meets capital.

AI Legal & Policy Roles

Where AI meets law and policy.

AI Industrial Roles

Where AI meets the physical world.

AI Consumer & Commerce Roles

Where AI meets the consumer.

AI Creative Roles

Where AI meets craft.

AI Executive Roles

Where AI meets the C-suite.

AI Research Roles

Where AI meets the frontier.

AI Product Roles

Where AI meets the roadmap.

AI Design Roles

Where AI meets the interface.

AI Operations Roles

Where AI meets production.

AI Engineering Roles

Where AI meets the codebase.

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