Feature Store Engineer.
Kansas City.
$160,000
median salary, 7% below the national average
$121,000 to $209,000. Updated for 2026.
The numbers.
Everything you need to negotiate with confidence.
If you are evaluating a Feature Store Engineer offer in Kansas City, MO, here is the reality: $121,000 to $209,000, with $160,000 as the midpoint. 7% below the national average. Feature store engineers build infrastructure that serves ML features at scale, a specialized role that combines data engineering with ML platform knowledge. Do not accept the first number.
Salary range
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How Kansas City compares
Kansas City, MO
$160,000
Cost of living: 7% below average
National Average
$172,000
Kansas City is $12,000 below
What you should know
The Feature Store Engineer landscape in Kansas City is not what most salary sites will tell you. Kansas City straddles Missouri and Kansas, creating a unique dual state job market with strong logistics, tech, and agriculture technology sectors. The metro's central location has made it a hub for distribution centers and supply chain companies. Cerner's healthcare IT presence and a growing startup scene have boosted demand for technology professionals. Feature store engineers build infrastructure that serves ML features at scale, a specialized role that combines data engineering with ML platform knowledge. Experience with systems like Feast, Tecton, or custom feature platforms drives salary above standard data engineering roles. Companies running real-time ML inference at scale pay the highest premiums.
Junior feature store engineers earn $130,000 to $155,000. Engineers with 3 to 5 years of ML infrastructure experience reach $172,000 to $225,000. Senior engineers and tech leads earn $230,000 to $300,000, while staff engineers and ML platform architects can command $310,000 to $400,000. In Kansas City, cost of living sits near the national average, so the numbers you see are roughly what you keep.
Base salary is not the full picture. ML platform companies offer equity packages of 20 to 40% of base salary. Annual bonuses typically range from 12 to 20%. Some firms provide additional compensation for on-call rotations supporting production feature serving systems at $10,000 to $20,000 annually. And on the tax side: missouri's top income tax rate is about 4.8%, and Kansas City adds a 1% earnings tax. Workers living in Kansas face that state's rates instead. Choose your side of the state line carefully. When someone quotes you $160,000, ask what the total package looks like. The gap between base and total comp is where real money hides.
On negotiation: Negotiate which side of the state line you will be based on. Your tax situation differs meaningfully between Missouri and Kansas, and some employers offer flexibility on office location. The range for Feature Store Engineers in Kansas City runs from $121,000 to $209,000. That is not a narrow window. Where you land inside it depends almost entirely on whether you negotiate and how well you prepare.
Top industries in Kansas City
Negotiating in Kansas City
Negotiate which side of the state line you will be based on. Your tax situation differs meaningfully between Missouri and Kansas, and some employers offer flexibility on office location.