Xcout IntelJobs that ask for AI skills advertise 17% more pay. At the same employer, the median gap is zero.
US median $138,400 · 95,706 postings
Xcout Pay Pulse
This month's finding
Jobs that ask for AI skills advertise 17% more pay. At the same employer, the median gap is zero.
We read the pay ranges employers post on their own careers sites. In October 2026, 95,706 salaried US postings from 4,851 employers carried a range; the median midpoint was $138,400. Within the same role and seniority, postings that ask for AI skills advertise a median +17% more. Compare the same role inside one employer and the median difference is zero: most of the premium is about which employers ask for AI, not what they pay for it.
$138,400median posted US salary
95,706salaried US postings, 4,851 employers
+17%AI premium, same role and seniority
0%AI premium inside one employer
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Median posted pay by job family, United States
Annual salary midpoints in USD, October 2026. The bar is the middle half of postings, the dot the median. The change is against September 2026 and counts only the 3,309 employers that posted salaried US roles in both months, so a change in which employers we read cannot move it (September 2026: 51,851 postings; October 2026: 95,706). Families with fewer than 100 such postings in either month show no change. On that same panel the median for all roles moved −2.9%, which mixes changes in pay with changes in which roles were posted.
| Job family | Median | vs Sep | Postings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | $177,250 | +2.9% | 4,679 |
| Engineering (other) | $132,000 | +0.8% | 4,278 |
| Project / Program Manager | $147,500 | +4.7% | 3,038 |
| Product Manager | $184,325 | −0.1% | 2,317 |
| Sales Representative | $100,000 | +8.2% | 1,695 |
| Supply Chain / Logistics | $109,300 | −4.4% | 1,561 |
| Accountant | $118,725 | −2.8% | 1,372 |
| Account Executive | $132,750 | −4.7% | 1,346 |
| Account Manager | $127,500 | 0.0% | 1,339 |
| Consultant | $127,250 | −4.9% | 1,241 |
| Technician | $75,000 | +0.9% | 1,045 |
| Administrative / Coordinator | $65,000 | 0.0% | 1,022 |
| Architect | $187,500 | +0.7% | 1,022 |
| Legal / Counsel | $190,000 | −6.5% | 959 |
| Security Engineer | $163,500 | −3.6% | 934 |
| Healthcare Practitioner | $92,500 | −2.5% | 923 |
| QA Engineer | $130,000 | −3.3% | 851 |
| Operations Manager | $118,575 | +2.3% | 822 |
| Nurse | $117,500 | −5.0% | 811 |
| Scientist / Researcher | $144,884 | −3.0% | 810 |
| Solutions / Sales Engineer | $180,700 | −2.3% | 807 |
| Banking / Lending | $61,850 | −18% | 798 |
| Marketing / Comms | $134,300 | −5.6% | 796 |
| DevOps / SRE | $171,525 | +0.4% | 738 |
| Therapist / Counselor | $93,500 | 0.0% | 736 |
| Data Scientist | $175,000 | +1.0% | 729 |
| Sales Manager | $140,000 | −6.7% | 717 |
| Finance / Controller | $139,775 | +2.0% | 668 |
| Financial Analyst | $112,088 | +0.4% | 641 |
| Engineering Manager | $208,400 | +0.8% | 621 |
| Quality Assurance / Control | $123,500 | −3.7% | 611 |
| Clinical Research | $177,950 | +4.2% | 603 |
| Manufacturing / Production | $112,700 | −5.8% | 578 |
| Construction / Trades | $125,000 | +0.7% | 569 |
| Recruiter | $129,350 | −5.9% | 561 |
| ML / AI Engineer | $200,000 | −1.3% | 550 |
Families with at least 100 postings this month. Not shown: Other (no role family); Open Application (not a role); Security / Guard (mostly information-systems and facility security officers, not guards); Driver / Delivery (mixes drivers with program, software and content delivery roles).
By seniority
Median posted pay in each family and seniority with at least 30 postings; a blank cell had fewer. Seniority is read from the title, so a title with no level word counts as mid, and a bank title such as “Java Developer – Vice President” counts as Director+, which pulls that column down for engineering families. The last row covers every family in the report.
| Job family | Intern | Junior | Mid | Senior | Lead / staff | Manager | Director+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | $98k | $168k | $186k | $212k | $159k | ||
| Engineering (other) | $83k | $116k | $150k | $165k | |||
| Project / Program Manager | $165k | $190k | $135k | $162k | |||
| Product Manager | $140k | $178k | $212k | $160k | $235k | ||
| Supply Chain / Logistics | $81k | $135k | $130k | $122k | $208k | ||
| Accountant | $88k | $111k | $85k | $135k | $200k | ||
| Consultant | $105k | $138k | $180k | $168k | $191k | ||
| Technician | $73k | $93k | $86k | ||||
| Administrative / Coordinator | $55k | $66k | $82k | ||||
| Legal / Counsel | $181k | $200k | $183k | $238k | |||
| Security Engineer | $142k | $168k | $183k | $168k | $228k | ||
| QA Engineer | $118k | $147k | $154k | $123k | |||
| Operations Manager | $83k | $147k | $116k | ||||
| Scientist / Researcher | $127k | $151k | $184k | ||||
| All families | $66k | $75k | $107k | $158k | $184k | $132k | $209k |
The AI premium, and where it comes from
A posting “asks for AI skills” when its description or title asks for them (machine learning, LLMs, AI tools and similar), not when the company merely describes itself as an AI business; 11,598 postings that only mention AI are left out of both sides. 22% of the US postings in these families ask for AI skills.
+17%
Same role and seniority, all employers
Median of 79 comparisons (job family × seniority, at least 30 postings on each side; 8,661 AI postings against 18,464). 75 of the 79 favour the AI side; the middle half runs +9.3% to +28%.
0%
Same role and seniority, same employer
Median of 840 comparisons at 306 employers that posted the same family and seniority both with and without AI skills. The AI version paid more in 384, less in 273 and the same in 183; the average is +6.1%.
Read the two together. Employers that ask for AI skills tend to pay more for every role, so comparing across employers credits the skill with the employer's pay level. Inside one employer the same role usually carries the same pay band whether or not the posting asks for AI.
| Job family | All employers | Same employer |
|---|---|---|
| Account Executive | +48% | −5.6% |
| Consultant | +35% | 0% |
| Engineering Manager | +28% | +2.2% |
| Engineering (other) | +28% | +5.1% |
| Security Engineer | +26% | 0% |
| Executive / Admin Assistant | +24% | 0% |
| Legal / Counsel | +21% | 0% |
| Project / Program Manager | +20% | 0% |
| Marketing / Comms | +20% | −4.3% |
| Software Engineer | +20% | +1.0% |
| DevOps / SRE | +17% | +8.1% |
| QA Engineer | +16% | 0% |
| Product / UX Designer | +15% | 0% |
| Product Manager | +14% | 0% |
| Scientist / Researcher | +13% | +1.4% |
| Architect | +7.7% | −4.7% |
| Accountant | +7.3% | 0% |
| Data Engineer | +6.7% | −0.4% |
| Financial Analyst | +2.8% | 0% |
A family is listed only where at least 10 employers can be compared with themselves, so its all-employers figure can be checked against the same-employer one. 21 more families had an all-employers comparison but too few such employers.
Posted pay beside H-1B wages, six occupations
Posted: median salary midpoint of US postings first seen 1 Aug 2026 – 31 Oct 2026, matched to the occupation by job family and title (our mapping, written by hand). H-1B: median wage offered on labor condition applications in the Labor Department's FY2026 Q3 file (fiscal year 2026, October 2025 to June 2026). Updated as the Labor Department publishes each quarter.
This is not a measure of what H-1B workers are paid relative to anyone else. The two sides are different populations over different windows: posted ranges come from employers that publish pay, which over-represents states with pay-transparency laws (California, Washington, New York, Colorado); the H-1B side includes IT outsourcing firms and every US state; an application states a wage offered for a position, not a salary paid; and the occupation mapping is ours.
| Occupation (SOC title) | Posted median | H-1B median | Posted vs H-1B |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software Developers | $178,500 | $145,000 | +23% |
| Data Scientists | $178,000 | $129,709 | +37% |
| Information Technology Project Managers | $182,000 | $139,298 | +31% |
| Software Quality Assurance Analysts And Testers | $128,075 | $108,680 | +18% |
| Computer And Information Systems Managers | $210,000 | $208,662 | +0.6% |
| Business Intelligence Analysts | $129,750 | $119,142 | +8.9% |
More on who files these applications: US visa sponsors.
By state
Median posted pay, October 2026, states with at least 100 postings and 10 employers. Placed by the posting's first listed location (74,101 of 95,706 postings could be placed). A state's median reflects its mix of roles as much as its pay.
By country
Median posted pay in each country's own currency, October 2026, countries with at least 100 postings and 10 employers. The dollar column uses approximate 2026 exchange rates, not the month's rates, and only orders the list. Employers post pay mainly where the law asks for it, so these are not national averages.
| Country | Median | ≈ USD | Postings |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | USD 138,400 | $138k | 95,706 |
| Belgium | EUR 97,150 | $107k | 117 |
| Ireland | EUR 84,550 | $93k | 535 |
| Germany | EUR 82,500 | $91k | 857 |
| Austria | EUR 72,500 | $80k | 131 |
| Netherlands | EUR 72,500 | $80k | 349 |
| Canada | CAD 107,500 | $77k | 5,802 |
| France | EUR 62,500 | $69k | 531 |
| Spain | EUR 59,988 | $66k | 514 |
| Australia | AUD 101,018 | $66k | 292 |
| United Kingdom | GBP 49,650 | $65k | 2,144 |
| Poland | PLN 233,050 | $61k | 216 |
| Italy | EUR 42,500 | $47k | 891 |
| Portugal | EUR 42,000 | $46k | 103 |
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Editions
Every edition is frozen at its own address, so a number you quote or share never changes under the link.
How this is measured
- What we read: job postings on employers' own careers sites (Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, Ashby and other applicant-tracking systems) that state a pay range. A posting belongs to the month it was first seen. Each edition is frozen on the 11th of the following month, after late-arriving descriptions have been read.
- Which pay: annual salaries only, using the midpoint of the posted range, between $20,000 and $1.5 million a year (other currencies converted for that test only). 61,907 hourly US postings this month are excluded, as are 2,337 with a monthly, weekly or unstated interval. Bonuses and equity are not in posted ranges.
- One posting per role: an employer posting the same title at the same range in many locations counts once.
- Roles and seniority are read from the title. A figure needs at least 30 postings; a change needs at least 100 postings (50 for a seniority cell) from employers present in both months.
- AI skills: our classifier reads the posting's description and title. Postings that only mention AI in passing (usually the company describing itself) are left out of both sides.
- States come from the first location a posting lists; countries use each country's own currency, and postings in another currency (often US-remote roles listed abroad) are left out.
- H-1B wages come from the Labor Department's public labor condition application files, as published on US visa sponsors.
What these figures do not show
- They are posted ranges, not salaries paid, and employers that publish pay are not all employers.
- The AI premium across employers is not the value of an AI skill: it mixes the skill with which employers ask for it. Read it beside the same-employer figure.
- Posted pay beside H-1B wages does not show that H-1B workers are paid more or less than anyone.
- A month-over-month change is a change in what was posted, by the same employers; it is not a wage index.
- State and country medians reflect the mix of roles posted there.
Quoting these figures
Free to quote, chart and report on, with attribution: Source: Xcout Intel Pay Pulse (intel.xcout.app/insights/pay-pulse). Reproducing a chart or table needs a link back to this page. Full terms are on the attribution page; how the data is collected is on the methodology page.
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