{"id":548441,"date":"2026-04-24T14:54:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/548441\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T14:54:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:54:25","slug":"ai-researcher-jobs-pay-650k-salaries-but-its-not-about-the-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/548441\/","title":{"rendered":"AI researcher jobs pay \u00a3650k salaries but it’s not about the money"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past few years, AI labs like Anthropic<\/a> and OpenAI <\/a>have emerged as some of the most coveted companies to work for. There are multiple reasons for this, not least the massive sums they’re paid.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udca5Follow us on WhatsApp for news alerts.<\/a>\ud83d\udca5<\/p>\n

Job postings for Anthropic in London break down salary ranges in both its AI research<\/a> and its engineering divisions. Top paying engineering openings offer salaries up to \u00a3390k, while various AI research roles pay up to \u00a3630k. The lab’s most recent accounts for its UK entity showed that, in 2024, it paid 43 staff members an average of \u00a3288k in ‘salaries and wages,’ alongside \u00a3225k in ‘share-based payments.’<\/p>\n

Other AI firms aren’t as transparent with their UK pay. OpenAI doesn’t show salary ranges in job listings (only 10% of jobs in London actually do<\/a>), and did not break down employee expenses in its 2024 accounts. There were some listing that had salary ranges by virtue of them also being posted in California where it’s a legal requirement, but these only reached up to $370k.<\/p>\n

Deepmind<\/a>‘s most recent accounts show that it spent just over \u00a31bn on employee expenses but, since its researchers are technically google employees, it doesn’t disclose headcount. It had roughly 2,000 UK employees<\/a> a year ago, which suggests average compensation there could be as high as \u00a3505k.<\/p>\n

Anthropic’s offering isn’t that impressive compared to trading firms that are after the same calibre of talent. Quadrature,<\/a> an AI-powered trading firm, paid \u00a32.8m per head in its most recent accounts while the likes of Jane Street <\/a>and Citadel Securities<\/a> pay over \u00a3800k on average<\/a>. Why not just work there?<\/p>\n

Especially for student and graduate talent, the visibility of working in an AI firm is more valuable. “For me, publishing this year is a lot more important than working for a hedge fund,” one AI researcher told us. “If we’re not getting paid an insane amount of money, we want to publish our work.” This doesn’t often mesh with the culture of trading firms, where the most valuable information is proprietary and highly guarded. The prestige of working at an AI lab can take you much further in other industries; one incoming OpenAI intern said he has already received full-time graduate offers from tech startups and scale-ups despite not having started his internship yet.<\/p>\n

There’s also the fact that stock pay earned at these companies could balloon in value. Anthropic, for example, is nearing a valuation of $1tn on the secondaries market. If you don’t think there’s an AI bubble, that value could climb higher still.<\/p>\n

The OpenAI intern, who was also interviewing for quant jobs, said that the mission and challenge of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is another reason people pick AI labs over finance firms. “They’re essentially trying to create a new life form. These labs need the most intelligent, bright people with good morals to figure out how to produce that while doing good for the world.” He said that AI labs, including OpenAI, care strongly about morality in each role they hire, and said you “literally cannot get in unless you really care about it.”<\/p>\n

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you\u2019d like to share?\u00a0Contact: WhatsApp: http:\/\/wa.me\/442079977910<\/a> (+44 20 7997 7910), Telegram: @AlexMcMurray, Signal: @AlexMcMurrayEFC.88 Click here to fill in our anonymous form<\/a>, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the past few years, AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI have emerged as some of the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-548441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}