What does a ai engineer in san francisco earn?

SF compensation runs at the top end of the band. Founding engineer offers commonly clear $200k base + 0.5–2% equity at seed-to-Series-A. The typical band for a ai engineer runs $160k–$260k base + significant equity.

Are AI engineer jobs in san francisco remote-friendly?

2 of the current 46 listings (4%) allow remote work; the rest are on-site or hybrid in San Francisco.

What companies hire AI engineer jobs in san francisco?

Jobs Base aggregates listings across YC-backed startups, growth-stage companies, and selected larger companies hiring with builder-role characteristics.

What's the difference between a ai engineer and a regular ai engineer?

Jobs Base only lists builder roles. Positions where one person owns the product end-to-end. We filter out ticket-driven, narrowly-scoped roles even when the title matches. About 9% of listings scraped match this definition.

AI Engineer Jobs in San Francisco

San Francisco is where AI engineer hiring is concentrated globally. Roles come from foundation-model companies (rare hires), AI-application startups (common), and traditional SaaS companies bolting AI features onto an existing product (most common). The work varies sharply by company type. At foundation-model companies it's closer to research, at application startups it's closer to product engineering with extra eval and prompt work. Comp is the highest globally; expect $200k base floors at well-funded companies.

46 active 4% remote median salary $250k

1.	AI Engineer (EQL Tech (sales & engineering talent)) San Francisco, California, United States+1 \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| llm apis, vector databases, fine-tuning \| 3mo ago
2.	AI Engineer (Varick Agents) San Francisco, California, United States \| $175,000 – $225,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| llms, agent architectures, evaluation systems \| 3mo ago
3.	AI Product Engineer (Speak) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| mid \| react, node, typescript \| 3mo ago
4.	Sr. AI Agent Engineer (Greylock Partners) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| python, llm, vector search \| 3mo ago
5.	Applied AI Engineer (Artisan) San Francisco, United States+2 \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| ai, llm, prompt engineering \| 3mo ago
6.	Applied AI Engineer — Greylock Investment Team (Greylock Partners) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| ai, llm, python \| 3mo ago
7.	Founding AI Engineer (Raya Health) San Francisco, California, United States \| $100,000 – $120,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| openai models, anthropic models, fine-tuning \| 2mo ago
8.	Software Engineer, AI (Ruli) San Francisco, California, United States \| $110,000 – $200,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| python, typescript, serverless \| 2mo ago
9.	Software Engineer - AI (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, go \| 2mo ago
10.	Software Engineer - AI (WealthyMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| python, fastapi, langchain \| 2mo ago
11.	DevSecOps Engineer - AI (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| devsecops, ai security, llm security \| 2mo ago
12.	Full Stack Engineer (AI Systems & Quality) at Segmental AI (Segmental AI) San Francisco, California, United States+2 \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| full stack, backend development, frontend development \| 2mo ago
13.	Software Engineer, Gen AI Platform (Abridge) San Francisco, California, United States \| $221,000 – $300,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| python, java, go \| 3mo ago
14.	Senior Software Engineer, AI Engineer (Midi Health) San Francisco, California, United States+1 \| $170,000 – $210,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| python, llm, machine learning \| 2mo ago
15.	Agentic Engineer (MGT Insurance) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| ai agents, llms, autonomous systems \| 3mo ago
16.	Senior Software Engineer (AI Agents) (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| react, typescript, go \| 3mo ago
17.	Senior Frontend Engineer, AI (Airwallex) San Francisco, California, United States \| $147,000 – $252,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| react, typescript, vite \| 3mo ago
18.	Founding Engineer (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| react, typescript, python \| 3mo ago
19.	Founding Engineer & CTO (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 2mo ago
20.	Founding Engineer & CTO (WealthyMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 2mo ago
21.	Founding Engineer (Lance (YC W26)) San Francisco, California, United States \| $160,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| python, javascript, software development \| 2mo ago
22.	Founding Engineer (SF, On-site) (Caddie AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $180,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, typescript, react \| 3mo ago
23.	Full-Stack Engineer (Actively AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, fastapi, react \| 3mo ago
24.	Founding Engineer (Back-end) (Stealth Startup) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend engineering, apis, databases \| 3mo ago
25.	Software Engineer ($180K - $220K + Equity) at YC-backed AI Data Infrastructure Startup (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $180,000 – $220,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| next.js, react, python \| 2mo ago
26.	Founding Engineer (Nohi) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 3mo ago
27.	Forward Deployed Engineer (Reval) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| python, playwright, selenium \| 2mo ago
28.	Founding Engineer ($200K - $250K + Up to 1% Equity) at YC-backed AI GTM startup (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $200,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, next.js \| 2mo ago
29.	Founding Senior Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, backend \| 3mo ago
30.	Founding Engineer ($170K - $250K + 0.5% - 1.5% Equity) at Healthcare AI startup backed by Scale AI Angels (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $170,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, cloud platforms \| 2mo ago
31.	Staff Engineer (Varick Agents) San Francisco, California, United States \| $220,000 – $280,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| systems design, ai/ml systems, inference \| 3mo ago
32.	Senior Software Engineer ($250K - $300K + Equity) at YC-backed AI Data Infrastructure Startup (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $250,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| next.js, react, node.js \| 3mo ago
33.	Head of Engineering (Vidably) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| typescript, ai-native tooling, ai coding tools \| 3mo ago
34.	Founding Software Engineer (MIRA) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| llm, fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation (rag) \| 3mo ago
35.	Founding ML Engineer (TrueMile.AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| machine learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning \| 2mo ago
36.	Fullstack Engineer ($185K - $250K + 0.1% - 0.3% Equity) at Founders Fund-backed AI Enterprise Startup (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $185,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| python, react, apis \| 3mo ago
37.	Founding Head of Engineering (kadence) San Francisco, California, United States+1 \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| full-stack development, backend development, frontend development \| 3mo ago
38.	Founding Engineer (Python, Typescript, React) (Trinity Consulting Group) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $180,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, typescript, react \| 3mo ago
39.	Software Engineer (ShiftOS) San Francisco, California, United States \| $120,000 – $165,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| react, next.js, typescript \| 3mo ago
40.	Software Engineer – Frontend & UX Design (CompFly AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| $100,000 – $200,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| react, typescript, ux design \| 3mo ago
41.	Machine Learning Engineer (Shields Group Search) San Francisco, California, United States \| $180,000 – $260,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| transformer architectures, pytorch, deep learning \| 3mo ago
42.	Frontend Engineer (React \| TypeScript) (Epic Placements) San Francisco, California, United States \| $200,000 – $270,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| react, typescript, next.js \| 3mo ago
43.	Principal Machine Learning Engineer (Lila Sciences) San Francisco, California, United States \| $252,000 – $374,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| pytorch, jax, tensorflow \| 2mo ago
44.	Founding CTO Engineer (iOS-First, Mobile Builder) (Solve) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| ios, swift, mobile development \| 3mo ago
45.	Software Engineer (Founding) (Moe) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| react native, typescript, aws lambda \| 3mo ago
46.	Founding CTO / Founding Engineer (iOS-First, 0→1 Builder) (Solve) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| ios, swift, backend systems \| 3mo ago

Frequently asked questions

What does a ai engineer in san francisco earn?: SF compensation runs at the top end of the band. Founding engineer offers commonly clear $200k base + 0.5–2% equity at seed-to-Series-A. The typical band for a ai engineer runs $160k–$260k base + significant equity.
Are AI engineer jobs in san francisco remote-friendly?: 2 of the current 46 listings (4%) allow remote work; the rest are on-site or hybrid in San Francisco.
What companies hire AI engineer jobs in san francisco?: Jobs Base aggregates listings across YC-backed startups, growth-stage companies, and selected larger companies hiring with builder-role characteristics.
What's the difference between a ai engineer and a regular ai engineer?: Jobs Base only lists builder roles. Positions where one person owns the product end-to-end. We filter out ticket-driven, narrowly-scoped roles even when the title matches. About 9% of listings scraped match this definition.