Updated 2026-06 · 189,701 salary data points
AI & data engineer daily rates — live benchmark
What you pay per day for senior AI, ML, and data engineers across six markets. Eastern Europe runs 40–60% below US rates for the same seniority.
| Role | Canada | Germany | Poland | Romania | UK | USA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Engineer | €644 €559–€743 | €656 €571–€734 | €457 €393–€610 | €368 €211–€561 | €707 €564–€884 | €1,207 €957–€1525 |
| AI Research Scientist | €513 €413–€639 | €502 €401–€585 | — | — | €386 €326–€457 | €1,025 €859–€1221 |
| AI Solutions Architect | €553 €462–€661 | — | — | — | €631 €507–€784 | €1,148 €955–€1377 |
| Data Architect | €557 €474–€654 | €567 €474–€673 | €399 €283–€544 | — | €616 €500–€758 | €950 €761–€1186 |
| Data Engineer | €486 €419–€561 | €528 €477–€580 | €381 €335–€447 | €419 €347–€479 | €515 €432–€612 | €803 €663–€974 |
| Data Scientist | €454 €392–€527 | €491 €441–€552 | €328 €259–€385 | €557 €278–€793 | €247 €212–€288 | €871 €747–€1017 |
| ML Engineer | €644 €553–€750 | €689 €587–€774 | €435 €393–€544 | €596 €508–€684 | €757 €639–€894 | €1,056 €862–€1292 |
| MLOps Engineer | €549 €469–€643 | €502 €468–€607 | — | — | €634 €500–€806 | €1,051 €879–€1256 |
| NLP Engineer | €648 €556–€757 | €502 €401–€510 | €196 €167–€213 | — | €740 €617–€887 | €1,151 €923–€1437 |
| Python Developer | €442 €368–€531 | €448 €396–€505 | €278 €242–€371 | €449 €367–€599 | €474 €383–€586 | €670 €519–€866 |
Daily rates per engineer, shown low–median–high (€/day). Estimated from Glassdoor engineer salaries plus average industry margins — indicative only.
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How these rates are calculated
- Salary base: Market salary data aggregated monthly from public sources (Glassdoor estimates) by role, market, and seniority.
- Daily rate: The gross daily cost of that salary plus the average industry margin for the role family — the rate a buyer would pay.
- Frequency: Refreshed the first week of every month. The current dataset reflects 2026-06.
- Quality gate: A cell is published only when the underlying sample is large enough to be reliable.
These are market rates — not a quote
The table shows indicative day rates per engineer. Your actual cost depends on team size, seniority mix, stack, and engagement length. Scope it in four steps and get a team composition with a real rate band.
Scope your engagement cost →Frequently asked questions
How are the daily rates calculated?
We take market salary data for each role, market, and seniority, convert it to a gross daily cost, and add the average industry margin for that role family. The result is the indicative daily rate a buyer would pay to engage that engineer.
How is the data collected?
Salary data is aggregated monthly from public market sources (Glassdoor salary estimates) by role, market, and seniority. We then apply average industry margins to produce the daily rate, publishing a cell only when the underlying sample is large enough to be reliable.
What markets are covered?
USA, UK, Germany, Canada, Romania, and Poland. We focus on markets where we have enough postings to produce reliable data.
How often is the data updated?
The crawler runs the first week of every month. New data is published to the site as soon as the monthly run completes and passes validation.
What does “insufficient data” mean?
A cell shows a dash when we captured fewer than three distinct job postings for that role, market, and seniority combination in the current month. We prefer to show no data rather than a misleading average from one or two postings.