OpenSource

Industry expertise

AI, ML & data recruitment.

Every company is suddenly “an AI company”, which makes real machine-learning and data talent the most contested hiring market of 2026. The candidates who can take models to production, not just fine-tune a demo, are outnumbered by the roles chasing them, and compensation reflects it.

Talk to us → Open roles

What ai & data pays in 2026

Indicative London base salaries at startups and scale-ups. Ranges are real. Where a role lands within them depends on your funding stage, how the business is doing and how urgently you’re hiring.

Typical spread across levels: £70k–£160k+.

Mid ML / Data Engineer £60k–£90k
Senior ML Engineer £90k–£125k
Senior Data Engineer £85k–£120k
Staff ML / Data Engineer £125k–£155k
AI Product Manager £85k–£120k

AI/ML engineers earn a clear premium over general software engineers at the same level: roughly 8–15% in London and 15–25% in Berlin on 2026 benchmarks, with engineers combining LLM and MLOps experience earning £10k–£25k above peers. US AI-lab offers run far higher still. If you’re competing with them for the same person, the premium is not optional.

What moves offers here

  • Production LLM experience (retrieval, evals, cost/latency engineering) is 2026’s single most-requested skill.
  • MLOps, getting and keeping models in production, pays more than modelling alone.
  • Strong data engineering underneath (pipelines, quality, governance) is what separates AI teams that ship from ones that demo.
  • Candidates weigh compute, data access and publication freedom alongside salary. The offer is more than the number.

Berlin and Amsterdam run in euros at broadly similar levels; New York is higher in dollars. See the city salary guides for local tables.

FAQ

AI & Data recruitment, answered

What does an AI recruitment agency do?

A specialist AI recruitment agency finds and screens machine-learning, data and AI-product talent that generalist recruiters struggle to assess. At OpenSource, every candidate is technically screened by us, people who understand the work, before they reach you, so you only interview people who can genuinely take models and data pipelines to production.

Do you recruit machine learning and data engineers as well as AI product roles?

Yes. We hire across the full AI and data stack: ML engineers, data engineers, analytics engineers, data scientists, MLOps and AI product managers, from mid-level through to staff and leadership, for startups and scale-ups across the UK, Europe and the US.

How much do AI and machine learning engineers earn in the UK?

In 2026, senior ML engineers in London typically earn £90k–£125k base, with staff-level roles reaching £125k–£155k. AI/ML engineers command a clear premium over general software engineers, and those combining LLM and MLOps experience earn more again. See the salary table above for current ranges.

How quickly can you deliver a shortlist for a data or AI role?

For most roles we come back with a technically screened shortlist within days, not weeks, because we screen candidates ourselves and maintain an active network of pre-vetted data and AI talent.

Roles we cover: DataEngineeringProduct
Hiring in: LondonBerlinAmsterdamNew York