AI Engineer Salaries at OpenAI & Anthropic and the Skills They Want

Bashiri Smith · Facebook reel · 2026-09-11 · 0:50 · 1,694 views · Open on Facebook

Topics: Industry Trends & Job Market, Resume, Job Search & Interviews, Start Here: Roadmaps & Strategy · Level: beginner

Summary

The video points to two Applied AI Engineer job postings, one at Anthropic ($200K–$320K) and one at OpenAI ($230K–$385K+), as evidence that companies pay well for engineers who turn AI into real products. It names the skills the postings ask for: building agents, working with LLMs, writing evaluations, and getting AI systems to run reliably in production. It also says LinkedIn ranked AI engineer as the fastest-growing role in the US in 2026, and suggests that people who already code turn these skills into projects they can explain in interviews. The video ends with a pitch for the creator's coaching community.

Key points

• Anthropic Applied AI Engineer role: $200,000–$320,000 per year.
• OpenAI Applied AI Engineer role: $230,000–$385,000+ per year.
• Companies are paying for engineers who can turn AI into actual products, not just research.
• LinkedIn ranked AI engineer as the #1 fastest-growing role in the US in 2026.
• Skills listed in the job postings: building agents, working with LLMs, creating evaluations, and shipping reliable AI systems to production.
• Already knowing how to code gives you a strong base for moving into AI engineering.
• Build these skills into portfolio projects you can explain clearly in an interview.

Resources mentioned

• BASWE.Ai Engineer (Skool community) · community · skool.com · paid
  The creator's paid community and program, with an AI learning roadmap (including the full ops and evaluation track), daily calls with engineers and recruiters, resume and portfolio help, and a job-search pipeline.
  Also in: Basic RAG Pipeline in 60 Seconds: From Documents to Grounded Answers (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Pointer to Bashiri Smith's Complete AI Engineer Roadmap for 2026 (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Step-by-Step Roadmap to a $200K+ AI Engineering Role (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), How to Evaluate a RAG Pipeline: Retrieval vs. Generation (Interview Answer) (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) and 76 more
• Anthropic Careers – Applied AI Engineer · website · anthropic.com · free
  Anthropic's careers page, where the Applied AI Engineer posting from the video can be found.
• OpenAI Careers – Applied AI Engineer · website · openai.com · free
  OpenAI's careers page, where the Applied AI Engineer posting from the video can be found.
• LinkedIn Jobs on the Rise · article · linkedin.com · free
  LinkedIn's ranking of the fastest-growing jobs in the US, which put AI engineer at #1 for 2026.
  Also in: Why Software Engineers Should Move Into AI Engineering (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes)

Try this

• Read real AI engineering job postings, such as the Applied AI Engineer roles at OpenAI and Anthropic, to see which skills are asked for.
• Build up skills in agents, LLMs, evaluations, and production reliability on top of your existing coding ability.
• Turn those skills into projects you can explain in an interview.
• Optional (promotional): comment 'AI job' to get the link to the creator's community.
• Build an AI agent project that you can explain end to end in an interview.
• Build an LLM application with an evaluation suite that measures how well it performs.
• Ship an AI application that runs reliably in production and be ready to talk about the reliability choices you made.