Microsoft: Personnel in the AI ​​field have salaries much higher than average

However, it seems that the Redmond giant not only spends a lot of time and effort on its AI products, but also pays very generous salaries to the staff working in this technology field.

A recent report by Business Insider revealed detailed information about the average salary of a large portion of Microsoft employees. If the leaked data is accurate, there is a large difference in the average remuneration that employees in the AI ​​field receive compared to colleagues in other departments in a year at Microsoft.

Accordingly, on average, a software engineer in Microsoft's AI department is paid up to 377,611 USD a year. This includes a base salary for the job of $192,667, plus stock and cash bonuses totaling $184,994. Large stock and cash bonuses help a Microsoft AI engineer receive significantly greater real compensation than colleagues in Microsoft's Azure cloud computing division. Data revealed by Business Insider shows that the total salary of an Azure team member can be up to $252,464 a year. The actual base salary is not much higher than that of an AI team member, with $174,196 a year. However, cash and stock bonuses for Azure employees are much higher, at only $77,268 a year.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced the establishment of a new AI department at the company, led by Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of two famous AI companies DeepMind and Inflection. Suleyman holds the title of CEO of Microsoft AI, similar to Phil Spencer as CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

As part of its plan to establish an AI division, Microsoft has decided to move its Bing, Copilot, and Edge development teams to the new AI team. However, it is unclear how much the creation of an AI department and higher salaries will specifically make a difference in Microsoft's future AI plans.