Being a young person seeking for work is difficult right now, unless you work in artificial intelligence.
For entry-level employees, the labor market is still in a downturn. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that in June, the unemployment rate among recent college graduates was 4.8%, while the overall worker unemployment rate was 4%.
Even while AI contributes to the downturn, there is one bright spot: employees that have real-world machine learning experience. They are in their early 20s, have experience with artificial intelligence, and some of them earn $1 million annually.
According to a new report by the AI staffing company Burtch Works, which examined the pay of thousands of AI and data-science candidates, base salaries for nonmanagerial workers in AI with zero to three years of experience increased by about 12% between 2024 and 2025, the largest rise of any experience group. Additionally, according to the survey, individuals with experience in AI are being promoted to positions of management about twice as quickly as those in other technology-related disciplines. Rather than their years of experience, they are moving up the corporate ladder due to their impact and abilities.
A professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and co-lead of its AI job tracker, Anil K. Gupta, claims that there is a substantial pay gap between positions as a software engineer and a machine-learning engineer.
This year, Databricks, a data analytics software business whose value has increased dramatically during the AI boom, intends to triple the number of individuals it employs straight out of school, partly due to their expertise with AI.
The chief executive of the firm, Ali Ghodsi, predicts that they will arrive and be entirely AI-native. For all our efforts, we are unable to persuade seniors to embrace it.
According to Databricks’ job listings page, a generative-AI research scientist with as little as two years of experience may earn base wages ranging from $190,000 to $260,000. The total pay may be significantly larger when stock awards are included.
Ghodsi stated, “we definitely have people, quite junior people, that have big impact and they’re getting paid a lot.” “A person under 25 can earn a million dollars.”
“There is a bifurcation even in the market for people with AI experience,” says Jure Leskovec, a Stanford University computer science professor and co-founder of the firm Kumo.AI. He observes that Ph.D. students in their early 20s conduct productive research, graduate early, and are acquired by businesses with generous offers before they have any prior work experience.
“There are a lot of zeros,” he remarks.
Then there are people who know how to use AI. They are quick learners, quick thinkers, and adept at using technology to increase productivity. According to him, even if they lack advanced degrees, the difference between them and traditional programmers is growing.
He goes on to say, “It’s almost like a next generation of software engineers.”
As per Levels.fyi, there are several positions for machine-learning engineers at firms like Roblox that pay up to $200,000 annually and require zero to one year of expertise. 42 user-submitted offers totaling more than $1 million from AI businesses had been reviewed by the compensation-data supplier. Nine of those applicants had fewer than ten years of experience working in a business setting, while some may have held Ph.D.s.
Scale AI, which just completed a reverse-acquihire agreement with Meta Platforms, has around 15% of employees under the age of 25. Scale AI workers may expect to start out with a basic salary of roughly $200,000 per year.
He continues, “It’s almost like a software engineer of the future.”
Ashli Shiftan, head of people at Scale AI, states, “We are keen to hire AI-native professionals, and many of those candidates are early in their careers.”
The business has even threatened to take legal action against companies who attempt to hire its youngest employees.
After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in December with a computer science major and an AI specialization, Lily Ma applied for 30 to 40 jobs. She interviewed around a dozen of them. She acknowledges that having prior research experience is very beneficial. (She also worked as a Tesla intern.)
The 22-year-old accepted a position at Scale AI but declined other enticing offers, such as one from a startup that offered a 1% share in the business.
Co-founder of CTGT, a firm that develops enterprise-risk and safety software to address issues like AI hallucinations, is Cyril Gorlla. Among its investors is Google. According to him, his company’s average age is 21. Currently, some of its employees’ equity is valued at around $500,000.
Younger and younger potential recruits have been contacting Gorlla, who is 23 years old, including a 16-year-old who has previously had a paper published at an AI conference.
He claims, “I most certainly did not see that a few years ago.”
