The Exact Salaries Palantir Pays AI Researchers, Engineers

Palantir stock is up nearly 500% over the past year at the time of writing. As the software and defense technology company’s value skyrockets, the question remains: How well does it pay its staff?

According to new federal filings, obtained by Business Insider, Palantir pays competitively for top tech talent. Software engineers, for example, can make anywhere from $155,000 to $240,000 in base pay.

The range aligns with what other major tech companies offer for the same role, though others have a higher ceiling. Meta pays $120,000 to $480,000, Google pays $109,180 to $340,000 and Microsoft pays $82,971 to $284,000 for software engineering talent.

Related: How Much Does Apple Pay Its Employees? Here Are the Exact Salaries of Staff Jobs, Including Developers, Engineers and Consultants.

Palantir builds platforms to help analyze and manage data, mainly for large organizations and the U.S. government and its allies. The company helps break down complex data to drive better decision-making, operations and security. Palantir’s data analysis software is considered a military intelligence tool. The company operates across the world, in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, but is headquartered in the U.S., in Denver, Colorado.

^{Palantir CEO Alexander Karp. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images}

According to its careers page, Palantir is hiring across the board, from engineering roles targeting new college graduates to product designer jobs.

The company submitted federal filings showing salary information for the first quarter of the year. The filings are required when companies hire foreign workers through the H-1B visa program, which enables highly skilled workers to take on specialty occupations.

The documents only show base annual salaries for H-1B workers and do not include signing bonuses, stock options, or other forms of compensation. They only represent one part of the compensation picture, not the entire view.

Related: Here’s How Much Money Amazon Employees — From Software Engineers to Product Managers — Make in a Year

The filings show that Palantir pays other roles as follows:

• AI Machine Learning Researcher: $210,000 to $250,000
• Deployment Strategist: $120,000 to $192,000
• Product Designer: $135,000
• Quality Engineer: $136,000
• Technical Program Manager: $165,000

According to Palantir’s proxy statement, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in April, CEO Alexander Karp’s total compensation in 2024 was $4.63 million, while the median employee’s total compensation for the same year was $229,912. Karp made 20 times more than the mid-level worker at the company.

Related: Here’s How Much a Typical Nvidia Employee Makes in a Year

Palantir has nearly 4,000 U.S. employees.

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