Worldwide online searches for “AI degree” hit the highest weekly volumes reached this week, soaring to a record 1.7 million in 2024 so far, 70% more than in 2023 and 830% more than in 2020. With Bitcoin just hitting $100,000 value on December 5th, Elon Musk being named head of US president-elect Donald Trump’s DOGE agency, and Nvidia reaping all the benefits from the relentless AI enthusiasm this year to a stellar $3.3 trillion market cap, a career in fintech and AI is worth considering in 2025 and beyond.
While higher education degrees are worthwhile, top software engineers at StoryChief.io conducted a thorough study of the US job market and revealed shortcuts to an instant salary boost higher even than a PhD, starting with simply looking for opportunities in the states that pay the most, like California, Washington and New York. The income model they developed is also applicable for complete novices wanting a career change in 2025.
They analyzed 12,634 US job listings on Glassdoor that mention artificial intelligence and display any salary information, published up until and including March 8th, 2024. The research identified the most common keywords relating to requirements like skills, education level and experience length found across all the evaluated job openings. The model then estimates each keyword’s salary value depending on the state the job is in and identifies a weighted average. Certain keywords have negative values, which does not mean fulfilling those requirements was a disadvantage. Rather, it means that job descriptions containing those keywords tend to pay less.
The study’s model makes it possible to combine US employer locations, various skills, experience length and education levels and to estimate a final average salary worth pursuing.
California has the highest salaries for AI jobs, averaging $150,110 per year. Surprisingly, the second best-paying state for AI specialists is Washington, where average AI salaries are not far off Californian levels. People working in the AI field in Washington state can expect to earn $143,570 per annum.
Storychief.io’s model has found that the average salary in America for AI jobs is $101,816. Washington DC and another 19 states have a salary above the national level. Alaska, West Virginia and North Dakota have the lowest-paying AI jobs.
The highest concentration of AI jobs is in Washington state (841), California (830), New York state (826), Washington DC (763), Massachusetts (735) and Texas (718). Not all of these necessarily have the highest pay levels. States with the scarcest AI vacancies include Wyoming (8), West Virginia (10), South Dakota (13), Idaho (18) and Vermont (18).
The ability to program in Rust gives candidates the highest pay bump. AI job adverts containing Rust as a requirement offer a salary increase of $29,480, on average. Google’s open-source programming language, called Go or Golang, can boost salaries by $21,080. Other pay-boosting skills include deep learning, Python, PyTorch, Scala, JavaScript and NLP.
Some skills have negative values, which does not mean that having them decreases one’s salary. Instead, job listings that mention these skills tend to have lower-than-average salaries. For example, adverts containing MATLAB, Keras and clustering are usually associated with salaries that are around $8,826-12,990 below average.
Valeri Potchekailov, CEO of StoryChief.io,said: “AI is an incredibly fast-paced environment. While higher education is always valuable, the fact that employers appreciate certain specific skills sometimes more than having a particular degree evens out the playing field for those who cannot access higher education or have limited experience. This is refreshing news and opens the door to AI enthusiasts from all walks of life. We hope our findings encourage those who are passionate about AI and have a knack for coding to be more confident and make more informed choices when looking for a job in AI.”
