AI jobs

AI Internships

Which AI internships are open for the 2027 cycle, what each publishes as pay, the deadlines closing this autumn, and the employers running none at all — checked on 23 September 2026.

Updated September 2026

Quick answer: The 2027 AI internship cycle is open now, and the application window for most of it is autumn 2026 rather than spring 2027. The nearest hard deadline is Microsoft Research’s Undergraduate Research Internship, which closes on 5 October 2026 — twelve days from this page. The highest published pay in the category is not at an AI lab: IMC’s machine learning research internship lists a base salary of $300,000 and Citadel’s machine learning researcher PhD internship lists $4,300 to $5,800 per week, against $20 to $71 per hour at Nvidia and $40 to $85 per hour at Netflix. Two of the best-known AI employers run no conventional internship at all: Anthropic’s only early-career research route is its Fellows Program, and OpenAI had no live 2027 intern requisition when we checked.

This page is about structured, employer-run internships — fixed-term placements for people who are enrolled in a degree. If you are looking for paid AI work with no degree and no enrolment requirement, that is a different market entirely and it is covered at best AI jobs for beginners and AI training jobs. For what the salaried version of these roles pays afterwards, see AI salaries.

Every posting, deadline and pay figure below was checked at the employer’s own careers page or job board on 23 September 2026. Postings in this category expire, move and get replaced within days. Where an employer publishes no figure, this page says “data not available” rather than estimating one.

The three different things called an “AI internship”

These three are often merged, which is what makes pay figures across the category hard to compare.

The rest of this page covers the first row. Residencies and fellowships are a genuinely different route with different eligibility — OpenAI’s residency FAQ states that residents are full-time employees and “cannot be actively enrolled in any school programs”, which is the exact opposite of every internship listed here. Platform work is covered at AI data annotation platforms.

What is open right now

Checked at source on 23 September 2026. Where a posting’s body would not render to an automated reader, the row says so rather than repeating an aggregator’s version of it.

Four employers on that list publish a job body that an automated reader cannot retrieve — AMD, IBM, Waymo and Apple all serve their postings through JavaScript. The requisitions exist and the titles are correct. Any pay figure you see quoted for them online did not come from the posting.

Apple’s live intern requisitions carry no cycle year except one. The only date range Apple publishes in a title is Intern Opportunities at Apple, General, October 2026 to September 2027, which is a pipeline requisition rather than a summer programme. Its Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Undergrad Internships requisition is live and undated.

The deadlines that matter before November

Four dated items, because everything else on this page is rolling and will still be there next month.

Microsoft Research closes on 5 October 2026. Its undergraduate research internship page states that “applications for Summer 2027 are now accepted until October 5th, 2026”. It is a 12-week programme in Redmond, New York City or New England, it requires two written essays, and it is restricted to rising juniors and rising seniors on a bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, information science or a related major. Microsoft Research publishes no pay figure for it.

Amazon Japan closes in mid-October 2026. Its applied scientist internship states an application and assessment deadline of “Mid October, 2026”, selection communication beginning end of October 2026, and offers extended between December 2026 and March 2027. It runs 8 to 12 weeks in Tokyo in summer 2027, and it targets students graduating in 2029. No pay figure is published.

Netflix’s machine learning internships are winter, not summer. Both are Winter 2027, with a start date in the second week of January 2027. They are PhD-only, and the posting states applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and the window stays open “until roles are filled”. Netflix has zero summer 2027 internships posted, company-wide — its entire open internship set on 23 September 2026 was three roles.

Google’s Canadian research internship window runs to 26 February 2027, and its student researcher window to 16 July 2027, both with Google’s own caveat that they “may close earlier if all available projects are full”. Both are PhD-level. The research internship is restricted to students in their penultimate academic year.

What AI internships actually pay

Three things to note before the numbers.

Annualised figures are not what you get paid. Amazon’s posting says “109,395.00 USD Annually” for a placement its own text limits to 12 weeks. IMC’s says “Base Salary: $300,000” for a placement of 10 to 12 weeks. Neither intern receives that sum. Both are annualised rates.

Weekly and hourly figures are the ones that survive multiplication. Citadel publishes $4,300 to $5,800 per week, and Citadel Securities $4,500 to $5,800. Two Sigma publishes $4,900 per week for bachelor’s, $5,000 for master’s and $5,500 for PhD on its quantitative researcher internship, and $3,800, $3,900 and $4,200 on its software engineering internship. Those are the numbers that survive being multiplied out.

Base pay and total compensation are not the same number. Salesforce states its $43 to $52 per hour “represents base salary only”. Netflix states its $40 to $85 per hour “is based on total compensation (vs. only base salary), which is in line with our compensation philosophy”. Comparing the two directly is a mistake.

Against all of that, the national benchmark is much lower than any figure on this page. The National Association of Colleges and Employers puts the average hourly wage for bachelor’s-degree-level interns at $23.35, in its 2026 Guide to Compensation for Interns and Co-ops. That figure reflects wages as of summer 2025, from a survey of 284 organisations fielded between 15 October 2025 and 4 January 2026, across all majors rather than technology alone. AI internships pay two to three times the national intern average, and the quantitative trading firms pay an order of magnitude more than that.

Pay figures nobody publishes. Meta, Apple, IBM, AMD, Qualcomm, Adobe and Microsoft publish no intern pay figure on any page we could read. Anthropic, Cohere, Mistral, Scale AI and Sierra publish none either. That is more than half of the best-known names in the category. Treat any specific dollar figure attached to those employers as unsourced unless it links to the employer’s own posting.

The employers that run no AI internship at all

Anthropic runs no conventional internship. Its Greenhouse board carried 626 open jobs on 23 September 2026 and no requisition with “intern” in the title in its AI research and engineering section. The only early-career research route is the Anthropic Fellows Program, which runs three tracks — AI safety and security, ML systems and reinforcement learning, and the Anthropic Institute for economics and policy. It is a four-month fellowship rather than a student placement, its listing published $3,850 per week plus roughly $15,000 a month of compute when we checked it on 22 September 2026, and it does not sponsor visas.

OpenAI had no live 2027 intern requisition. Its emerging talent page describes internships, residencies and full-time roles as three strands, but the two intern requisition URLs that surface in search both return dead pages. What is live is a full-time role rather than an internship: Software Engineer, Applied Emerging Talent (2027) in San Francisco, listed at $180,000 plus equity, for candidates with a bachelor’s or master’s and zero to one years of experience. The separate OpenAI Residency states plainly that “applications for the 2026 Residency are now closed” and pays $18,333 monthly.

No live intern requisition of any kind was found at Cursor, Midjourney, Character.AI, Stability AI or Groq. Runway publishes an Acceleration Program — three months, converting engineers into machine learning engineer roles — instead of an internship.

SpaceXAI’s only intern postings are infrastructure roles from the 2026 cycle. SpaceX acquired xAI in a deal announced on 2 February 2026 and the company now trades as SpaceXAI; its Greenhouse board listed 275 open jobs on 23 September 2026. The two intern requisitions on it are mechanical, electrical and controls roles in data centre infrastructure at Memphis and Southaven, for summer 2026. There is no AI or machine learning research internship. The separate SpaceX board does carry summer 2027 software engineering internships.

The stale pages that read as current

Every one of these was live and read as current on 23 September 2026.

Adobe Research’s internships page is frozen in a cycle that has already ended. It states, in the present tense, “research and engineering internships for 2026 are now open to applicants pursuing PhD and Master’s degrees” and “2026 internships will be offered as hybrid roles for summer 2026”. Summer 2026 finished weeks ago. The page is otherwise maintained — its footer reads 2026 and it links Adobe Summit 2026 news — so only the internship copy is stale. There is no 2027 Adobe Research internship posting. Adobe does have a live 2027 Intern, Software Engineer requisition in San Jose, which is not a research role.

Nvidia runs 2026 and 2027 twins side by side. “Nvidia 2026 Internships: Deep Learning” and “Nvidia 2027 Internships: Deep Learning” are near-identical titles on the same site. The 2027 requisition is JR2023497. Check the number, not the title.

Salesforce hides its AI research internships on a second job board. Its main careers site runs on one Workday tenant and its AI research requisitions run on a separate Salesforce_Research tenant. A student searching the main site will not see research roles at all. Separately, its Summer 2026 AI Research requisition still resolves as a URL and still reads as live in search results, while the Workday record itself returns no description — the signature of a pulled requisition.

Two title conventions mean the opposite of what they look like. Netflix’s “Winter 2027” roles start in January 2027, which places them in the cycle before summer 2027, not after it. Amazon’s “Class of 2029” internship is a summer 2027 placement — 2029 is the graduation year it targets.

Qualcomm publishes nothing readable. Its Americas internships page returns “You need to enable JavaScript to run this app” and no listing. An aggregator lists a Qualcomm summer 2027 machine learning internship; no Qualcomm URL corroborates it.

Eligibility: the graduation-date window is the real filter

The published eligibility rules turn on graduation date, and the windows are narrow.

Two patterns. The frontier-adjacent research roles are overwhelmingly PhD-only — Google, Netflix, IMC, Citadel, Two Sigma and Waymo’s machine learning tracks all require one. The bachelor’s-accessible roles are mostly software engineering roles at AI companies rather than AI research roles, which is a real distinction in what you will actually do.

And one rule that catches people: Nvidia requires the anticipated graduation date, in month and year, on the CV itself to be considered. Google requires the same plus a transcript in English.

International students: the rules changed, and then a court stopped them

If you need US work authorisation, this section matters more than the pay tables.

One year of full-time curricular practical training eliminates your eligibility for optional practical training. That is the published wording on the Student and Exchange Visitor Program’s SEVIS Help Hub, and it is the single most expensive mistake in this area. Full-time CPT means more than 20 hours per week; 20 hours or less is part-time. Two or three full-time summer internships on CPT can add up faster than students expect, and OPT is the thing you need afterwards to actually start a career.

The other published CPT rules: you must have been lawfully enrolled full-time for at least one academic year, except where a graduate programme requires earlier training; you must have secured the position before your designated school official can authorise it; authorisation is employer-specific and dated; and work cannot begin before the CPT start date. An internship taken in your home country does not require CPT at all.

The STEM OPT extension runs 24 months, requires a degree on the Department of Homeland Security’s STEM designated degree program list and an employer enrolled in E-Verify. We could not retrieve the US Citizenship and Immigration Services page directly — it returned an empty response — so treat the surrounding detail as cited rather than read, and check it at uscis.gov yourself. What is confirmed at source is how DHS defines a STEM field: the Classification of Instructional Programs series for engineering (14), biological sciences (26), mathematics (27) and physical sciences (40), plus related fields. Computer and information sciences sit at CIP 11, which is a related series rather than a core one, so inclusion is determined at the six-digit code level on the published list — not by whether the degree looks technical.

Now the part that is changing under everyone’s feet. DHS published a final rule on 17 July 2026 replacing “duration of status” admission for F, J and I nonimmigrants with a fixed admit-until date, capped at the programme length on the Form I-20 and not exceeding four years. It would have required students to file a Form I-539 extension of stay with USCIS, with fee and biometrics, in order to begin post-completion OPT or STEM OPT — a filing that has never previously been required. It was due to take effect on 15 September 2026.

On 14 September 2026, US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in Massachusetts preliminarily enjoined the rule, finding the plaintiffs likely to succeed on their Administrative Procedure Act claims, while a challenge filed by NAFSA and the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration proceeds. As of 23 September 2026 the duration-of-status framework remains in place. This is live litigation and the position can change with a single order, so verify it at your own institution’s international office before you make a decision that depends on it. Note that nothing in this page is legal or immigration advice.

Return offers: what the 63.1 per cent figure counts

The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports a 63.1 per cent conversion rate for the 2024 to 2025 intern class, the highest in five years and up nearly 13 per cent on the year before. The acceptance rate was 88.3 per cent, up from 82.8 per cent.

NACE defines conversion rate as accepted offers divided by eligible interns — and “eligible” means interns who were graduating and looking for a job. A rising junior who gets invited back for a second internship is not in the denominator at all. NACE’s own benchmark is that a recruiting-oriented internship should convert at least half of eligible interns.

There is no credible published return-offer figure specific to AI or machine learning internships, or to technology in 2026. The most-quoted number in the category — “56% of interns receive full-time offers”, on levels.fyi’s internship page — carries no year, no sample size and no methodology. It is not NACE’s figure and cannot be reconciled with it. Neither number is employer-specific.

Netflix states the position honestly in its own posting: “conversion/return offers are based on business need and headcount, and are not guaranteed”.

Unpaid internships, and the scams that target this exact search

An unpaid internship at a for-profit employer is only lawful in narrow circumstances, and the test is public. The US Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #71, updated January 2018 and not superseded since, sets out a seven-factor “primary beneficiary” test asking, in substance: whether both sides understood there would be no pay; whether the training resembles what an educational environment provides; whether it is tied to formal coursework or credit; whether it accommodates the academic calendar; whether its duration is limited to the period of beneficial learning; whether the intern’s work complements rather than displaces paid employees; and whether both parties understand there is no entitlement to a paid job afterwards. No single factor decides it. If the analysis shows the intern is really an employee, both minimum wage and overtime are owed. Unpaid internships at public-sector and charitable non-profits sit outside the test.

Nothing on this page requires you to pay anyone. If a programme asks you for money to participate, the Federal Trade Commission’s rule is the one to apply: never pay to get a job, and never pay to get paid.

The scam volume in this category is real and rising. The FTC published a consumer alert on 30 April 2026 on fake job-offer texts, describing recruiters who impersonate known companies, pitch vague remote roles, quote daily or weekly pay with no job detail, and — the newer tactic — ask you to reply “YES” or “INTERESTED” rather than click a link, before escalating into fake-cheque or task scams. Rutgers University issued its own student-facing warning on 23 March 2026 naming the specific tactics: impersonating real faculty and career-office staff, advance fees for equipment, deposit-and-return cheque fraud, and requests for a social security number or bank details before any formal interview.

For scale: the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center released its 2025 report on 6 April 2026, recording 1,008,597 complaints and roughly $21 billion in losses, up from 859,532 complaints the year before. Its first dedicated AI section recorded 22,364 complaints and about $893 million, involving fake profiles, voice clones, forged identity documents and deepfake video. The report does not break out an employment-fraud figure in the press release, so we do not quote one.

The practical filter: a real internship posting lives on the employer’s own domain or its own applicant tracking system, names a requisition number, and never asks for money or bank details before an offer.

The trackers worth using, and the one that is not

Three community-maintained GitHub repositories dominate this category. They are aggregators, so verify anything you act on at the employer.

The third is maintained by one person. Its README says it is “maintained by just me”, it has 45 total commits, and its newest dated row is two months old. Its maintainer writes that he expects it to become “almost unmaintainable for one person” once the large repositories start posting 2027 roles. Use it as a supplement, not a source.

Search results still describe the speedyapply repository as carrying “356 internships and 253 new graduate positions”. Its live README says 577 US internships and 482 US new-graduate positions, plus 550 and 518 international.

Best internship for each situation

You are a PhD student in machine learning and you want the most money. Apply to the quantitative trading firms, not the AI labs. IMC’s machine learning research internship lists a $300,000 base salary over 10 to 12 weeks with travel and accommodation included, and requires a June 2027 in-person start and graduation between September 2027 and July 2028. Citadel lists $4,300 to $5,800 per week, and Citadel Securities $4,500 to $5,800.

You are a PhD student who wants to publish rather than earn. Google’s Research Intern, PhD, Summer 2027 is the deepest research placement with a published window, and one application to the Student Researcher programme is considered across DeepMind, Google Research and Google Cloud simultaneously. Both of the postings we read are Canada-located; check the equivalent US requisitions on the same board.

You are an undergraduate and it is October. Microsoft Research’s undergraduate research internship closes on 5 October 2026 and is genuinely open to rising juniors and seniors. After that, Nvidia, Amazon, Salesforce and Scale AI are all open, rolling and bachelor’s-accessible.

You want to work at an AI-native company rather than a big technology company. Scale AI, Sierra, Together AI and Cohere all have live 2027 requisitions. Accept that most of them publish no pay figure, and that Sierra’s own posting says the full benefits list applies only to full-time employees.

You are in Europe. Mistral AI’s applied scientist internship is available only in France or the UK, prefers at least six months, and states explicitly that you must already hold the right to work there — it does not sponsor. Cohere lists London, Paris and Berlin offices on a remote-friendly internship.

You are not enrolled in a degree, or you have already finished one. Internships are the wrong route and most of them will reject you on eligibility. Look at fellowships and residencies instead, or at AI career paths for the lateral move from an adjacent role, which is the route with the most evidence behind it.

You need income now rather than a placement next summer. Nothing on this page pays before May 2027. Best AI jobs for beginners and AI data annotation platforms cover work that starts within weeks, with the honest caveat that it pays as supplementary income rather than a salary.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI internship?

An AI internship is a fixed-term, paid placement at an employer working on artificial intelligence or machine learning, almost always requiring that you are enrolled in a degree and returning to it afterwards. The typical length is 10 to 14 weeks and the typical start is May or June. It is distinct from an AI residency or fellowship, which is aimed at people who have finished studying and which OpenAI’s residency FAQ explicitly bars enrolled students from — and distinct again from AI training and annotation platform work, which has no enrolment requirement at all.

When should I apply for a summer 2027 AI internship?

Now. The 2027 cycle opened in autumn 2026, not spring 2027. Microsoft Research’s undergraduate research internship closes on 5 October 2026 and Amazon Japan’s applied scientist internship closes in mid-October 2026. Almost every other programme checked on 23 September 2026 is explicitly rolling and closes when places fill, which means applying in March gets you a smaller set of open projects rather than the same set later.

How much do AI internships pay in 2026?

Published rates for machine learning internships run from $20 to $85 per hour at technology companies, against a national all-majors average of $23.35 per hour reported by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Nvidia publishes $20 to $71 per hour, Salesforce $43 to $52 per hour as base only, Databricks $54 to $56 per hour in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Netflix $40 to $85 per hour as total compensation. The quantitative trading firms pay far more: Citadel publishes $4,300 to $5,800 per week and IMC publishes a $300,000 annualised base salary for a 10 to 12 week placement.

Which company pays the most for an AI internship?

On published figures as of 23 September 2026, IMC pays the most, listing a base salary of $300,000 for its summer 2027 machine learning research internship in Chicago. That is an annualised rate for a 10 to 12 week placement, not a sum received. Citadel is next at $4,300 to $5,800 per week ($4,500 to $5,800 at Citadel Securities), followed by Two Sigma’s quantitative researcher internship at $4,900 to $5,500 per week depending on degree level. All three are quantitative trading firms rather than AI companies, and all three require a PhD.

Does OpenAI offer internships?

OpenAI describes internships as one of three emerging-talent strands on its careers site, but no live 2027 intern requisition could be found on 23 September 2026 — the two intern URLs that surface in search both return dead pages. What is live is a full-time role for people with zero to one years of experience, Software Engineer, Applied Emerging Talent (2027), listed at $180,000 plus equity in San Francisco. The separate OpenAI Residency is a six-month programme paying $18,333 monthly, its 2026 applications are closed, and residents cannot be enrolled in a degree.

Does Anthropic offer internships?

Anthropic runs no conventional internship. Its job board carried 626 open roles on 23 September 2026 with no requisition titled “intern” in its AI research and engineering section. The only early-career research route is the Anthropic Fellows Program, a four-month fellowship running three tracks, which published $3,850 per week plus roughly $15,000 a month of compute when checked on 22 September 2026 and which does not sponsor visas.

Do I need a PhD for an AI internship?

For research roles, usually yes. Google’s research internship and student researcher roles, both Netflix machine learning internships, IMC’s and Citadel’s machine learning research internships and Waymo’s machine learning tracks all require enrolment in a PhD. For engineering roles at AI companies, no: Amazon, Nvidia, Salesforce, Scale AI, Sierra, Databricks and Cohere all accept bachelor’s students. The practical distinction is that the bachelor’s-accessible roles are mostly software engineering on AI products rather than AI research.

Can international students do an AI internship in the US?

Yes, on curricular practical training, but the rules carry a trap. The Student and Exchange Visitor Program states that one year of full-time CPT eliminates your eligibility for optional practical training, and full-time CPT means more than 20 hours per week. You must have been enrolled full-time for at least one academic year, must secure the position before your designated school official authorises it, and cannot begin work before the authorised start date. Separately, a DHS final rule published on 17 July 2026 that would have required a new USCIS filing before starting OPT was temporarily blocked by a US District Judge in Massachusetts on 14 September 2026, so the duration-of-status framework remains in place as of 23 September 2026.

What percentage of interns get a return offer?

The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports a 63.1 per cent conversion rate for the 2024 to 2025 intern class, with an 88.3 per cent acceptance rate, from a survey of 284 organisations. That figure counts accepted offers as a share of eligible interns, meaning those who were graduating and job-seeking — it is not the share of all interns who get asked back. No credible published return-offer figure exists specifically for AI or machine learning internships, and the widely quoted “56% of interns receive full-time offers” on levels.fyi carries no year, sample size or methodology.

Are AI internships remote?

Mostly not. Amazon states that all its intern roles require in-person work. IMC requires an in-person start on 7 June 2027. Google’s research internship requires you to be located in the posting’s country for the whole engagement. Netflix’s posting contradicts itself, saying the role is based at Los Gatos but “may be open to remote candidates” while its structured listing field says onsite. Cohere is the clearest remote-friendly option among the live 2027 postings. For how remote this market genuinely is, see our guide to remote AI jobs.

Which AI internship deadlines are closing soonest?

Microsoft Research’s undergraduate research internship closes on 5 October 2026, twelve days from 23 September 2026. Amazon Japan’s applied scientist internship closes in mid-October 2026. Netflix’s two winter 2027 machine learning internships start in January 2027 and close when filled, so they are effectively closing now. Google’s Canadian research internship window runs to 26 February 2027 and its student researcher window to 16 July 2027, both with a stated caveat that they may close earlier once projects are full.

Are there unpaid AI internships, and are they legal?

At a for-profit employer in the US, an unpaid internship is only lawful if it passes the Department of Labor’s seven-factor primary beneficiary test, set out in Fact Sheet #71 and updated in January 2018. The factors cover whether there was any expectation of pay, whether the training resembles an educational environment, whether it is tied to coursework or credit, whether it accommodates the academic calendar, whether its duration is limited to the learning period, whether the work complements rather than displaces paid employees, and whether both sides understand there is no entitlement to a job. If the intern is really an employee, minimum wage and overtime are owed. Unpaid internships at public-sector and charitable non-profit organisations sit outside the test.

How do I spot a fake AI internship offer?

A real posting lives on the employer’s own domain or its applicant tracking system and carries a requisition number. The Federal Trade Commission’s April 2026 alert describes the current pattern: an unsolicited text or message impersonating a known company, a vague remote role, daily or weekly pay quoted with no job detail, and a request to reply “YES” rather than click a link — escalating into fake-cheque or task scams. Rutgers University’s March 2026 warning adds impersonation of real faculty, advance fees for equipment, and requests for a social security number or bank details before any formal interview. Never pay to get a job and never pay to get paid.

Which AI internship job boards are out of date?

Adobe Research’s internships page still states in the present tense that “research and engineering internships for 2026 are now open”, for a summer that has already ended, and has no 2027 research posting at all. Qualcomm’s Americas internships page renders no listings at all and the only Qualcomm 2027 machine learning internship in circulation appears on an aggregator with no corroborating Qualcomm URL. Among the community trackers, the sndsh404 summer-2027 repository has a single maintainer, 45 commits and a newest dated entry of 21 July 2026, and search caches of the speedyapply repository still report 356 internships when its live README says 577.

Is an AI internship worth it if I want a full-time AI job?

On NACE’s figures, 63.1 per cent of eligible interns in the 2024 to 2025 class converted to an accepted offer, the highest rate in five years. The caveat is eligibility: internships require enrolment, and most require a specific graduation window, so they are simply unavailable to career changers. For that route, our AI career paths guide covers the lateral move from an adjacent role, which carries more evidence than any other entry path.

Related pages

• AI jobs — the two very different markets behind the term, and where each one starts
• AI salaries — what these roles pay once they are full-time, every figure sourced and dated
• AI career paths — six routes into AI work, ranked by how much evidence there is that they work
• Best AI jobs for beginners — paid AI work with no degree and no enrolment requirement
• AI data annotation platforms — the eight major platforms compared on pay, payout cadence and entry gates
• AI training jobs — what the work involves and which platforms hire for it
• Remote AI jobs — how remote this market actually is
• Prompt engineer salary — what one much-hyped title really pays