AI & Data Salary Guide Australia 2026-27
What ML, AI, MLOps, data science and data engineering talent actually costs in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Built for founders, CTOs and Heads of Data who are scaling a team.
- Salary bands for 6 roles across 4 levels, plus leadership
- Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, with Perth, Adelaide, Canberra and remote
- Job board averages vs what senior people actually sign for
- Contract day rates, equity by company stage and a hiring playbook
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Senior base salaries, excluding super. The full guide has every level from junior to lead, for six roles across three cities.
Superannuation of 12% sits on top of every figure.
What's in the guide
Eight pages, written for the people who sign off the offer.
- Salary bands by cityMelbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, junior to lead, for ML, AI, MLOps, data science, data engineering and analytics.
- Leadership payData managers, Heads of Data and AI, and Chief Data and AI Officers.
- Job boards vs signed offersWhy Indeed, Glassdoor and SEEK averages fall short for specialist roles.
- What moves someone up the bandProduction ownership, LLM experience and the other signals that set the price.
- Total comp by company stageWhat sits on top of base at seed, Series B to D, AI-native and listed companies.
- Contract day rates and a hiring playbookDay rates for project work, plus five moves that win offers.
Built from the market, not a guess
For every role and level we gathered 2026 salary data from public job boards and salary sites and from published industry salary guides, adjusted it to base salary by city, and took the median. Then we checked every band against our own conversations with candidates and hiring managers.
Thor Talent is a specialist AI and data recruitment agency in Melbourne, placing ML, AI, MLOps, data science and data engineering talent into Australian startups and scale-ups.
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