Microsoft has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, one of the major ones being the global layoff of over 9,000 employees. At the time, the company confirmed its increasing reliance on artificial intelligence, thereby leading it to streamline the workforce and make the setup more efficient. The company has sunk billions into AI, most notably its Copilot tool on Windows, and remains the largest investor in OpenAI, despite the recently reported tensions between them.
As we move on from the mega layoff news, Microsoft’s internal documents, as revealed by a Business Insider report, reveals that employees are encouraged to increase their use of AI tools, enabling managers to grant retention bonuses, particularly targeting employees contributing to AI initiatives. It is said that those working in the AI departments at Microsoft enjoy higher compensation than their non-AI peers.
While Microsoft closely guards pay data, visa application records have offered a glimpse into compensation for foreign hires. These figures reflect only base salaries, excluding bonuses and stock options.
Here are some of the basic salaries known from sources:
- Software Engineering: $82,971 – $284,000
- Product Management: $122,800 – $250,000
- Data Engineering: $144,855 – $264,000
- Data Science: $121,200 – $274,500
- Customer Experience Engineering: $126,422 – $239,585
- Technical Program Management: $120,900 – $238,000
- Applied Sciences: $127,200 – $261,103
- Hardware Engineering: $136,000 – $270,641
- Cloud Network Engineering: $122,700 – $220,716
- Research, Applied and Data Sciences: $85,821 – $208,800
- Business Analytics: $159,300 – $191,580
Note that these ranges reflect only base salaries for foreign hires according to over 5,400 visa applications from early 2025.
Microsoft’s LinkedIn is also hiring for AI-centric roles. Notably, a staff software engineer specialising in machine learning can earn up to $336,000, while senior engineers in the same domain start at $154,000 and can command base salaries as high as $278,000.
