Career Ranking
Highest-Paying Careers
If you're optimising purely for earnings, this is the shortlist: the roles in our catalogue with the highest median pay, ranked. Each links to a full guide with the entry-to-top-10% salary band, the day-to-day, and the realistic path in.
One honest caveat before you sort your life by this list: the highest-paying role you're a poor fit for will usually underpay the well-fit role just below it, because fit compounds into the performance and tenure that actually move your income over a decade. Use pay as one input, not the only one.
- 1Physician$230K – $595K$280k median
- 2AI Research Scientist$165K – $595K$235k median
- 3Private Equity Associate$175K – $985K$235k median
- 4Hedge Fund Analyst$140K – $985K$215k median
- 5Portfolio Manager$125K – $798K$198k median
- 6Quantitative Analyst$135K – $595K$195k median
- 7Venture Capital Associate$145K – $685K$195k median
- 8Machine Learning Engineer$130K – $380K$185k median
- 9Dentist$138K – $365K$175k median
- 10Investment Banking Analyst$110K – $685K$175k median
- 11Intellectual Property Attorney$110K – $625K$175k median
- 12Tax Attorney$110K – $525K$175k median
- 13Cloud Architect$120K – $295K$168k median
- 14Corporate Attorney$105K – $595K$168k median
- 15Computer Vision Engineer$115K – $345K$168k median
- 16MLOps Engineer$115K – $308K$168k median
- 17Solutions Architect$115K – $285K$168k median
- 18Sales Engineer$110K – $305K$165k median
- 19Chief of Staff$110K – $360K$165k median
- 20Site Reliability Engineer$110K – $305K$162k median
- 21Platform Engineer$110K – $295K$162k median
- 22Technical Product Manager$110K – $298K$162k median
- 23Technical Program Manager$105K – $305K$158k median
- 24Security Engineer$110K – $295K$158k median
- 25Controller$110K – $285K$158k median
- 26Blockchain Engineer$105K – $325K$158k median
- 27Data Engineer$105K – $285K$152k median
- 28Management Consultant$95K – $485K$152k median
- 29Software Engineer$92K – $380K$148k median
- 30Data Scientist$100K – $265K$145k median
Ranked by median salary from the Work Fit IQ catalog, calibrated to publicly available 2024-2026 US labor signals (BLS OEWS/OOH, O*NET, Levels.fyi spot checks). Pay varies materially by metro, employer, and equity.
Other rankings
Which of these fits you?
A high rank means nothing if the work fights your wiring.
The free 12-question diagnostic ranks every role by how well it fits your traits — not just one metric. About 3 minutes.