Land a six-figure salary and work from your couch? That’s a tangible possibility in the current R&D job market, and specialized skills could be an asset. While some sectors are still reeling from layoffs, there are a considerable number of job openings across R&D roles.

Geographic distribution of R&D jobs/salary ranges

While California has seen the highest number of tech layoffs since the Dot Com era, the Golden State is still the undisputed champion of R&D opportunities, boasting 212 openings. But Virginia and Maryland are hot on California’s heels with 110 and 100 openings respectively. In fact, just five states – add New York and Texas to the mix – account for 39.74% of all R&D jobs.

The R&D field tends to offer competitive salaries, with average compensation ranging from $80,050 to $115,514 in our analysis of job openings with job titles such as Senior Data Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer, Bioinformatics Specialist, Quantum Computing Researcher, and Clinical Molecular Genetics Laboratory Director.

Top-paying R&D positions with some breaking the $300K barrier

Some specialized positions pay considerably more. For instance, positions like Senior Vice President of Policy and Research, Linux Kernel Engineer in AI, and Senior SDM in Machine Learning Acceleration boast salaries upwards of $300,000. In fact, more than 16% of R&D jobs in the dataset advertise salary ranges exceeding $150,000.

While the data science job market is saturated, attracting strings of complaints from social media posters grumbling about the competitive job market, the position still emerges as a top earner, with an average salary of $153,150. Machine Learning positions also pay well ($130,586 average) while Bioinformatics is lower with a $84,850 average.

While Research positions are more abundant, they offer a lower average salary of $52,859.

Flexibility meets higher compensation

In terms of remote work for R&D jobs, while going into the lab is still a requirement for many jobs, remote work is common. More than two-thirds of remote positions offer a hybrid model. Remote gigs also tend to pay better, with an average salary of $100,156 compared to $74,739 for on-site roles.

While research positions are plentiful (334 openings), they’re at the lower end of the pay scale, averaging $52,859.

Methodology: The data here came from open job listings for a range of R&D roles, ranging from R&D scientist to chief technology officer. Python helped with the number-crunching and visualizations and seaborn supplied the pictures.