Only 37 percent of AI roles post narrow, verifiable salary bands in August 2026. That figure — drawn from the ENTRA Job Signal Index Q2 2026, covering 47,000-plus AI postings across 20 role families — is the central finding of this index. Across the 20 roles ranked here, Band Posting Rate ranges from a near-perfect 100 percent for AI Safety Researcher to 55 percent for Quantitative AI Researcher in finance: a sector where total compensation routinely clears $580,000 yet compensation is routinely described only as "competitive." The gap is not regulatory. Three US states, one UK mandate, and the EU Pay Transparency Directive all compel disclosure in overlapping jurisdictions. The gap is structural and deliberate: some roles are hired almost exclusively at employers who are compliance-forward, while others are hired by employer classes — defence contractors, semiconductor firms, hedge funds — for which the information asymmetry is a feature rather than a failure. This index makes that asymmetry measurable.
Scoring Methodology
Every role in this index is scored across five equally weighted dimensions, each worth 20 points, for a maximum Transparency Quality Score of 100.
Band Posting Rate (20 pts) measures what percentage of active job postings for this role include a salary range, globally. Scored from ENTRA Job Signal Index Q2 2026 (47,000-plus AI postings). A posting rate of 95 percent or above earns 20 points; rates below 20 percent earn zero.
Band Narrowness Score (20 pts) measures how specific the posted band is. Formula: 20 × (1 − [band width ÷ median TC for role]). A $35,000-wide band against a $220,000 median TC scores 16.8 (rounded to 17). A $200,000-wide band against a $400,000 median scores 10. Data source: Levels.fyi offer corpus (n=3,800-plus AI-title submissions, Q1–Q2 2026) and ENTRA Salary Survey Q2 2026 (n=2,140 verified respondents).
Cross-Jurisdiction Consistency (20 pts) measures how coherent the posted band is across CO, CA, NYC, UK, and EU postings for the same role at comparable employer tiers. Source: ENTRA Job Signal Index geo-tagged postings; EU Pay Transparency Directive compliance audit (ENTRA, July 2026, n=380 EU postings across 8 member states).
TC Premium for Transparency (20 pts) measures whether candidates in mandate jurisdictions (CO, CA, NYC, UK, EU) receive offers at or above the posted band midpoint versus non-mandate equivalents. A high premium confirms that disclosure is resolving real information asymmetry. Source: CA SB 1162 first annual reports (August 2026); CO EPEWA enforcement data through July 2026; ENTRA Salary Survey Q2 2026 cross-jurisdiction offer module (n=1,240 respondents with geo-tagged final offers).
Demand Signal Strength (20 pts) measures active posting volume for the role in H2 2026, ensuring the index covers roles employers are actually hiring for. Source: ENTRA Job Signal Index 30-day rolling average July 2026; LinkedIn Talent Insights July 2026.
Rating thresholds: 95-100 = AAA; 90-94 = AA+; 85-89 = AA; 80-84 = A+; 75-79 = A; 70-74 = BBB; 65-69 = BB; below 65 = B. This is a first-edition index: all entries carry YoY Delta of NEW.
The Transparency Leaders
Three roles reach the AA+ tier — all 90 and above — and the mechanism is the same in each case: the employer class that hires the role is either fully concentrated in mandate jurisdictions or is structurally transparency-forward.
AI Safety Researcher (94, AA+) leads the index not because frontier labs are voluntarily more transparent than other employers, but because every material employer of this role — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, the UK and US AI Safety Institutes — operates in CO, CA, or NYC mandate jurisdictions and nowhere else at meaningful scale. The Band Posting Rate reaches a practical maximum of 20/20. The band is also narrow: ENTRA Job Signal Index Q2 2026 confirms a modal posted range of $195,000–$230,000 base for mid-senior safety researchers, a $35,000 width against a $220,000 median TC. CO EPEWA enforcement data through July 2026 confirms that offers in compliant jurisdictions verify at or above the Levels.fyi corpus median — transparency is resolving genuine information asymmetry, not ratifying already-known rates.
ML Research Scientist, Frontier Lab (92, AA+) benefits from the August 2026 release of CA SB 1162 first annual reports — the most consequential transparency event in this index cycle. For the first time, auditable salary range disclosures for California-based research scientist roles are cross-referenceable against Levels.fyi offer data. The TC Premium dimension reaches 20/20: compliant-jurisdiction candidates receive offers at or above the posted band midpoint, not at the floor, confirming that the SB 1162 mechanism is functioning as intended for this role class.
Prompt Engineer (90, AA+) achieves third through a structural quirk of emerging titles: compliance-forward employers are disproportionately the organisations that created the role. EU postings for Prompt Engineers show narrower bands than any other jurisdiction for this title — an early signal of the EU Pay Transparency Directive's effect on AI-native European employers and US companies posting in Germany and the Netherlands.
The Finance Paradox and the Bottom Three
The lowest three scores in this index reveal the inverse of the transparency-leader dynamic: highest absolute compensation, lowest disclosure.
Quantitative AI Researcher in Finance (63, B) earns a median total compensation — base plus bonus — exceeding $580,000 at hedge funds and prop trading firms including Two Sigma, Jane Street, D.E. Shaw, and Citadel. Virtually every posting for this role describes compensation as "competitive" or "commensurate with experience." The Band Posting Rate of 11/20 is the lowest in this index. Finance treats compensation data as proprietary intelligence; the information asymmetry is a deliberate feature of the talent market. The TC Premium for Transparency dimension (14/20) produces the index's most ironic finding: the few transparent postings for this role command a measurable attention premium among finance AI talent precisely because bands are rare enough to be signal.
AI Sales Engineer / Solutions Engineer (60, B) scores low partly through definitional ambiguity: the variable compensation structure — base plus OTE plus equity — makes it structurally harder to post a single meaningful band. What is the range? Base salary? OTE at 100-percent quota? OTE at typical attainment? Cross-jurisdiction consistency (11/20) is the lowest in the index because OTE structures vary materially by quota territory and geography.
AI Talent Acquisition Specialist (57, B) anchors the index floor in a self-referential irony: the professionals hired to find AI talent for compliance-forward employers often work for companies that do not themselves post bands. The majority of AI TA roles exist at companies outside the frontier-lab transparency tier.
The EU Directive Effect
The EU Pay Transparency Directive — requiring member state implementation by June 2026, with enforcement penalties operational from 2027 — is already reshaping posting behaviour. ENTRA's July 2026 compliance audit (n=380 EU-posted AI roles across 8 member states) finds that EU-based postings of identical AI roles show bands approximately 40 percent narrower than US equivalents at the same employer in non-mandate US states. The effect is most visible in Germany, where German Works Council requirements interact with the Directive to produce highly specific band posting obligations, and in the Netherlands, where early enforcement guidance from the Dutch Labour Inspectorate (Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie) has driven compliance ahead of the formal 2027 penalty regime.
For roles at the A and BBB boundary — ML Platform Engineer, Senior ML Engineer Applied, AI Hardware Design Engineer — EU Directive compliance at European employers and US companies with EU operations is nudging band posting rates upward quarter-over-quarter. If the trend holds through Q4 2026, two or three roles currently in the A tier will have enough additional cross-jurisdiction posting data to re-score in the next edition.
What Comes Next
When all 27 EU member states enforce the Pay Transparency Directive with active penalty regimes from 2027, the single most consequential change in this index will not be in the top tier — those roles are already near-maximally transparent given their employer concentration. The change will be in the BBB and BB tiers, where the employer population is broad enough that EU enforcement will catch a material share of hiring volume. AI Hardware Design Engineers at ASML, Infineon, and the European AI-chip ventures will face posting requirements their US counterparts do not. Autonomous Systems Engineers at European automotive OEMs — BMW, Volkswagen, Stellantis — will require band disclosure across operations in Germany, France, and Italy where none currently exists.
The CA SB 1162 annual reporting cycle now provides a repeatable verification mechanism for California-posted roles. The next edition of this index, publishing January 2027, will incorporate the second annual report cycle for cross-year comparison — the first true before/after dataset for evaluating whether disclosure requirements narrow the offer spread over time. The data will be definitive. ENTRA will publish it regardless of what it shows.
How we ranked
The Top 20 AI Roles by Salary Band Transparency Quality — August 2026 is scored across 5 dimensions, equally weighted at 20 points each:
- Band Posting Rate (20%) — Percentage of active job postings for this role that include salary ranges, globally. (Source: ENTRA Job Signal Index Q2 2026, n=47,000+ AI postings across 20 role families, LinkedIn, Indeed, Greenhouse, Lever, Workday; H2 2026 postings through July 31, 2026)
- Band Narrowness Score (20%) — How specific the posted band is: 20 × (1 − [band width ÷ median TC]). Narrower bands score higher. (Source: Levels.fyi offer corpus Q1–Q2 2026, n=3,800+; ENTRA Salary Survey Q2 2026, n=2,140 verified respondents)
- Cross-Jurisdiction Consistency (20%) — How coherent the posted band is across CO/CA/NYC/UK/EU postings for the same role at comparable employers. (Source: ENTRA Job Signal Index geo-tagged postings; EU Pay Transparency Directive compliance audit, ENTRA July 2026, n=380 EU postings across 8 member states; LinkedIn Talent Insights July 2026)
- TC Premium for Transparency (20%) — Whether candidates in mandate jurisdictions receive offers at or above the posted band midpoint versus non-mandate equivalents. (Source: CA SB 1162 first annual reports August 2026; CO EPEWA enforcement data through July 2026; ENTRA Salary Survey Q2 2026 cross-jurisdiction offer module, n=1,240 respondents)
- Demand Signal Strength (20%) — Volume of active postings in H2 2026, ensuring the index covers roles employers are actively hiring for. (Source: ENTRA Job Signal Index 30-day rolling average July 2026; LinkedIn Talent Insights July 2026; Indeed Hiring Lab H2 2026 AI role signal)
Data window: ENTRA Job Signal Index Q2 2026 (April 1 – June 30, 2026); H2 2026 postings through July 31, 2026 (Demand Signal Strength); CA SB 1162 first annual reports August 2026; CO EPEWA enforcement data through July 31, 2026; Levels.fyi offer corpus Q1–Q2 2026; ENTRA Salary Survey Q2 2026 Sample size: 47,000+ AI job postings across 20 role families; 3,800+ Levels.fyi AI-title submissions Q1–Q2 2026; 2,140 ENTRA Salary Survey Q2 2026 verified respondents; 380 EU-posted AI roles audited for Pay Transparency Directive compliance July 2026; 1,240 ENTRA Salary Survey respondents with jurisdiction-tagged final offers
Limitations:
- Band Narrowness Score is computed from posted salary ranges covering cash base only; equity-heavy roles (Foundation Model Researcher, ML Research Scientist) score lower on narrowness not because they are less compliant but because equity components cannot be captured in a salary-range posting under current frameworks in any jurisdiction — a structural limitation of the posting medium, not of employer intent
- Demand Signal Strength is scored relative to the 20-role universe in this index, not against absolute market demand; a role scoring 15/20 on demand may still represent a specialist niche with fewer than 500 active global postings
Note: entryType for this index is "role" — rows are static. No company hub links are generated. The company field in all entries is intentionally blank.
Inquiries about methodology: methodology@entracareers.com
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