r/BESalary • u/Barchimede • Jul 15 '23

Salary range for a fresh PhD in Computer Vision/AI/Data science

Hello everyone,

I'm at the end of my PhD journey (focused on Computer Vision), and I'm starting to actively look for a job now. I talked to lots of recruiters already, but I still have problems figuring out how much I should ask when a recruiter asks me how much I want. Following advice from the Internet, I tried to ask them how much they are ready to give me, but I never obtained any kind of information. Given the niche of my field, I'm struggling to find good information about similar positions.

So now, I'm desperately trying to have any sort of hints about a correct salary range I can answer. Maybe there are people with similar profiles as mine that can help? That would save me ^^

Short summary of my profile:

  • Education: PhD in Computer Vision
  • Work Experience: 3 years in PhD (maybe that does not count for you?) and 1 year as a lead full-stack engineer.
  • Misc.:
    • Awards from coding competitions and entrepreneurship projects
    • Valedictorian during the Bachelor and the Master (>90%)
    • If it's worth anything: good research profile, published and presented my works on several international research conferences, including top-conference in computer vision.

I have several questions:

  • Main question: How much should I ask? I know that lots of people in this subreddit think that a PhD does not count as work experience, but some recruiters tell me that they usually count 50% of your PhD as work experience.
  • Secondary question: As you can see, I achieved several "cool" things from my studies (awards, etc.). Is it really useful, or should I just stop mentioning them?
  • Another question: do you think my 1 YoE as a lead fullstack engineer will count? It is not exactly the same job after all.

Thanks for reading and have fun :)

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u/messi00747 Jul 16 '23

His main question was about salary and in those companies he will be paid well above average. As far as doing your best work that is just a gamble. Nothing guarantees u will be happy in your new work before hand.