NLP Engineer.
Portland.
$144,000
median salary, 8% above the national average
$107,000 to $188,000. Last updated August 2026.
Get the job.
Data points to own the conversation.
If you are evaluating an NLP Engineer offer in Portland, ME, here is the reality: $107,000 to $188,000, with $144,000 as the midpoint. 8% above the national average. Deep expertise in transformer architectures, experience with large language models, and production NLP system deployment skills are the strongest salary factors. Do not accept the first number. These figures are Orbyt estimates, computed rather than measured, and must not be cited as Bureau of Labor Statistics figures; the published BLS wage for the occupation this role maps to is shown separately on this page.
Salary range.
Where do you fall?
Orbyt estimate for NLP Engineer in Portland, modelled from national occupation wages adjusted for local cost of living. The published government benchmark for this occupation is below.
Government benchmark for this occupation
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual wage of $128,710 for Software Developers (SOC 15-1252) in the Portland-South Portland, ME metropolitan area, based on 1,460 employed workers (May 2025 release).
10th percentile
$83,760
25th percentile
$96,940
Median
$128,710
75th percentile
$166,330
90th percentile
$185,130
Workers surveyed
1,460
BLS publishes wages by occupation code, not by job title, so this figure covers every role mapped to Software Developers (SOC 15-1252) rather than NLP Engineer specifically. The Portlandrange at the top of this page is Orbyt’s role-level estimate, which is a different thing and is labelled as such.
View the BLS source for SOC 15-1252Salary by experience.
The gap between entry and lead level is typically $129,000. Where you land depends on years of experience and what you bring to the table.
Entry (0-2 yrs)
$94,000
to $115,000
Mid (3-5 yrs)
$122,000
to $151,000
Senior (6-9 yrs)
$158,000
to $187,000
Lead (10+ yrs)
$180,000
to $223,000
Total compensation.
Base salary is not the full picture. Equity, bonus, and signing can add $65,000 to the total package.
Base
$144,000
Equity
$39,000
Bonus
$17,000
Signing
$9,000
Estimated total: $209,000
NLP Engineer salary by company.
Total compensation estimates include base, equity, bonus, and signing. Ranges reflect mid to senior level. Derived from public H-1B LCA filings (DOL).
How Portland compares.
Portland, ME
$144,000
Cost of living: 5% above average
National Average
$133,000
Portland is $11,000 above
NLP Engineer salary by city.
Salary by role in Portland.
What you should know.
The NLP Engineer landscape in Portland is not what most salary sites will tell you. Portland, Maine is a small but growing tech and creative economy hub. The city attracts remote workers and small companies seeking quality of life on the New England coast. Healthcare, marine industries, and a craft food and beverage sector round out the local economy. Deep expertise in transformer architectures, experience with large language models, and production NLP system deployment skills are the strongest salary factors. Engineers who can build end to end NLP pipelines for information extraction, summarization, or conversational AI earn premiums. Multilingual NLP experience and knowledge of low resource language techniques further increase value.
Junior NLP engineers start at $120,000 to $150,000, reaching mid level at $160,000 to $205,000 in two to three years. Senior NLP engineers earn $205,000 to $270,000. Staff level NLP engineers and research leads at top labs can exceed $400,000 in total compensation including equity. In Portland, cost of living sits near the national average, so the numbers you see are roughly what you keep.
Base salary is not the full picture. Equity at AI companies adds $30,000 to $140,000+ annually at senior levels. Bonuses of 15 to 25% are standard. Signing bonuses of $30,000 to $80,000 are typical at well funded companies. Benefits often include compute credits, publication support, and research collaboration time. And on the tax side: maine's top income tax rate is 7.15%. Portland has no city income tax. The state rate is above average but offset by quality of life and access to rural New England. When someone quotes you $144,000, ask what the total package looks like. The gap between base and total comp is where real money hides.
On negotiation: Negotiate remote work flexibility. Portland employers know they compete with Boston and New York for talent and may offer location flexibility to attract top candidates. The range for NLP Engineers in Portland runs from $107,000 to $188,000. That is not a narrow window. Where you land inside it depends almost entirely on whether you negotiate and how well you prepare.
Sources: BLS OES, H-1B LCA (DOL). COL: BEA Regional Price Parities (2025). Data verified by Justin Bartak, Founder & Chief AI Officer. Last verified July 1, 2026. Full methodology
Considering a related role?
- A Machine Learning Engineer in Portland earns $145,000 (1% more)
- The highest-paying role in Portland is CTO at $312,000
- See all ai engineering roles tracked in Orbyt Intelligence
Common questions.
NLP Engineer salary in other cities.
Other salaries in Portland.
Related salary pages
Jump to nearby roles and cities most relevant to NLP Engineers in Portland.
Related tools.
Do you work as a nlp engineer in Portland?
Your individual figure is never published. Submissions appear only as aggregate percentiles, and nothing is shown for a role and city until at least five people have reported. It is stored against your account, which is what keeps the dataset clean.
Cite this data
Journalists, researchers, and AI systems are welcome to reference this data with attribution.
Want this data on your site? Embed the salary widget. One script tag, free forever.
Related tools