12 Best AI Engineer Job Boards in 2026

12 best AI engineer job boards in 2026, with employer prices checked on each site: free options, paid AI-only boards, sourcing channels for ML researchers, and what happened to Hired.

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The best AI engineer job boards in 2026: Wellfound for startup roles with free unlimited posts, LinkedIn for volume and passive-candidate reach, AIJobs.ai for a paid AI-only board with published prices, Hugging Face for sourcing ML researchers by their public work, and Toptal for vetted contract engineers. YC companies get Work at a Startup, Hacker News "Who is hiring?" is a free monthly thread, 80,000 Hours covers AI safety and policy roles, and Welcome to the Jungle (formerly Otta) and Built In win on candidate experience and employer branding.

The AI engineer market changed in 2025. Generalist boards have not caught up. Most still treat "AI engineer" as a synonym for "data scientist" or "ML researcher," which it is not. Every board claims AI talent; few can show you engineers who have actually shipped LLM apps, RAG pipelines, agent frameworks, and production inference workloads instead of just listing them on a resume. Salary ranges swing widely between regions and seniority tiers. Specificity matters more than reach.

This guide compares the 12 best AI engineer job boards and hiring channels in 2026: what each one covers, the employer pricing each publishes (and where it does not), pros and cons, and a framework to pick the right board for your role, your budget, and your hiring timeline. Pricing and product details were checked on each company's own site on 2026-09-26. No hands-on hiring test is claimed.

Best AI engineer job boards: a brief overview

• Wellfound (AngelList Talent): Best for startup and seed-to-Series-B AI roles with equity comp.
• LinkedIn: Best for volume and passive-candidate reach across every seniority tier.
• AIJobs.ai: Best paid AI-only board with published, flat posting prices.
• Hugging Face Hub: Best for sourcing ML researchers and open-source contributors by their public work.
• Anthropic Careers: Best as a benchmark for top-tier safety and frontier AI roles.
• Foorilla (formerly ai-jobs.net): Best low-cost featured slot on a salary-first tech board with an AI and data section.
• Welcome to the Jungle (formerly Otta): Best for curated, candidate-first AI roles in the UK, Europe and the US.
• Y Combinator Work at a Startup: Best for YC founders hiring engineer #1 through #10.
• Hacker News "Who is hiring?": Best free monthly thread for reaching engineers who read Hacker News.
• Built In: Best for US tech-hub AI roles with strong employer branding.
• 80,000 Hours Job Board: Best for AI safety, alignment and AI policy roles.
• Toptal: Best for vetted freelance and contract AI engineers on demand.

Published price to promote one AI job listing (USD)

Source: wellfound.com/recruit/pricing, aijobs.ai/pricing, the foorilla.com "Post a job" panel and the September 2026 Hacker News thread rules, checked 2026-09-26. LinkedIn, Welcome to the Jungle, Built In paid plans and Toptal do not publish comparable prices.

1. Wellfound (AngelList Talent), best for startup AI roles with equity transparency

Wellfound (formerly AngelList Talent) is a job board built for venture-backed startups. Wellfound says 27,000+ companies hire on the platform, and its job cards show salary ranges and equity next to the role. For AI engineers who want to work on GenAI products at seed-to-Series-B startups, the platform surfaces roles that rarely appear on traditional boards.

Key features

• Salary and equity ranges on job cards
• Direct lines to founders and hiring managers, per Wellfound, not third-party recruiters
• Filters for funding stage, remote policy, and tech stack
• Built-in ATS, or sync your own

Best for

• Seed-to-Series-B startups hiring AI engineers with equity comp
• Candidates who want startup roles and equity transparency
• Founders who want to message engineers directly without a recruiter layer

Pricing

• Job posts: free, unlimited listings
• Job Ads (top-of-search placement): from $200 per ad
• Reach AI sourcing: free Explore tier, paid seats from $135 per seat per month
• Autopilot dedicated recruiter: $500 per month per open role plus a 10% placement fee on hire

Pros

• Large startup base: 27,000+ companies, per Wellfound
• Salary and equity visible upfront cuts down on mismatched applicants
• Founder-led messaging shortens time-to-first-interview
• Strong filtering by funding stage and remote policy

Cons

• Skews heavily toward seed-to-Series-B; thin coverage at FAANG-scale or pure research
• Volume in non-US markets is limited compared to LinkedIn

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2. LinkedIn, best for volume and passive-candidate reach

LinkedIn has over 1 billion members, according to its own job posting page, which makes it the biggest audience on this list. Big-tech AI labs, enterprises and later-stage startups post here, and its targeting tools give an AI hiring manager the widest reach of any channel in this guide.

Key features

• Job alerts and AI-assisted candidate matching
• Recruiter and Recruiter Lite tiers for outbound sourcing
• InMail to passive candidates outside the public job pool
• Company pages for employer branding

Best for

• Enterprises hiring senior AI engineers and ML leads at scale
• Recruiters running passive-candidate outbound campaigns
• Candidates open to inbound but not actively applying

Pricing

• LinkedIn does not publish a flat job post price; its page says pricing varies with the role, the job location and the number of hires
• Recruiter and Recruiter Lite are separate paid products

Pros

• Biggest audience on this list: 1B+ members, per LinkedIn
• Excellent filtering by seniority, location, and skill
• Strong employer brand surface through company pages

Cons

• Application volume is high and quality varies widely
• Costs add up fast at scale; not budget-friendly for early-stage startups

3. AIJobs.ai, best paid AI-only board with published prices

AIJobs.ai is a job board only for artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science roles, from AI startups and established companies. Like Wellfound and Foorilla, it prints its employer prices on a public page, so you know the cost before you talk to anyone. The site says a single post reaches its 30,000 monthly visitors.

Key features

• AI, ML and data science roles only
• Single posts stay live for 30 days with top placement on the homepage
• Featured placement across category and blog pages, plus posting to its social accounts
• Permanent company page with your logo

Best for

• Startups that want an AI-only audience without a subscription
• Teams hiring two to ten AI roles who can use a job pack
• Hiring managers who want a fixed, known cost per role

Pricing

• Single job post: $299 for 30 days
• Highlight add-on: $49
• Job packs: 3 jobs for $749, 5 jobs for $1,099, 10 jobs for $1,799

Pros

• Every listing sits next to other AI roles, not general business jobs
• Flat, published pricing with no sales call
• Pack discounts for teams hiring several roles

Cons

• No free posting tier
• Audience size (30,000 monthly visitors, per the site) is a fraction of LinkedIn's reach

Skip it if you need passive senior candidates who are not browsing job boards; LinkedIn Recruiter or a placement partner reaches them better.

4. Hugging Face Hub, best for sourcing ML researchers by their public work

Hugging Face is the main hub of the open-source AI community. It does not run an employer job board: "Hugging Face Jobs" is a compute product that runs code on CPUs and GPUs in the cloud, and Hugging Face's own openings sit on its Workable careers page. We keep it on this list as a sourcing channel. Profiles on the Hub show the models, datasets and Spaces people have published, which is hard evidence for research-leaning and fine-tuning roles.

Key features

• Public profiles with models, datasets and Spaces a person has published
• Organization pages that show who contributes to which projects
• Direct visibility into candidates' open-source footprint

Best for

• Companies hiring ML researchers and model engineers
• Roles requiring deep transformer, fine-tuning, or inference expertise
• Recruiters who source by published work rather than resumes

Pricing

• No job posting product; browsing public profiles is free

Pros

• Candidates often have public, verifiable open-source contributions
• Strong fit for fine-tuning, evaluation, and model deployment roles

Cons

• Not a job board: you cannot post a role, so all outreach is manual
• Skews research and ML over applied AI engineering

5. Anthropic Careers, best as a benchmark for frontier AI roles

Anthropic Careers is not a job board in the marketplace sense: it is a single-employer careers page. We include it because it is a useful benchmark for what frontier AI roles look like in 2026: detailed role scopes, published pay ranges, and teams that mix research and engineering. Anthropic's careers page says its "engineers here do lots of research, and researchers do lots of engineering." Its Greenhouse board listed 618 open roles when we checked, and US listings include an annual compensation range. If you would rather have agents built than staff a lab-style team, see our AI agent development service.

Key features

• Research, engineering, policy, operations and business teams
• Detailed role scopes with explicit responsibilities and qualifications
• Annual compensation ranges on US role listings
• Safety and alignment roles published alongside engineering

Best for

• Candidates benchmarking comp and scope for AI engineer roles
• Hiring managers studying how a frontier lab structures AI hiring
• Researchers targeting safety and alignment tracks

Pricing

• Not applicable: single employer

Pros

• Clear reference for how to scope an AI engineer role
• Published pay ranges on US listings
• Strong signal of what frontier AI work actually entails

Cons

• Not a marketplace: you cannot post jobs here
• Roles are highly competitive; conversion rate is low for most candidates

6. Foorilla (formerly ai-jobs.net), best low-cost featured slot with an AI and data section

ai-jobs.net now redirects to Foorilla, which lists tech jobs with salary ranges and has a dedicated data, AI and machine learning section. The feed is broader than it used to be: the main hiring page mixes AI roles with DevOps, help desk and other engineering jobs. For employers, the draw is a cheap featured slot with published prices. Foorilla publishes AI summaries of each role and links out to your own ATS for applications.

Key features

• Data, AI and machine learning section at foorilla.com/hiring/data-ai-and-machine-learning/
• Salary range shown on listings; required for all featured listings
• Applications go to your ATS or careers page (no apply-by-email)
• AI-written summaries instead of full job descriptions

Best for

• Startups and SMBs promoting an AI role on a small budget
• Remote-friendly roles that benefit from salary-first listings
• Candidates who filter by salary before anything else

Pricing

• Featured listing: $192 for 30 days, $256 for 60 days
• Featured posts are arranged by email; Foorilla replies with a payment link if the role fits its audience

Pros

• Low published price for a featured slot
• Salary transparency is required for featured roles
• Global mix of remote and on-site roles

Cons

• No longer an AI-only board: AI roles sit next to general tech jobs
• Limited employer branding features compared to Built In or Welcome to the Jungle

7. Welcome to the Jungle (formerly Otta), best for curated, candidate-first AI roles

Otta is now Welcome to the Jungle: otta.com redirects to Welcome to the Jungle UK, which describes itself as "formerly Otta." It built its reputation on candidate-first curation, and the UK site says it shows "only relevant roles" with 70,000+ live jobs from over 3,500 companies. For AI engineers in the UK, EU, and parts of the US, it is a high-signal board, and pairs well with our list of the best AI development companies in the UK if you are hiring through an agency instead.

Key features

• Curated listings with no outdated or duplicate jobs, per the site
• Salary data and company insights next to each role
• Company culture profiles with mission, perks, and values
• UK, France and US sites

Best for

• Product-led AI startups hiring mid-to-senior engineers
• UK and EU AI roles
• Candidates who prioritize culture and salary transparency

Pricing

• Employer pricing is not published; the employer site routes to a sales and pricing contact

Pros

• Curated listings improve candidate experience and brand
• Salary transparency helps reduce drop-off
• Strong UK/EU reach with US coverage
• Above-average company profile depth

Cons

• Smaller US footprint than LinkedIn or Wellfound
• Pricing is quote-based, so you cannot compare cost upfront

8. Y Combinator Work at a Startup, best for early-stage AI engineer hires

YC's Work at a Startup is limited to Y Combinator companies, which makes it small but high-density. Candidates apply to YC startups with a single free profile, and founders can contact them directly. For engineers who want to work on early-stage AI products, it is a concentrated funnel, and the YC brand draws strong applicants.

Key features

• Limited to YC-backed companies
• Founder-led messaging and applications
• One candidate profile visible to YC startups