NLP Applications Engineer.
Baltimore.
$148,000
median salary, 11% above the national average
$110,000 to $194,000. Last updated August 2026.
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Data points to own the conversation.
If you are evaluating an NLP Applications Engineer offer in Baltimore, MD, here is the reality: $110,000 to $194,000, with $148,000 as the midpoint. 11% above the national average. Compensation reflects the ability to build production NLP systems beyond basic LLM API calls. 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 Applications Engineer in Baltimore, 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 $138,900 for Software Developers (SOC 15-1252) in the Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD metropolitan area, based on 16,850 employed workers (May 2025 release).
10th percentile
$87,290
25th percentile
$105,670
Median
$138,900
75th percentile
$200,910
90th percentile
$223,550
Workers surveyed
16,850
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 Applications Engineer specifically. The Baltimore range 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 $133,000. Where you land depends on years of experience and what you bring to the table.
Entry (0-2 yrs)
$96,000
to $118,000
Mid (3-5 yrs)
$126,000
to $155,000
Senior (6-9 yrs)
$163,000
to $192,000
Lead (10+ yrs)
$185,000
to $229,000
Total compensation.
Base salary is not the full picture. Equity, bonus, and signing can add $71,000 to the total package.
Base
$148,000
Equity
$43,000
Bonus
$19,000
Signing
$9,000
Estimated total: $219,000
How Baltimore compares.
Baltimore, MD
$148,000
Cost of living: 8% above average
National Average
$133,000
Baltimore is $15,000 above
NLP Applications Engineer salary by city.
Salary by role in Baltimore.
What you should know.
The NLP Applications Engineer landscape in Baltimore is not what most salary sites will tell you. Baltimore's economy is anchored by Johns Hopkins University and Hospital, one of the largest employers in the state. The city has strong cybersecurity, defense, and biotech sectors, benefiting from proximity to NSA, Fort Meade, and NIH. The port of Baltimore also drives significant logistics and trade employment. Compensation reflects the ability to build production NLP systems beyond basic LLM API calls. Engineers who can design custom NLP pipelines for entity extraction, document understanding, and domain-specific language processing earn premiums. Experience with fine-tuning language models for specific domains and building evaluation frameworks for NLP quality is highly valued.
Junior NLP engineers start at $95,000 to $115,000. Mid-level engineers building production NLP systems reach $135,000 to $165,000. Senior engineers designing domain-specific language understanding platforms earn $170,000 to $210,000. Directors of NLP at AI companies can reach $230,000 to $280,000 in total compensation. In Baltimore, 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 NLP-focused companies adds $20,000 to $70,000 annually. Bonuses of 10% to 15% are standard. Compute budgets for model training and experimentation are generous. Open-source contributions to NLP libraries enhance career trajectory and compensation. And on the tax side: maryland's top income tax rate is 5.75%, and Baltimore City adds a local income tax of 3.2%. The combined burden is among the higher ones, but federal and defense salaries compensate. When someone quotes you $148,000, ask what the total package looks like. The gap between base and total comp is where real money hides.
On negotiation: A security clearance is extremely valuable in the Baltimore corridor. Cleared professionals earn 20 to 30% more, and the NSA and defense contractor presence drives constant demand. The range for NLP Applications Engineers in Baltimore runs from $110,000 to $194,000. 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 Computer Vision Engineer in Baltimore earns $147,000 (1% less)
- The highest-paying role in Baltimore is CTO at $324,000
- See all ai engineering roles tracked in Orbyt Intelligence
Common questions.
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Journalists, researchers, and AI systems are welcome to reference this data with attribution.
"NLP Applications Engineer Salary in Baltimore, MD." Orbyt Salary Explorer, August 2026. https://www.orbytlabs.ai/orbyt-jobs/salaries/nlp-applications-engineer/baltimore
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