I make over $250k as a Meta AI researcher. Publishing research helped me land the job.

Ruiyu Li is a research scientist at Meta.

Ruiyu Li Ruiyu Li, a research scientist at Meta , makes over $250k and focuses on AI and machine learning.

She said working in eight AI labs in college and grad school allowed her to publish research.

Li said she developed a niche by focusing on AI video generation and large-scale AI systems.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ruiyu Li, a 26-year-old AI researcher at Meta, based in Menlo Park.

Her identity, employment, and salary (which includes base, bonus, and equity) have been confirmed by Business Insider.

This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a research scientist at Meta specializing in AI and machine learning.

I work on training AI models to advance large-scale recommendation systems, building AI-native agents to improve efficiency, and optimizing LLM post-training and inference.

I graduated from college in 2022 and finished my Master's in machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University in 2023.

It was a difficult time in the tech job market .

I found career fairs and conferences useless — but I eventually landed three Big Tech offers.

I went to Microsoft first, but later ended up at Meta.

That experience gave me practical lessons on what actually helped to get tech offers during a difficult market.