The 2026 GCC Tech Salary Report: Riyadh vs Dubai vs Doha for AI and Engineering Talent

If you're a software engineer or AI specialist weighing offers across the Gulf in 2026, the headline numbers almost always mislead. Riyadh and Dubai ads quote the same dollar figure but pay you very differently after housing. Doha looks lower on every chart, then closes most of the gap when school fees enter the picture. This report cuts through that noise with current data on where the three cities actually sit, who's hiring, and which trade-offs matter when you sign.

The headline numbers

Pay scales with experience and specialization more than city. But for the same level of seniority, the gap between markets is real:

Mid-level software engineers (3 to 6 years). Riyadh sits at SAR 14,000 to 22,000 per month base, roughly $3,700 to $5,900. Dubai pays AED 25,000 to 38,000, about $6,800 to $10,300. Doha runs QAR 14,000 to 25,000, around $3,800 to $6,800. Dubai leads on raw base; Riyadh has narrowed the gap fast under Vision 2030 and now wins on housing-adjusted take-home in many roles.

Senior software engineers (6+ years). Riyadh seniors clear SAR 22,000 to 35,000 monthly, with tech leads and architects passing SAR 35,000 to 50,000+. Dubai seniors land AED 35,000 to 62,500, with top-company packages above AED 70,000 including housing. Doha seniors range QAR 18,000 to 32,000+, with multinationals adding QAR 45,000 to 55,000 total compensation in lead positions.

AI and ML engineers. This is where the spread widens. Mid-level AI engineers in Riyadh make SAR 18,000 to 28,000, while senior or principal roles at Aramco, SDAIA, NEOM, and HUMAIN reach SAR 40,000 to 75,000 monthly with strong specialization. UAE senior AI engineers, especially those with GenAI or LLM experience at G42, TII, or Hub71 startups, pull AED 37,500 to 50,000+, with principal roles passing AED 60,000. Doha AI seniors bring in QAR 25,000 to 32,000 typically, with outliers in oil and gas analytics and sovereign tech reaching higher.

Glassdoor and Levels.fyi data confirms the pattern. Median total compensation for software engineers at the time of writing: SAR 228,101 annually in Riyadh, $81,688 in Dubai, QAR 240,438 in Doha. Senior software engineers in Riyadh report 90th percentile pay of SAR 52,000 monthly base. AI engineer 90th percentile in Dubai sits at AED 40,667 monthly. [VERIFY: refresh these figures from Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, and SalaryExpert at publish time, since the underlying samples update weekly.]

What the gross figures hide

A salary number in isolation tells you almost nothing. Three adjustments matter more than the headline:

1. Housing changes everything

Cost-of-living data from Expatistan in late April 2026 puts Riyadh at 24% cheaper than Dubai. Property Finder's tracker has the gap closer to 29 to 30%, with the largest difference in housing. A two-bedroom apartment in central Dubai (Downtown, Marina) runs AED 11,000 to 18,000 monthly. A comparable unit in central Riyadh (Olaya, Diplomatic Quarter, Al Malqa) sits at SAR 5,500 to 9,000. Doha falls between the two, closer to Dubai for premium areas like West Bay and The Pearl.

Saudi Arabia introduced a five-year rent freeze in late 2025, capping increases on existing tenants in Riyadh until 2030. [VERIFY: check the latest regulatory status before publish, since implementation guidance was still being issued in early 2026.] This makes Riyadh uniquely predictable for multi-year stays. Dubai uses the DLD rental index, which permits increases tied to market rates. Doha rents fluctuate with energy cycles and have softened since the 2022 World Cup peak.

If your offer doesn't include a housing allowance, this gap eats 30% to 40% of the Dubai vs Riyadh salary delta. If it does include housing, you keep most of the spread.

2. School fees are the silent killer

Once you add children, the math flips again. Top international schools in Dubai charge AED 80,000 to 120,000 per child per year. Doha runs slightly lower at QAR 65,000 to 95,000. Riyadh's premium tier (American School, British School, KAUST Schools) lands at SAR 65,000 to 90,000, with mid-tier options well below that. A family of two children at a top Dubai school will spend AED 200,000+ annually, before uniforms, transport, or extras.

A senior offer that looks 25% better in Dubai can break even or fall behind once two kids start school. Always negotiate education allowance separately from base, and confirm whether it's per child or capped per family.

3. Dependent fees and visa costs

Saudi Arabia charges SAR 400 per dependent per month on expat residency. A spouse and three children adds SAR 1,600 monthly, around SAR 19,200 annually. The UAE has no equivalent dependent fee. Qatar's dependent visa structure is also lighter than Saudi's. For larger families, this single line item can shift Riyadh from cheapest to mid-pack.

Who's actually hiring at the top of the market

Job listings tell you the floor. Compensation reports tell you the ceiling. The companies below define the ceiling in each market, and they're the ones to target if you want above-median pay.

Riyadh and the Eastern Province. Saudi Aramco still anchors the senior tech market, particularly in industrial AI and supercomputing (the Shaheen-III cluster gives Aramco one of the largest research compute footprints in the region). SDAIA leads sovereign AI strategy, hiring for Arabic NLP, computer vision, and policy-engineering hybrid roles. NEOM Tech and Digital Company, despite ongoing scope adjustments, continues recruiting for greenfield smart-city architecture. HUMAIN, the PIF-backed AI venture launched in 2024, has scaled hiring through 2025 and 2026 and pays at the top of the local market for foundation-model and infrastructure roles. SABIC, STC, and Al Rajhi anchor the corporate enterprise track. AWS Saudi opened its Riyadh region in 2024 and pays SAR 16,000 to 22,000 for juniors, 25,000 to 38,000 mid-level, and 45,000 to 65,000 for seniors.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi. G42 dominates Abu Dhabi's AI scene with senior salaries clustering AED 60,000 to 95,000 monthly, particularly for engineers with sovereign AI, LLM, or compute infrastructure backgrounds. The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) sits in similar territory for research-track roles. Microsoft Abu Dhabi, fueled by its $15.2 billion UAE investment, hires for Azure AI and Copilot integration at AED 65,000 to 80,000 senior total comp. e& and du run major cloud and 5G platforms with strong cybersecurity demand. On the consumer side, Careem, Talabat, and Noon pay AED 50,000 to 75,000 for senior product engineers. Hub71 and DIFC Innovation Hub feed a long tail of well-funded startups.

Doha. Qatar's tech market is smaller but pays well in three concentrated verticals: energy analytics (QatarEnergy and adjacent partners), aviation tech (Qatar Airways' digital arm and Hamad International), and sovereign and defense tech (Q-CERT, Mada). Banking sector (QNB, Doha Bank) hires steadily for fintech and risk modeling. Multinationals running regional offices, particularly in oil services and consulting, top out total compensation in the QAR 45,000 to 55,000 monthly range for principal positions.

The skills that actually move the number

Three patterns hold across all three markets:

GenAI and LLM experience adds 25% to 40% over a comparable ML role. This is the single biggest premium in the 2026 market. Engineers who've shipped production retrieval-augmented generation systems, fine-tuned open models, or built agent orchestrators land in the top quartile faster. Arabic-language model work specifically commands an extra 15% to 20% in Saudi and UAE government-facing roles, since the talent pool is genuinely thin.

Cloud and MLOps depth matters more than framework breadth. Hiring managers across the region report the same gap: candidates who can list ten ML libraries but have never deployed a model behind a load balancer with monitoring. AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Azure AI Engineer, and GCP Professional ML Engineer certifications add 15% to 25% in negotiation, especially for mid-level candidates trying to break into senior bands.

Cybersecurity has decoupled from general tech pay. The UAE National Cybersecurity Strategy and Saudi NCA mandates have made cyber roles structurally undersupplied. Mid-level cyber roles in Dubai pay AED 20,000 to 45,000, often above comparable software roles. This is the most reliable arbitrage in the region for engineers willing to specialize.

How to read an offer in 90 seconds

When a recruiter sends a package across, work through this checklist before responding:

First, separate base from total. Many GCC offers bundle housing, schooling, and transport allowances into a single "package" figure. Ask for base, fixed allowances, variable bonus, and any equity or long-term incentive broken out. The base alone determines your end-of-service gratuity in Saudi and the UAE, so it's not just an accounting question.

Second, calculate effective housing. If housing is provided in kind (employer-leased compound or apartment), what's the market rent equivalent? If it's a cash allowance, is it sufficient for the area you'd want to live in? An AED 12,000 monthly housing allowance sounds generous until you price a three-bedroom in Downtown Dubai.

Third, model the family scenario. Even if you're single, model the offer assuming you might have a partner and one child within three years. Many candidates take the higher base now and discover the ceiling on family benefits later. School fee caps, dependent visa costs, and annual flight tickets per family member all matter.

Fourth, check the gratuity math. Saudi end-of-service is roughly half a month's wage per year for the first five years, then a full month's wage per year after. UAE follows a similar but slightly different formula. Qatar's gratuity is often more generous for long-tenure staff. For a 5-year stint, this can be a meaningful number, and it's calculated on basic salary only in most cases.

Fifth, verify the employer's Saudization or Emiratization band. In Saudi, working for a company in the Red or Low-Green nitaqat band creates real visa risk for expats and limits your mobility. The same is true for Emiratization compliance in the UAE. A great offer at a non-compliant company is a worse offer than a slightly lower one at a Platinum-band employer.

Where each city wins

If you optimize for savings rate, Riyadh wins clearly. Lower rents, lower utilities, the rent freeze, and competitive base pay especially in AI and senior software combine for the highest take-home as a percentage of gross. The trade-off is a less mature lifestyle ecosystem, though that gap closes month over month.

If you optimize for base salary and lifestyle, Dubai still leads. The deepest concentration of multinational employers, the most active startup ecosystem, mature public transport and entertainment, and zero-tax pay you can spend the same week you earn it. The trade-off is housing and schooling that quietly eat the premium.

If you optimize for specialized depth and stability, Doha is the dark horse. Smaller market, but multinationals operating there pay well above their Dubai or Riyadh equivalents for principal roles in energy, aviation, and defense tech. Lifestyle is steady and family-friendly, schools are solid, and the talent market is less crowded.

What to expect through the rest of 2026

Three trends to track:

The AI talent premium will compress at the junior end and expand at the senior end. Bootcamp graduates and self-taught Python developers are flooding the market faster than the demand for entry-level AI roles can absorb. Junior AI salaries in all three cities have flattened in early 2026. Senior salaries continue to rise because the supply of engineers who've shipped real production AI systems hasn't grown.

Saudization-driven hiring will keep raising the floor for Saudi nationals in tech. Companies competing for the same pool of qualified Saudi engineers are bidding up packages, particularly in cloud, cybersecurity, and AI. Non-Saudi engineers in the same teams are seeing pressure on housing allowances and bonuses to stay competitive.

Cross-border movement is accelerating. More engineers are spending two to three years in Riyadh, then moving to Dubai for lifestyle, then back to Riyadh for the senior bump. The GCC tech market is starting to behave like a single labor market with three regional clusters. If you're early in your career, plan for at least one cross-city move; the engineers who do this end up earning more than those who stay put.