AI Governance & Compliance Officer
NicheAlso known as: AI Compliance Manager, Responsible AI Officer, AI Risk Manager
Develop and enforce organizational policies that ensure AI systems comply with regulations, ethical standards, and risk frameworks.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for ai governance & compliance officers.
About 1 in 33 reaches this level
Growing field of ~5-10K practitioners (est., no BLS code — nearest SOC 13-1041 Compliance Officers is far broader); only ~150-300 reach VP of AI Governance at the ~100-200 companies facing the EU AI Act and similar regulations, at ~$243K total comp (~3%).
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
This career typically requires a bachelor's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:
Cost to Qualify
Four years of tuition and required fees runs about $56K at a typical public college in our list (in-state) and about $288K at a typical private one. Both are pricier than the US national averages (about $48K public in-state, $180K private nonprofit, College Board 2025-26) because our 161-college dataset only includes nationally-ranked schools, not every US college. This excludes room and board, which we show separately on each college's page.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
An AI governance and compliance officer writes the rules for how a company uses AI, checks that its AI systems follow the law, and documents it all. There is no separate government job code; the nearest is compliance officers, a much broader group. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that group to grow about 4% from 2025 to 2035, close to the average for all jobs, with about 32,700 openings a year.
The demand side is strong because the rulebook keeps growing. In 2025 every US state introduced AI bills, and 38 states adopted or enacted around 100 AI measures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In a 2024 survey of more than 670 organizations by the IAPP, a nonprofit association for privacy and AI governance professionals (published in 2025 with Credo AI, a company that sells AI-governance software), 77% were working on AI governance and only 10 of 671 said they would not need more governance staff in the next year. That survey is now more than two years old, so treat it as a snapshot.
Much of the paperwork, like reading rules, drafting policies and writing up audits, is the kind of task AI tools help with. A 2025 Microsoft Research study of 785 jobs put compliance officers in the middle (247th) for how much of their work AI chatbots can help with. That fits the rubric's "2 Low": AI speeds up the writing, and the growing volume of rules absorbs the time saved.
What would change this score: if governments pause or roll back AI rules, demand would shrink and this would move to 3. So would signs that companies are meeting AI rules with software and a smaller team rather than hiring.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
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