NIST is in effect a branch of the NSA, although not literally, only in effect. If the NSA says jump, it'll ask how high. If the NSA say "ban this model because our adversaries will use it to patch their systems", NIST will say yes sir.
I guess we'll all be transitioning to open models soon enough.
Government pay often is. The pay scales are capped, with a few exceptions and ways around things, so unless this job goes up to an SES or similar grade that $197k is the best they can do.
Note that at the top the GS-15 steps 6-10 all get the same pay. The linked position's listed pay range spans GS-13 through GS-15, which is actually a huge spread and kind of funny. That's a large spread in responsibility between GS-13 and GS-15. In civil service, as a manager a GS-13 might be responsible for on the order of 50-100 people and millions in contracts and equipment, a GS-15 might be responsible for thousands of people and billions in contracts and equipment (location does matter a bit, the folks in DC, because the cost of living is so much higher, usually end up with some grade inflation so drop them 1-2 grades to compare to the rest of the US).
Govt jobs do a CoL adjustment based on the region located, which would put this kind of role at market rate base salary for adjacent positions in the DMV and Bay.
> pay is all based on years of experience, not talent.
That's true for GS and WG positions (though they can get performance based bonus step increases, these are relatively rare unless you play golf with the boss), but the pay bands mostly try to get around that and give performance-based raises. Supervisors don't like getting taken to EEO so they often won't give low scores even to people who deserve them, though. This results in the top performers usually getting bigger raises than low performers, but low and middling performers end up with roughly equivalent raises.
In theory, most of the pay band systems offer an effective way to weed out poor performers, but it's just not used.
govt jobs are about the benefits and security. lifetime of healthcare, retirement, and job security. i know a ton of people who refuse to work in private sector after going into govt work cuz it's so much more stable.
I guess I wasn't clear. Being an individual who sets policy on which models can be made available is worth many millions even if it was formally a volunteer position.
You really think fully qualified high level AI engineers anywhere in this US, let alone in a major metro, are pulling in $150k with no stock or bonus?
They would just leave and pursue one of the many open positions paying double that for fully remote work that also typically include RSU's, bonuses, or options.
I know project managers that make twice that in smaller cities, just because they're AI adjacent.
> You really think fully qualified high level AI engineers anywhere in this US, let alone in a major metro, are pulling in $150k with no stock or bonus?
No. You're completely missing the point.
If they paid competitively then candidates would be competing against qualified engineers.
Regardless of qualification, it's a valuable position, because of the responsibility and capability of setting policy. You don't need any qualification for that. It probably helps not to have it. And that's value that can be turned into other forms of compensation, perhaps using fancy accounting.
