01 Headline findings

Six numbers worth taking away.

difference between the median base at a Seed company and a Series D+ company. Both sit at $200K. Funding stage does not predict pay.

6.8%

of roles will sponsor a new visa. Most will transfer one you already hold — but only 38 of 557 will start one from scratch.

$2.5K

separates the median remote, on-site and hybrid role. The remote discount does not exist in this market.

77.7%

of roles describe equity only as “competitive” — no percentage, no number. Fewer than one in five give a figure.

$220K

median base midpoint across core engineering functions — ML, backend, infrastructure, full-stack, product and founding engineers.

37.5%

of roles offer no visa support of any kind, which is the single largest filter on an otherwise global talent pool.

02 By function

Base salary bands, 26 functions.

Each row is the interquartile band of advertised midpoints — the middle half of the market — with the median marked. Roles tagged with more than one function are counted under each. Rows marked * rest on fewer than 10 roles and should be read as indicative.

$75K$125K$175K$225K$275K$315K

Function	Roles	Cos	p25	Median	p75
Engineering Leadership	13	12	$222K	$258K	$303K
Infrastructure/DevOps/SRE	30	29	$208K	$239K	$255K
Backend Engineer	48	44	$200K	$225K	$250K
Machine Learning Engineer	49	43	$200K	$225K	$250K
Security Engineer	10	10	$198K	$222K	$271K
Product Design & UI/UX*	6	6	$204K	$219K	$242K
Product Engineer	44	41	$200K	$215K	$232K
Full Stack Engineer	65	59	$199K	$212K	$225K
Founding Engineer	40	37	$189K	$202K	$225K
Data Engineer*	9	8	$170K	$202K	$225K
Product Management	22	20	$189K	$200K	$221K
Research Engineer*	7	6	$180K	$200K	$270K
AI / ML Researcher*	5	4	$170K	$200K	$288K
Frontend Engineer*	9	8	$199K	$200K	$215K
Electrical Engineer*	5	4	$162K	$200K	$246K
Robotics Hardware Engineer*	6	4	$170K	$200K	$200K
Forward Deployed / Solutions Engineer	62	53	$175K	$198K	$218K
Chief of Staff*	6	6	$150K	$192K	$202K
Sales / GTM Leadership*	5	5	$160K	$175K	$199K
Marketing & Growth	26	23	$157K	$172K	$204K
People & Talent	11	11	$145K	$172K	$182K
Operations & Strategy	25	18	$140K	$170K	$188K
Sales / Solutions Engineer*	9	8	$135K	$161K	$175K
Account Management / Customer Success	14	12	$126K	$145K	$201K
Account Executives / Sales	36	32	$130K	$144K	$160K
Sales Development Rep (SDR/BDR)*	7	7	$75K	$82K	$90K

Advertised base only. Equity, bonus and on-target commission are excluded — which matters most for the sales rows, where variable pay is a large share of total compensation.

03 By funding stage

Stage buys you almost nothing.

The intuition is that a Series D company outbids a seed startup. In this sample it does not. Median base is flat from Pre-Seed through Series D+, and the widest gap between any two stages is smaller than the spread inside any single one of them.

$75K$125K$175K$225K$275K$315K

Stage	Roles	Cos	p25	Median	p75
Pre-Seed*	9	9	$178K	$200K	$224K
Seed	221	133	$175K	$200K	$225K
Series A	150	70	$165K	$200K	$225K
Series B	61	26	$181K	$215K	$250K
Series C	10	6	$176K	$188K	$233K
Series D+	22	10	$168K	$200K	$233K

Series C rests on 10 roles from 6 companies — at the edge of the publication threshold, and the one row here that should not be leaned on.

04 By workplace

Remote is not discounted.

Remote, on-site and hybrid roles pay the same to within $2,500 at the median. Whatever remote costs a candidate in this market, it is not base salary.

$75K$125K$175K$225K$275K$315K

Workplace	Roles	Cos	p25	Median	p75
Remote	51	36	$170K	$200K	$225K
On-Site Or Remote*	5	5	$152K	$200K	$240K
On-Site	315	171	$175K	$200K	$225K
Hybrid	115	78	$162K	$198K	$225K

On-site roles list one or more named metros; remote roles are advertised without a required location. Nearly all roles in this sample are US-based, so this is not a cross-border comparison.

05 Method, and what this cannot tell you

Read the limits before you quote the numbers.

How it was built

Snapshot taken 8 September 2026

Source

Live open roles listed by companies hiring through external recruiters. 557 roles were collected; 487 survived filtering.

Filters applied

USD-denominated roles only (18 dropped as non-USD or with an unparseable range) and posted within 180 days of the snapshot (52 dropped as stale).

The band

Each role contributes the midpoint of its advertised range. Reported figures are the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile of those midpoints.

Publication threshold

No band is published unless it rests on at least 5 roles from at least 3 distinct companies. 24 function segments were suppressed on this rule. This is what stops any single employer's numbers being read back out of a thin cell.

What it cannot tell you

Stated plainly, because these limits are real

These are asks, not settlements

Every figure is what an employer advertised, not what a candidate accepted. Real offers land inside, below and above these bands.

Base only

Equity is excluded because 77.7% of roles never quantify it. Bonus and commission are excluded too, so sales figures understate total compensation the most.

No geography

Almost every role in the sample is US-based and most list several metros at once. There is no defensible regional cut here, so none is published.

Selection bias

These are companies that hire through external recruiters — venture-backed, mostly early stage, mostly AI-adjacent. They are not a random sample of employers, and this is not a national wage survey.

Seniority is not separated

Function bands mix levels. A wide band usually means the function spans junior through staff, not that the market disagrees with itself.

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