Base salary by level

Level	Typical range	Median
Mid-level engineer	$140k – $186k	$160k
Senior engineer	$160k – $192k	$176k
Staff / principal / lead	$180k – $230k	$200k
Engineering management	$200k – $220k	$205k

“Typical range” is the middle half of our placements — the top and bottom quarters fall outside it. Base only, in USD; equity and bonus excluded.

Base salary by company stage

Stage at placement	Typical range	Median
Seed – Series A	$140k – $200k	$170k
Series B – C	$160k – $200k	$175k
Growth & public (Series D+, PE, post-IPO)	$175k – $240k	$200k

Stage is the company’s stage on the day the offer was signed — checked against funding-history data — not its stage today. Roughly three-quarters of placements were at companies between seed and Series C, and stage moves the median about $30k.

The trend

Same measure, two periods: placements signed 2020–2022 had a median base of $170k; placements signed 2023–2026, $195k. The market repriced engineers by about 15% after the COVID hiring surge.

About this data

Recorded at signed offer. The same records our invoices are built on.
Base only. Equity is excluded because it varies too much by stage to average honestly.
Startup salaries, not big-tech bands. Most placements were at seed–Series B companies, where equity is half the story.
No thin cuts. We don’t publish any slice with too few placements behind it to be meaningful.

The compensation tables on our role pages show ranges for current live searches, which run ahead of these historical medians in a rising market. For the live number on your specific role and stage, book a call — we’ll tell you what offers are closing at right now.

Tell us about the role.

If we don’t think we can hit our number on it, we’ll say so on the call.

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