Startup engineering salaries, from our own placements.

Base salary by level

“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.

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 about 15% — and our data caught it.

About this data

• Recorded at signed offer. The same records our invoices are built on — a strong incentive for them to be right.
• 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. If you want the live number for your specific role and stage, that’s a call, not a table.

Tell us about the role.

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