Tech Salary by Job Title (2026)
median market pay range (posted or estimated) across 29 curated tech titles
$195K
top: Staff Software Engineer
$94K
floor: Business Analyst
$115K–$177.5K
middle 50% (p25–p75)
Across 29 curated US tech titles (each n ≥ 250), median market pay ranges run from $195K for a Staff Software Engineer down to $94K for a Business Analyst. A Software Engineer’s median is $137K.
Figures are the midpoints of market pay ranges shown to candidates (posted or estimated) — not employer-disclosed pay.
Key findings
- $195K median for Staff Software Engineer — the top curated title.
- A Senior Software Engineer’s median ($158K) sits $21K above a plain Software Engineer ($137K).
- The market-wide median across all priced roles is $144K (p25 $115K / p75 $177.5K).
Explore every title
Search and sort the 29 curated titles. Each row shows the posting count, the quartiles (p25 / median / p75), the remote share, and — on expand — the top skills that show up in those postings.
| Range | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 689 | $195K | 50.8% | ||
| 343 | $187.5K | 57.1% | ||
| 272 | $172K | 51.1% | ||
| 305 | $170K | 60.3% | ||
| 308 | $169K | 45.3% | ||
| 269 | $162K | 50.9% | ||
| 359 | $160.5K | 61.8% | ||
| 501 | $160K | 52.6% | ||
| 3,890 | $158K | 39.8% | ||
| 463 | $155K | 47.9% | ||
| 568 | $155K | 84.6% | ||
| 1,172 | $152.5K | 37.1% | ||
| 260 | $151K | 70.8% | ||
| 268 | $145K | 61.3% | ||
| 1,152 | $145K | 33.7% | ||
| 536 | $143.5K | 64% | ||
| 252 | $142.5K | 48.8% | ||
| 804 | $140K | 76.5% | ||
| 609 | $139K | 27.7% | ||
| 3,011 | $137K | 32.6% | ||
| 488 | $135K | 52.7% | ||
| 1,482 | $135K | 37% | ||
| 553 | $133K | 38.4% | ||
| 393 | $132K | 96.7% | ||
| 449 | $130.5K | 40.6% | ||
| 901 | $119.5K | 88.9% | ||
| 265 | $110K | 18% | ||
| 560 | $100K | 68.3% | ||
| 296 | $94K | 81.5% |
Click a title to expand its quartiles and top skills. Sort by tapping a column header.
The range is the story
A title is not a number — it is a band. Each row shows the market pay range for the top 12 titles: the bar runs from p25 to p75, the diamond marks the median. A Senior Software Engineer floors near $136.5K but reaches $180K at the top of the band.
Bar = p25–p75 · diamond = median · whisker = p5–p95. Market pay range (posted or estimated).
The title ladder, by median pay
Ranked by median market pay range, the curated titles span a $101K gap from top to bottom.
What separates a $195K Staff Engineer from a $94K Business Analyst?
The $101K spread between the top and bottom of this ladder is not about hours — it is about leverage and scarcity. Staff and Principal engineers ($195K and $187.5K) are paid for system-level judgment that compounds across teams; their postings lean on Python, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure. Analyst titles cluster near the bottom because the work, however valuable, is more substitutable and the advertised ranges reflect it — Business Analyst at $94K and Data Analyst at $100K.
Notice too where the AI and ML titles land: AI Engineer ($160K) and Machine Learning Engineer ($162K) already out-earn a generic Senior Software Engineer despite far smaller samples — a sign the market is repricing scarce skills faster than it is repricing seniority. We held the publish bar at n ≥ 250 precisely so these comparisons rest on real volume rather than a lucky handful of high postings.
How this was measured (n=204,223)
Sample: 204,223 postings · Window: 2026-03-20 – 2026-06-09
Method
- Titles are canonicalised, then kept only when they have ≥250 priced postings.
- Per title: p25 / median / p75 of the posted pay-range midpoint, plus remote share and top skills.
- The ladder ranks titles by median; the explorer lets you re-sort by postings, median, or remote share.
Limitations
- Median = midpoint of a market pay range shown to candidates, not employer disclosure.
- Title canonicalisation merges close variants; rare titles (n<250) are excluded.
- Corpus is US tech & professional roles, not all US jobs.
Salary figures are platform-estimated posted ranges (posted or estimated), not employer disclosure. Corpus is tech & professional roles.