Tech Salary Guide (2026)

CTO Salary

Chief Technology Officer compensation across startup, growth, and public companies. Equity, bonus, and total comp.

Chief AI Officer (CAIO) Salary

Chief AI Officer compensation in 2026. The newest C-suite role, with pay driven by high demand for AI leadership.

VP of Engineering Salary

Vice President of Engineering compensation. By company stage, location, and team size.

Director of Engineering Salary

Engineering Director compensation. By industry, company type, and geographic market.

Principal Engineer Salary

Principal Engineer compensation for the highest individual contributor track. By company type and tech stack.

Staff Engineer Salary

Staff Engineer compensation for the senior IC role between architecture and execution. By domain and company stage.

Engineering Manager Salary

Engineering Manager compensation for people leaders with 5–15 direct reports. By company size and location.

CTO Startup Salary

CTO compensation at venture-backed startups by funding stage. Seed through Series C, with equity breakdowns.

Remote CTO Salary

Remote CTO compensation in 2026. Location-agnostic vs geo-adjusted pay, and how remote work affects total comp.

Head of Engineering Salary

Head of Engineering compensation across US, UK, and EU markets. How the role compares to VP of Engineering.

Anthropic

Median TC ~$600K. RSP equity, conservative comp philosophy.

OpenAI

L4 to L7 bands. PPU tender offers, $1M+ at senior IC levels.

Google DeepMind

Google leveling L3 to L8. Research scientist track is separate.

xAI

Smaller dataset, equity-heavy due to recent funding rounds.

Microsoft AI

Elevated bands vs core Microsoft under the Suleyman org.

Meta Superintelligence Labs

The $100M signing-bonus era. E5 to E9 with retention-heavy packages.

Apple AI / ML

Private comp dataset. RSU-heavy, below frontier-lab cash.

Amazon AGI / AWS AI

AGI org plus AWS AI services. L4 to L8 banding.

Nvidia

Stock-millionaire territory after the 2024 split. NV1 to NV9 leveling.

Netflix

All-cash, top-of-market philosophy. No signing bonus, no perf bonus.

Scale AI

Post-Meta acqui-hire context. Member of Technical Staff track.

Databricks

IPO-track, MLOps-heavy. Post-Mosaic comp shape.

Perplexity

Search-disruption AI lab. Equity-weighted, smaller cash bands.

Palantir

Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) track. Public-co RSU stability.

AI Lab Levels Explained

Cross-company level map: OpenAI L3 to L7, Google L3 to L8, Anthropic, Meta E3 to E9, Microsoft 59 to 69.

AI Lab Millionaires

How Nvidia, OpenAI, and Anthropic equity created the new stock-wealth tier.

AI Engineer Salary by Mission

Defense, consumer, infrastructure, and foundation-model comp compared.

AI Engineer Equity & RSU

Public RSU, private RSU, PPUs, and options. The hidden 70% of pay at AI labs.

AI Salary Negotiation

Counter-offer math, signing-bonus tactics, and company-specific negotiation notes.

Bay Area AI Salary Premium

SF and NYC vs remote vs international comp tiers. How frontier labs handle location.

Alexandr Wang Compensation

The $100M+ Meta acqui-hire breakdown. Named-individual case study.