Salary guides, by role
Real US salary bands at p25 / p50 / p75 / p90 by experience level, with geographic variation, career progression timelines, and an honest take on what actually moves the offer.
Real percentiles
p25, median, p75, p90 — not just "range" numbers from job ads.
Geo variation
Multipliers for SF / NY / Seattle / Austin / Remote with cost-of-living context.
Career progression
5-10 year path with realistic comp jumps and what changes about the work.
Software Engineer
Software engineering compensation has compressed at Big Tech since 2023 but remains elevated compared to pre-2020 levels. The story in 2026 is bifurcated: AI-adjacent and infrastru
Data Analyst
Data analyst salaries have stratified sharply in 2026. Analysts who can build production-grade pipelines, work with LLM APIs for analysis automation, or connect data directly to re
Frontend Developer
Frontend developer compensation in 2026 sits slightly below equivalent backend roles at most companies, but the gap has narrowed. The biggest shift: companies now expect senior fro
Backend Developer
Backend development remains one of the highest-demand engineering disciplines in 2026, with compensation closely tracking software engineering generalist levels. The biggest comp d
Full Stack Developer
Full stack developers occupy an interesting position in the 2026 market: startups and small engineering teams pay a meaningful premium for engineers who can own both surfaces witho
QA Engineer
QA pay has bifurcated since 2024: manual QA wages flat or down, SDET / test automation engineers up sharply as companies push shift-left testing. This guide separates the two track
DevOps Engineer
DevOps / SRE compensation is one of the few tech tracks that did not deflate in 2024-25. The Kubernetes premium is real, the on-call comp is real, and the staff-engineer ceiling at