Salary guides
Software Engineering Salary Guide 2026
National and city-level compensation data for software engineering roles in 2026. Pick a role for percentile bands, top employers, and city-by-city breakdowns.
By engineering role
Salary report
Backend Engineer
$195Kmedian (national)
$150K–$281K (10th–90th percentile)
Salary report
Frontend Engineer
$185Kmedian (national)
$141K–$261K (10th–90th percentile)
Salary report
Full-Stack Engineer
$190Kmedian (national)
$144K–$270K (10th–90th percentile)
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DevOps / Platform Engineer
$200Kmedian (national)
$156K–$290K (10th–90th percentile)
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Machine Learning Engineer
$220Kmedian (national)
$161K–$350K (10th–90th percentile)
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Staff Engineer
$280Kmedian (national)
$221K–$400K (10th–90th percentile)
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Engineering Manager
$260Kmedian (national)
$200K–$361K (10th–90th percentile)
How we compute these
National medians and percentile bands are synthesized from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025 release, SOC 15-1252 Software Developers) and hand-curated total-comp medians at tech employers calibrated against public salary surveys. City pages additionally apply metro-area multipliers derived from BLS MSA data. Numbers refresh annually after the next BLS release.
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The salary pages above focus on compensation. For the role description, key skills, interview prep, and career ladder, see the matching role guide at /careers.