# Senior software engineer salary: $184,000–$242,000 a year

Every number below comes from 1,073 tracked live postings whose title matches "senior software engineer". No surveys, no self-reports — listed salaries only, in US dollars.

Measured September 2026 · n=516 US postings with salary.

## Findings

- The median senior software engineer posting offers $184,000–$242,000 a year (n=516).
- 41.5% of the 1,073 live postings matching "senior software engineer" are remote.
- Level 4 senior software engineers (building AI systems) list $184,000–$275,000, vs $180,000–$240,000 at Level 1.

## Median salary by seniority (USD / year)

| Segment | US postings with salary | Median min–max / year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Senior | 512 | $184,000–$242,000 |
| Lead | 4 | $274,480–$424,255 |

## Remote vs on-site (USD / year)

| Segment | US postings with salary | Median min–max / year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Remote | 220 | $184,500–$245,000 |
| On-site / hybrid | 296 | $184,000–$242,000 |

## Companies hiring senior software engineers

- [NVIDIA](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/nvidia) (130)
- [Elastic](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/elastic) (47)
- [Affirm](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/affirm) (41)
- [Databricks](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/databricks) (41)
- [ClickHouse](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/clickhouse) (40)
- [Airwallex](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/airwallex) (34)
- [Harvey](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/harvey) (23)
- [CoreWeave](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/coreweave) (22)

## Method

US-dollar postings whose title contains "senior software engineer", with both salary bounds listed. This page exists because 516 such postings clear the 50-posting floor Level requires before publishing a dedicated salary page — below that, the median moves too much between ingestion cycles to be a citable number.

Sample: postings at tech companies tracked by Level. Not the whole labor market — do not cite as a national average.

Refreshed automatically; this edition is measured September 2026. Small-n slices move a lot — read the n column first.

## Senior software engineer salary questions, answered from the data

**What is the median senior software engineer salary?**

Across 516 live US postings for senior software engineers with a listed USD salary, measured September 2026, the median offer is $184,000–$242,000 a year. This is the tracked catalog, not the whole labor market.

**How many senior software engineers jobs are remote?**

41.5% of the 516 live postings are marked remote by the employer, measured September 2026.

**Does the AI level of the job change the pay?**

In this sample, 165 postings are Level 4 (building AI systems) and 679 are Level 1 (AI is not the work). See the AI level breakdown below for the median in each band. Measured September 2026.

Source: https://jobsbylevel.com/salaries/role/senior-software-engineer