# Software engineer salary: $184,500–$270,000 a year

Every number below comes from 3,864 tracked live postings whose title matches "software engineer". No surveys, no self-reports — listed salaries only, in US dollars.

Measured September 2026 · n=1,929 US postings with salary.

## Findings

- The median software engineer posting offers $184,500–$270,000 a year (n=1,929).
- 37.8% of the 3,864 live postings matching "software engineer" are remote.
- Level 4 software engineers (building AI systems) list $190,000–$300,000, vs $184,000–$260,000 at Level 1.

## Median salary by seniority (USD / year)

| Segment | US postings with salary | Median min–max / year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Intern | 7 | $110,000–$132,000 |
| Junior | 22 | $124,500–$160,000 |
| Mid-level | 255 | $161,000–$230,000 |
| Senior | 1,054 | $184,000–$260,000 |
| Lead | 416 | $220,000–$298,700 |

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

| Segment | US postings with salary | Median min–max / year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Remote | 739 | $189,000–$270,000 |
| On-site / hybrid | 1,190 | $184,000–$270,000 |

## Companies hiring software engineers

- [NVIDIA](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/nvidia) (424)
- [Databricks](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/databricks) (164)
- [OpenAI](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/openai) (144)
- [Palantir](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/palantir) (134)
- [Affirm](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/affirm) (97)
- [Elastic](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/elastic) (96)
- [Applied Intuition](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/applied-intuition) (88)
- [Anthropic](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/anthropic) (87)

## Method

US-dollar postings whose title contains "software engineer", with both salary bounds listed. This page exists because 1,929 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 Not the whole labor market — do not cite as a national average.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.

## Software engineer salary questions, answered from the data

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

Across 1,929 live US postings for software engineers with a listed USD salary, measured September 2026, the median offer is $184,500–$270,000 a year. This is the tracked catalog, not the whole labor market.

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

37.8% of the 1,929 live postings are marked remote by the employer, measured September 2026.

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

In this sample, 708 postings are Level 4 (building AI systems) and 2,316 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/software-engineer