# Software Engineering salary: $182,400–$261,000 a year

Every number below comes from 10,818 tracked live software engineering postings. No surveys, no self-reports — listed salaries only, in US dollars.

Measured September 2026 · n=4,567 US postings with salary.

## Findings

- The median software engineering posting offers $182,400–$261,000 a year (n=4,567, USD).
- 39.3% of the 10,818 live software engineering postings are remote.
- The middle half of postings (25th–75th percentile) top out between $223,900–$311,400 a year — the median alone hides how wide that spread is.
- Level 4 software engineering roles (building AI systems) list $190,500–$290,000, vs $175,875–$253,644 at Level 1.

## Median salary by seniority (USD / year)

| Segment | US postings with salary | Median min–max / year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Intern | 12 | $109,000–$136,000 |
| Junior | 54 | $123,000–$161,000 |
| Mid-level | 629 | $151,000–$220,000 |
| Senior | 2,501 | $180,000–$258,750 |
| Lead | 892 | $217,000–$293,530 |

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

| Segment | US postings with salary | Median min–max / year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Remote | 1,688 | $185,000–$260,100 |
| On-site / hybrid | 2,879 | $181,220–$262,000 |

## Building AI vs working around it

| Segment | US postings with salary | Median min–max / year |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Level 4 — Build AI systems | 831 | $190,500–$290,000 |
| Level 1 — Work around AI | 2,519 | $175,875–$253,644 |

## Companies hiring software engineering roles

- [NVIDIA](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/nvidia) (1884)
- [OpenAI](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/openai) (313)
- [Databricks](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/databricks) (289)
- [Salesforce](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/salesforce) (274)
- [Applied Intuition](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/applied-intuition) (186)
- [Adobe](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/adobe) (176)
- [Anthropic](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/anthropic) (176)
- [Cloudflare](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/cloudflare) (175)

## Method

US-dollar postings with both salary bounds listed. This page exists because 4,567 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: software engineering postings at tech companies tracked by Level (10,818 live postings in this category on the measured date). Not the whole labor market — do not cite as a national average.

All amounts are USD per year. Every median and quartile above excludes hourly-rate postings (a listed maximum under $1,000, almost always an hourly rate, not a salary) and mid-range postings that are neither clearly hourly nor clearly annual (maximum between $1,000 and $10,000) — mixing either into an annual median would understate the real number. The middle 50% of postings top out between $223,900–$311,400 (25th–75th percentile).

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

## Software Engineering salary questions, answered from the data

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

Across 4,567 live US postings for software engineering roles with a listed USD salary, measured September 2026, the median offer is $182,400–$261,000 a year. This is the tracked catalog, not the whole labor market.

**How many software engineering roles jobs are remote?**

39.3% of the 4,567 live postings are marked remote by the employer, measured September 2026.

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

In this sample, 1,584 postings are Level 4 (building AI systems) and 6,630 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/software-engineering