2023 Mid-Year Engineer Salary Report: Who Leads the Pay Chart?

Levels.fyi released its 2023 mid‑year global programmer compensation report, analyzing total pay (salary, stock, bonus) for software engineers across five seniority levels.

Overall Trend: Significant Salary Increases

Salary growth was most notable for software engineering managers and technical project managers, whose median total compensation rose 5% and 4.8% respectively. However, many roles saw flat or declining pay.

Software engineer median total compensation remained unchanged at $170k.

Sales median compensation fell 0.3%.

Security, production, SRE, and iOS roles showed slight changes or declines.

Blockchain engineer median compensation dropped 11.3%.

Conversely, certain high‑growth areas saw strong increases: AR/VR engineers enjoyed a 14.5% rise, while distributed systems (backend), DevOps, full‑stack, ML/AI, and mobile (iOS + Android) engineers also experienced continued pay growth.

Junior Engineer Rankings

Databricks topped the junior list with a median total compensation of $274.2k, up from $221k in 2022. Flexport and Snowflake followed at $225k each, with LinkedIn, Waymo, Cruise, and Stripe rounding out the top eight.

Overall, junior engineers earned median pay above $210k, though the average compensation across companies fell compared to the previous year, and former leader Two Sigma disappeared from the list.

Mid‑Level Engineer Rankings

Databricks remained first with a median total compensation of $385.85k, though down from $443k in 2022. Roblox surged to second place with $370k, while other companies held steady.

Senior Engineer Rankings

The top three senior median compensations were Databricks, Netflix, and Roblox. Netflix moved from third to second with a median of $550k, while overall senior pay increased compared to the previous year.

Lead Engineer (主管工程师) Rankings

OpenAI surged to the top with a median total compensation of $925k, a dramatic rise from being unranked last year. The package targets engineers with ten years of experience and consists of a $300k base salary plus $625k in equity, vested over a four‑year cycle.

Lead engineers across the board now have median compensation above $660k, a substantial increase from the prior year.

Principal Engineer (首席工程师) Rankings

Facebook reclaimed the top spot with a median total compensation of $978k, though this marks a decline from $1.04M the previous year. Apple, Google, and Microsoft did not appear in the rankings.

Reference: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/2023-mid-year-report.html