Head of Engineering Salary Benchmarks

At growth-stage SaaS companies the titles are sometimes used interchangeably. At larger organizations, VP of Engineering is more senior with broader organizational scope and higher compensation. Head of Engineering often focuses on execution and team delivery, while VP of Engineering owns long-term technical strategy.

Common progressions include VP of Engineering (broader scope across multiple product lines), CTO (company-wide technical vision), or lateral moves into a Director of Engineering role at a larger organization. Some Heads of Engineering transition into founding technical roles at startups.

Yes. Our data shows a $95,172–$168,138 typical range across 134 salaries. Series B–D companies often pay the highest premiums as they scale engineering teams from 20 to 100+ and need leaders who've done it before.

At smaller SaaS companies (under 30 engineers), Heads of Engineering often spend 30–40% of their time on technical architecture and code review. As organizations grow past 50+ engineers, the role shifts almost entirely to people management, hiring, and cross-functional leadership.

On a median base salary of $135,000, a Head of Engineering at a US SaaS company makes about $11,250 a month, $5,192 every two weeks, or $64.90 an hour over 2,080 working hours a year. The middle half of salaries (25th–75th percentile) works out to $7,931–$14,012 a month. These are base-pay equivalents before tax, and they leave out bonus, commission, and equity.

Expect the lower half of this benchmark. Across 134 verified SaaS Head of Engineering salaries, the 25th percentile is $95,172 and the median is $135,000. A Head of Engineering at a seed or Series A startup, or at a bootstrapped company under roughly $10M ARR, will often land between those two figures. Base pay typically moves toward and past the $168,138 75th percentile as the company adds headcount and ARR. Those stage bands are a rule of thumb applied to this benchmark, not a breakdown by company size, which the dataset does not report.

Budget for more than base salary. On a median base of $135,000, the fully loaded cost of a US Head of Engineering is roughly $168,750–$189,000 per year once employer payroll taxes (~7.65% FICA plus federal and state unemployment), health and retirement benefits, software seats, and equipment are added. That 1.25–1.4x multiplier is a planning rule of thumb applied to the benchmark on this page, not a surveyed cost figure. Commission, bonuses, and equity sit on top where the role carries them. Also budget one-off hiring costs: agency recruiting fees commonly run 15–25% of first-year base, and a new hire takes weeks to months to reach full productivity.