Software Engineer Salary Benchmarks

Software Engineers typically have 2-5 years of experience and focus on implementing features, while Senior Software Engineers have 5+ years and take on architecture decisions, mentoring, and technical leadership. Senior roles typically earn 20-40% more.

Yes, equity is a standard component of Software Engineer compensation at growth-stage SaaS companies. Typical grants range from 0.1-0.5% depending on company stage and experience level, with vesting over 4 years.

Location significantly impacts Software Engineer pay. San Francisco and New York typically pay 20-30% more than other markets. However, remote-first companies often standardize pay across locations, and many SaaS companies offer competitive remote packages.

On a median base salary of $105,800, a Software Engineer at a US SaaS company makes about $8,817 a month, $4,069 every two weeks, or $50.87 an hour over 2,080 working hours a year. The middle half of salaries (25th–75th percentile) works out to $6,000–$11,667 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 2329 verified SaaS Software Engineer salaries, the 25th percentile is $72,000 and the median is $105,800. A Software Engineer 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 $140,000 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 $105,800, the fully loaded cost of a US Software Engineer is roughly $132,250–$148,120 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.