Software Engineer compensation
Software Engineer Salary at AI Startups (2026)
The Software Engineer salary range at AI startups runs from $24,000 to $1,296,000, with a median of $191,000 — based on 1802 disclosed salaries from postings on Fast AI Jobs. These are aggregate figures only; we never publish an individual company's offer.
$24,000Minimum
$191,000Median
$1,296,000Maximum
Sample size: based on 1802 disclosed salaries.
01
Median Software Engineer salary by funding stage
| Funding stage | Median salary | Sample size |
|---|---|---|
| Growth | $262,500 | 11 |
| Seed | $240,000 | 24 |
| Series H | $206,250 | 14 |
| Private Equity | $205,000 | 15 |
| Series F | $201,250 | 78 |
| Series E | $200,450 | 105 |
| Series D | $200,000 | 266 |
| Series C | $196,500 | 334 |
| Series B | $193,750 | 182 |
| Series G+ | $190,700 | 470 |
| Bootstrapped | $184,500 | 12 |
| Debt | $172,500 | 94 |
| Series A | $164,200 | 190 |
02
How we calculate this
Roughly a quarter of AI-startup postings disclose pay. We extract the USD range from those that do, normalize each to a midpoint, and aggregate across distinct postings (deduplicated by posting ID). The minimum, median, and maximum above are based on 1802 disclosed salaries. We publish aggregate ranges only — never a single company's salary — so the numbers stay representative rather than anecdotal.
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