Publish date: 10 October, 2024How much do software engineers at the so-called Big Five companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft – make? H512.com checked with Business Insider, which summarizes salaries in the sector on an annual basis using its Salary comparison tool*.
The platform specifies that the information is for the last three years and is from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website. This means the data is for employees who have a visa, and excludes US citizens as well as permanent residents. The totals can still be used as a guide to the state of the IT job market in the country right now.
“While indicative of what companies are paying for their jobs, the numbers are not absolute. For example, the H-1B visa program requires employers to pay the ‘prevailing wage’ for the position they are hiring for, but companies may classify employees at a lower level than their actual job,” Business Insider points out.
Additionally, they chose to analyze the companies they believe are most relevant and in demand by potential employees. The amounts are for one year and do not include bonuses and equity holdings.
Thus, according to the overall data, the lowest salary for a software engineer among the companies considered by the platform is 54 thousand dollars in IBM’s office in the US state of Florida, and the highest reaches 2.2 million dollars per year and is registered at Google in California. The average annual salary of a software engineer is 140 thousand dollars.
Alphabet (Google)
Employees of the corporation, which recently turned 26, have different options depending on the individual subsidiaries. We consider the largest of them – Google.
While the highest recorded value is $2.2 million (without knowing for sure if it’s for one or more employees), the lowest for software engineers is $220 thousand, or 10 times less. However, even this exceeds the company’s noted average salary value of $140 thousand.
Amazon
According to Business Insider’s data, Amazon’s software engineers are underpaid, with the salary ranging between $100 thousand and $180 thousand for a Level 1 Software Development Engineer in San Francisco. For level 2 and 3 professionals, respectively, and those with more experience, the amounts range between $110 thousand and $190 thousand per year across locations.
These are also some of the highest paying positions, alongside Applied Scientist, Manager – Technical Program and Product Manager.
Apple
In Apple’s offices in California, Colorado and Texas, the minimum annual salary for software engineers is around $110-140k, up by over $100k from the noted high of $260k for the Software Engineer – Applications position in Cupertino.
In Seattle, an Apple Software Engineer also earns a minimum of 110 thousand dollars.
The average salary in the company in total for all possible positions is 150 thousand dollars per year.
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Meta (Facebook)
We also look at Meta’s largest subsidiary, Facebook, again starting at the headquarters.
At Menlo Park, the social network’s software engineers earn between $100 thousand and $290 thousand, with an average annual salary of $170 thousand for all positions.
The published minimum for the New York and Seattle offices is also $100 thousand, and the highest salaries for software engineers there are $250 thousand and $240 thousand, respectively.
And how are salaries in the IT sector in our country? See here.
Microsoft
The highest figure of 260 thousand dollars per year is recorded at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, but in some of the published cases, software engineers are paid even less, up to a minimum of 93 thousand dollars per year. The lowest amount at the tech giant’s Bellevue office, on the other hand, is $110 thousand. The two cities are in Washington state, about a 20-minute drive from each other, and are located near Seattle.
In other locations, such as Fargo in North Dakota and Mountain View in California, values drop to $85 thousand a year.
And a few more companies..
We briefly look at Nvidia, where the lower salary limit for all possible positions is around $68k per year, and the upper one reaches $350k in some cases.
At the Robinhood fintech, co-founded by Bulgarian Vlad Tenev, the amount ranges between 50 thousand and 320 thousand dollars a year for employees in Menlo Park, where the company is headquartered. The highest salaries are for software engineers.
At IBM , salaries range from $530 thousand for a Senior Vice President of Human Resources to $48 thousand for a Lead SharePoint Developer.
And at Intel, the annualized amounts start at $38 thousand for a UI/UX Designer in Pleasanton and go up to $350 thousand for a VP of Manufacturing and Operations at the Santa Clara, California headquarters.
*The findings are based on data made public in Business Insider‘s rankings , which don’t claim to cover all positions at individual companies. It also doesn’t specify whether employees are hired half- or full-time.
We looked at company salaries for the Software Engineer position or its derivatives, depending on the structure and policies of individual employers.
