If you are benchmarking a Staff offer off a New York band and hiring in San Francisco, the median will look fine and you will still lose your strongest candidates.
| San Francisco | New York |
| 25th percentile | $225,750 | $222,325 |
| Median | $250,000 | $248,050 |
| 90th percentile | $361,250 | $300,000 |
| Open postings | 332 | 199 |
Two things happened at once over the past few years. Remote-era banding pushed companies toward
national pay scales, which lifted New York toward Bay Area levels at the middle of the range. And
New York's own AI and fintech density gave it genuine competition for senior ICs, so the middle rose
on its own merits rather than by policy.
What did not travel is the top of the market. Frontier labs and infrastructure companies remain
concentrated in the Bay Area, and they are the employers writing $350,000+ base offers for Staff
engineers. That is a small number of companies bidding hard, which moves a 90th percentile without
moving a median.
The practical consequence: **the two markets look the same until you are competing for someone
who has options.**
Worth knowing if you are deciding which role to open: in San Francisco, Engineering Managers
out-earn Staff ICs at the median ($262,500 versus $250,000). In New York the relationship is
roughly level ($240,000 versus $248,050). The IC-versus-manager premium is not a constant — it
depends on the market you are hiring in.
Looking for technical talent?
RFS specializes in technical recruiting — placing software engineers, ML engineers, and product leaders at high-growth startups.
Work with us → Browse open rolesWe have placed 21 Staff and Principal Engineers, 8 of them in the last twelve months, at a
median base of $220,000 and up to $325,000 — across seed through Series C companies in both markets.
Across the firm: 300+ placements, 150+ companies, and a candidate database of 2M+ engineers.
Hiring for this role? Tell us the band you are working with and we will tell you where it sits against the live market — and what it will take to close the candidate you actually want. Talk to Recruiting from Scratch →Figures come from active US job postings with a disclosed annual base salary between $80,000 and
$700,000, denominated in USD, deduplicated across job boards, measured on 12 August 2026.
Base salary only — equity, bonus and on-target earnings are excluded, which is why these numbers
read lower than the total-compensation figures you will see on aggregator sites. When you are
setting a band, base is the part you are actually negotiating.
Tell us about your open roles and we'll start sourcing within 48 hours.
