Compare Engineering Archetypes Side by Side
The archetype you land in matters as much as the company you land at. Rank every engineering archetype by total compensation — base, bonus, and annualized equity — then pick a few to line up side by side: pay, day-to-day work, and the qualities each one actually rewards. Choose a career level and a company tier to re-rank.
Check any 5 roles below to compare them side by side.
1
Engineering Management (Track)
$721k2
ML Engineer
$696k3
Security Engineer
$575k4
Technical Product Manager
$558k5
Forward Deployed Engineer
$556k6
Product / Full-Stack Software Engineer
$555k7
Platform / Infrastructure Engineer
$555k8
SRE / Production Engineer
$547k9
Mobile Engineer (iOS / Android)
$534k10
Data Engineer
$533k11
Developer Relations / Developer Advocacy
$505k12
Solutions Architect (Vendor-Side)
$484k13
Embedded / IoT Engineer
$460k14
Consulting Engineer / Professional Services Engineer
$443k15
Sales Engineer / Pre-Sales Engineer
$435k16
Solutions Architect (Consulting-Side)
$419k17
Customer Success / Customer Solutions Engineer
$370k18
Customer Support Engineer
$334kStaff · High-growth public · total comp (base + bonus + annualized equity) · P25–P75 band, P50 median · axis to $1.1M
Directional context only, not financial advice. Figures aren't a live feed of US individual-contributor total-comp submissions — see the methodology for sources and confidence levels.