Side-by-side distribution
Engineering Manager
$168,950
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 36%
- Live roles
- 9,976
Software Engineer
$173,500
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 30.5%
- Live roles
- 35,762
Highest-paying jobs
Engineering Manager, Research Productivity
Engineering Manager, GPU (ML Accelerator)
Engineering Manager, Research Data Platform
Junior Business Development Manager
Business Development Manager
Business Development Manager
Business Development Manager
Business Development Manager
Engineering Manager, Inference Infrastructure
Engineering Manager, Hardware Platform Security
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning (Audio)
Software Engineer, ML Networking
Senior Software Engineer
Lead Software Engineer
Staff Software Engineer, Kubernetes Platform
Staff Software Engineer, Node Infra
Staff Software Engineer, Code RL
Staff+ Software Engineer, Developer Productivity
Staff Software Engineer, Claude Code
Staff Software Engineer, Environments Infrastructure
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Northrop Grumman
|
$183,100 | 164 |
Databricks
|
$225,625 | 35 |
Cushman & Wakefield
|
$143,375 | 30 |
Brex
|
$225,000 | 25 |
|
Anthropic
|
$445,000 | 23 |
Accenture
|
$217,450 | 23 |
PwC
|
$182,500 | 21 |
Atwell, LLC
|
$117,500 | 21 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
Northrop Grumman
|
$136,000 | 341 |
Anduril Industries
|
$221,000 | 292 |
Booz Allen Hamilton
|
$126,800 | 185 |
Leidos
|
$122,275 | 162 |
OpenAI
|
$355,500 | 142 |
CACI
|
$139,950 | 142 |
SpaceX
|
$142,500 | 124 |
Blue Origin
|
$197,582 | 108 |
Engineering Manager salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | $385,944 | 6 |
| San Francisco | $238,500 | 415 |
| Seattle | $205,800 | 172 |
| New York | $198,000 | 522 |
| Austin | $194,100 | 110 |
| London | $190,145 | 74 |
| Boston | $182,500 | 132 |
| Los Angeles | $180,891 | 119 |
| Denver | $171,989 | 103 |
| Atlanta | $168,025 | 94 |
Software Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | $431,406 | 5 |
| San Francisco | $225,000 | 1,573 |
| New York | $212,225 | 1,430 |
| Seattle | $202,000 | 609 |
| Boston | $185,000 | 259 |
| Los Angeles | $183,075 | 228 |
| London | $181,500 | 135 |
| Austin | $171,700 | 207 |
| Atlanta | $162,000 | 167 |
| Chicago | $161,000 | 217 |
Engineering Manager vs Software Engineer: which pays more?
The median for Engineering Manager is $168,950 per year (typically $132,750–$210,194), versus $173,500 for Software Engineer ($135,000–$215,000). That puts Software Engineer about 3% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Engineering Manager and Software Engineer are compared on equal terms regardless of the currency each role was originally posted in. Only roles that publish a salary range feed the medians; numbers refresh every few hours as new roles post and older ones close, so this comparison reflects the market right now rather than a fixed survey. Use it as a directional benchmark when weighing one path against the other.