Side-by-side distribution
Staff Engineer
$220,063
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 54.2%
- Live roles
- 4,821
Tech Lead
$185,000
median · per year, annualized USD
- Disclosing
- 34.3%
- Live roles
- 2,594
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Staff Backend Engineer ($500k - $1.5m salary)
Senior Staff Frontend Engineer ($500k - $1.5m salary)
Senior Staff Full Stack Engineer ($500k - $1.5m salary)
Senior Staff React Native Engineer ($500k - 1.5m salary)
Staff Software Engineer (Backend)
Senior/Staff Backend Engineer, Applied AI
Senior/Staff Full Stack Engineer, Applied AI
Research Engineer (Senior Staff+), Safeguards Labs
Staff Research Engineer, Discovery Team
Senior Staff+ Software Engineer, Node Infra
Highest-paying jobs
Senior Business Development Lead - Retail Tech & Software Services
Lead Software Engineer (Backend)
Customer Engineering Lead
Technical Lead, Safety Research
Lead Security Engineer
Data Engineering Lead
RISC-V AI / HPC & Agentic Software Engineering Lead
Staff Engineer, Emulation Technical Lead
Technical Lead Manager, Data Engineering, Trust & Safety
Lead Machine Learning Inference Engineer, Advertising
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
Anduril Industries
|
$222,000 | 111 |
Databricks
|
$226,000 | 77 |
|
Anthropic
|
$405,000 | 57 |
Crusoe
|
$231,000 | 45 |
Grafana Labs
|
$147,923 | 45 |
Aurora Innovation
|
$231,500 | 40 |
Archer
|
$192,500 | 37 |
Okta
|
$206,000 | 34 |
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
Anduril Industries
|
$170,000 | 33 |
STR
|
$198,250 | 26 |
Motional
|
$237,500 | 21 |
Accenture Federal Services
|
$197,750 | 21 |
Fluidstack
|
$275,000 | 19 |
Scout Motors
|
$176,250 | 16 |
Relativity Space
|
$170,000 | 15 |
|
OpenAI
|
$338,750 | 14 |
Staff Engineer salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Dublin | $257,300 | 5 |
| Seattle | $250,000 | 154 |
| San Francisco | $244,573 | 626 |
| New York | $240,000 | 463 |
| Austin | $229,500 | 51 |
| Chicago | $227,250 | 44 |
| Los Angeles | $221,000 | 64 |
| Denver | $211,250 | 46 |
| Boston | $210,000 | 97 |
| London | $206,683 | 47 |
Tech Lead salary by location
| Location | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
| Austin | $266,500 | 24 |
| San Francisco | $238,500 | 141 |
| Seattle | $234,225 | 34 |
| New York | $224,000 | 100 |
| Boston | $212,500 | 51 |
| Atlanta | $190,000 | 13 |
| Denver | $182,000 | 16 |
| Los Angeles | $175,000 | 19 |
| Toronto | $167,673 | 24 |
| Chicago | $166,000 | 26 |
Staff Engineer vs Tech Lead: which pays more?
The median for Staff Engineer is $220,063 per year (typically $188,813–$250,000), versus $185,000 for Tech Lead ($152,500–$223,683). That puts Staff Engineer about 19% ahead at the median.
Both figures are computed live from active listings on JobsRadar and normalized to annualized USD, so Staff Engineer and Tech Lead 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.