Staff Engineer salaries in San Francisco.
What Staff Engineer roles in San Francisco pay, from live listings on JobsRadar.
Compare with anotherMedian salary
$246,375
per year · annualized USD
Typical range
$215k – $300k
25th–75th percentile
Disclosing pay
52.3%
624 of 1,193 roles
Live roles
1,193
open right now
Salary distribution
annualized USD · disclosed rolesHighest-paying live roles
Research Engineer, Knowledge Team
Research Scientist, Interpretability
Performance Engineer
Research Engineer, Machine Learning (RL Velocity)
Staff Research Engineer, Discovery Team
Research Engineer/Research Scientist, Pre-training
Research Engineer, Safeguards Labs
Research Engineer, Environment Scaling
Top companies hiring
| Company | Median | Roles |
|---|---|---|
|
Anthropic
|
$362,500 | 115 |
Databricks
|
$226,000 | 51 |
Perplexity
|
$312,500 | 24 |
Pinterest
|
$288,078 | 20 |
Harvey
|
$264,000 | 17 |
DoorDash USA
|
$184,800 | 14 |
Okta
|
$230,500 | 13 |
Planet
|
$162,550 | 11 |
See every Staff Engineer role
Browse the live listings, or save this search and get alerted the moment a new one posts.
How much do Staff Engineer roles in San Francisco pay?
The median salary for Staff Engineer roles in San Francisco is $246,375 per year. Most pay falls between $215,000 (25th percentile) and $300,000 (75th percentile), with the broader 10th–90th percentile band running from $180,450 to $365,195.
These figures are computed live from 1,193 active Staff Engineer roles in San Francisco on JobsRadar, of which 624 (52.3%) publish a salary range. Pay is normalized to annualized USD so roles can be compared on equal terms; the highest-paying roles listed above show their original posted currency. Numbers refresh every few hours as new roles are posted and older ones close.
Employers currently hiring well-paid Staff Engineer roles in San Francisco include Anthropic.
Salary transparency varies by employer and region, so the disclosing share above reflects only roles that publish pay — not every open position. Use it as a directional benchmark rather than an exact offer.