Software Engineer

Complete guide: salary benchmarks, common skills, and career path.

What does a Software Engineer do?

Software engineers design, build, and maintain software systems — from web applications to distributed infrastructure. They write code, review peers, debug production issues, and collaborate with product and design teams to ship features that solve real problems.

Avg experience: 6 years

Salary Overview

Weighted average across all cities with verified data. Based on 3261 data points.

$137,776

P25

$157,004

Median

$181,201

P75

P25 $137,776 Median $157,004 P75 $181,201

Top Paying Cities

$264,514 n=32 Menlo Park, Ca

$221,024 n=143 Mountain View, Ca

$214,000 n=218 Kirkland, Wa

$204,000 n=45 Sunnyvale, Ca

$194,000 n=243 San Francisco

$190,000 n=206 Santa Clara, Ca

$187,741 n=109 Cupertino, Ca

$187,740.8 n=14 Bellevue, Wa

$184,000 n=129 Seattle

Common Skills

System Design Data Structures & Algorithms Code Review Testing & QA CI/CD Cloud (AWS/GCP/Azure)API Design Database Design Version Control Agile/Scrum

Related Roles

Data Scientist Engineering Manager Product Manager DevOps Engineer

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