- Business Insider analyzed salary data for thousands of workers to reveal how much large tech companies pay.
- We crunched the numbers for companies including Airbnb, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Snap, and Uber.
- The data, which US companies report in visa applications for foreign workers, sheds light on how engineers, designers, and others are compensated in the competitive industry.
Big US technology companies have powered their way through the pandemic, posting impressive growth, minting money, and hiring rapidly.
In early July, the tech-industry association CompTIA reported that the sector experienced job growth in 10 out of the previous 12 months – a standout performance given the lockdowns last year. Tech firms added more than 80,000 workers in the US through the first half of 2021, it added.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, hired more than 4,000 employees in the second quarter alone. Overall, more than 300,000 open tech jobs were posted in June, with software and app developers, IT-support specialists and project managers, systems engineers and architects, and systems analysts in highest demand. Jobs in emerging tech, such as AI, accounted for more than a quarter of open positions.
Companies are required to disclose information including salary (or, in some cases, salary ranges) when they hire foreign workers under the H1-B visa program, giving insight into what these tech giants are willing to shell out for talent.
So, to get a sense of what salaries in the industry are like these days, Business Insider analyzed the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification’s disclosure data for permanent and temporary foreign workers to find out what companies pay employees in key roles, including engineers, designers, and salespeople.
When you’re done checking out this industry data, take a look at Insider’s searchable database of over 250,000 salaries from more than 250 companies so you can know how much you should be paid.
Google is often touted as one of the best places to work, with compensation to match.
A software engineer was offered $353,000, a vice president of engineering can get $475,000, and a senior vice president recently took in an annual salary of $650,000.
Here’s a look at many other positions and how much they pay across Google.
The company’s Cloud business has been aggressively building out its workforce as it tries to catch its larger cloud rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Here’s a peek at the salaries Google Cloud pays US-based engineers, managers, and more.
Amazon cloud-solutions architects are paid $90,800 to $185,000, depending on location and skills.
Amazon’s cloud unit, now run by Adam Selipsky, has continued hiring for technical and business talent to support its dominant cloud-computing business.
Insider reviewed more than 200 H-1B visas that Amazon’s cloud unit applied for from January to June to reveal how much it paid software developers, data scientists, marketers, salespeople, business analysts, and more. The highest-paid employees, according to that data, can make as much as $185,000 in base salary.
Senior marketing jobs at Apple can pay up to $325,000.
Apple’s advertising is legendary, and its broader marketing efforts are integral to the company’s success. The iPhone maker regularly gets attention for its cinematic campaigns.
The company sponsors visas for a range of well-paid marketing jobs. One marketing manager makes $240,000, while a marketing senior director earns $325,000.
A Facebook engineering director can make roughly $360,000
Facebook employees consistently make well into the six figures. An in-house ad-agency director hired in the past year earns a salary of just over $330,000. An engineering director makes roughly $360,000.
Pay depends on the job, of course, but increasingly on where the worker is based, too. A data analyst in California, for example, makes $130,000 to $150,000 a year. One data analyst in Texas makes $128,000, and another $111,000. A software engineer in New York makes $160,000. One in Rhode Island and another in Texas make $118,000 a year.
Here are all the latest data on Facebook salaries.
Microsoft’s highest-paying jobs include software engineers, sales managers, and researchers.
We analyzed Microsoft’s more than 1,400 active foreign-worker visas in 2020 to find the titles with the highest salaries and provided a salary range for each role.
We focused this list on roles that pay $175,000 or more at the high end of the range and categorized them based on information we found in job postings. The highest salary we found, for a channel sales manager, was $250,000.
In internal Microsoft surveys obtained by Business Insider, 55% of staff said in 2020 that their combined salary, bonus, and equity was competitive with similar jobs at other companies, down from 65% in 2017.
Uber competes with the biggest Silicon Valley companies, and its salaries show that.
Though Uber has gone through rounds of job cuts in recent years, its compensation for many full-time positions is competitive with the biggest Silicon Valley tech firms.
Senior engineers can earn salaries of well over $200,000, while data scientists can pull in almost $150,000 and senior product managers can make about $190,000 or more, excluding any equity or bonus.
Check out the full list of Uber positions and salaries here.
Intel engineering managers can make more than $300,000.
Intel is battling slowing revenue growth, shrinking margins, and rising competition from Taiwan Semiconductor, AMD, Nvidia, and others.
There’s also a semiconductor shortage to contend with, while marquee customers like Apple are designing their own chips.
For all of this, Intel relies on scientists, researchers, managers, marketers, and different types of software and hardware engineers.
Here’s a peek at the salaries Intel pays some of these employees, based on roles from almost 1,000 approved visa applications that the company filed with authorities.
IBM employees can make as much as $335,000 in base salary.
Under CEO Arvind Krishna, IBM is trying to reinvent itself for the cloud-computing era, dominated so far by Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba, and Google.
IBM’s 2019 purchase of the open-source-software firm Red Hat for $34 billion was a defining moment when the company bet big on hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence. Part of IBM’s reinvention includes growing its 350,000-strong employee base to add engineering talent in cloud, hybrid cloud, and AI, as well as in fields like strategy, consulting, and business analysis.
Business Insider analyzed the 241 H-1B visas IBM applied for since January to find out what it pays engineers, business analysts and consultants, digital strategists, and more. The highest-paid IBM employees can make as much as $335,000 in base salary, according to that data.
Check out all the jobs and salaries here.
A senior manager of software engineering at Salesforce is paid more than $215,000.
Salesforce is embracing a hybrid mindset, giving employees the option to work remotely part time, and it expects to increase its number of permanently remote workers, too.
That flexibility is opening up talent pools for the company. Last September, the company said it was planning to add over 12,000 jobs over the next year. And Chief People Officer Brent Hyder told the San Francisco Chronicle in April that Salesforce’s hiring spree this year would exceed 15,000 employees.
Insider analyzed the 206 H-1B visas Salesforce applied for from January to March to find out how much it paid workers in areas like engineering, data analytics, and product management. Software engineers can make more than $200,000 in salary, the data showed.
Here’s the full list of positions and pay.
Snap offers base salaries ranging from $59,000 to $500,000.
Snap, the company behind Snapchat, has had a growth spurt. And it’s been staffing up to support ambitions in areas like augmented reality, short-form video, and original shows. The company now has about 4,000 employees in 15 countries.
Snap said in May that it was committed to paying all employees a livable wage that “contributes to healthy work-life integration and to the local economy in which we work.” It offers a minimum of $15,000 in equity grants to new hires and said its baseline annual pay rate for employees at its headquarters in Santa Monica is $70,000.
In late 2020 and 2021, Snap offered annual base salaries ranging from $59,000 to $500,000 for various roles, according to data from H-1B visa applications analyzed by Business Insider.
Check out all the Snap jobs and pay here.
Waymo pays $122,000 to $300,000, depending on the type of job and location.
Few industries are blowing up like artificial intelligence and big data. PitchBook estimated that spending on AI software and hardware would reach $138 billion this year and grow at a rate of 23% in the next three years.
All that investment fuels an equally explosive jobs market. The job-search site ZipRecruiter showed more than 60,000 AI-engineer jobs listed. Those roles pay very well, with annual compensation as high as $304,500.
Business Insider analyzed US visa-application data from the first quarter of 2021 for permanent and temporary foreign workers to find out what 10 top AI companies pay engineers, researchers, and other professionals in the field of big data and machine learning.
Waymo relies heavily on AI to train the software that controls its autonomous vehicles. The Alphabet unit pays $122,000 to $300,000, depending on the type of job and location, according to the data.
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