Engineer Salary In Silicon Valley

The following 2006 salary numbers are from http://www.salary.com. (Took me a long time to pull all these numbers out). The salary is defined as total cash compensation (cash + bonuses). From my personal contacts & experiences, the numbers seem to be fairly accurate. All the experience levels are defined as follows:

  1. Level I: 0 to 2 years experience after Bachelor’s degree.
  2. Level II: 2 to 4 years experience
  3. Level III: 4 to 6 years experience
  4. Level IV: 6 to 8 years experience
  5. Level V: 8 to 10 years experience

A master’s degree I believe counts as 1 or 2 years of work experience, and a Ph.D degree counts as 2 more years of experience beyond the master’s degree.

I have used San Jose metropolitan area, and only looked up job titles related to IT, software, and hardware because they’re the more commonly held positions. Other good sources of salary surveys include http://www.engineersalary.com/, and IEEE salary survey which you need to sign up. Somehow http://www.engineersalary.com/ was giving a smaller salary number.

Job Title

25% percentile

50% (median)

75% percentile

Software Engineer I

57054

64261

71759

Software Engineer II

69680

78013

87687

Software Engineer III

82257

91992

102755

Software Engineer IV

99007

109277

121146

Software Engineer V

108396

118815

129968

Software Engr Manager

107251

144540

168786

Programmer I

54352

61471

69101

Programmer II

63227

71120

80328

Programmer III

79794

90449

101798

Programmer IV

93145

104937

118120

Programmer V

101645

113366

125687

Network Engineer I

61185

70121

81522

Network Engineer II

72530

84018

96087

Network Engineer III

88818

102424

115711

Unix Administrator

86539

101505

117370

Webmaster

68356

81674

98782

Electrical Engineer I

59568

65512

71383

Electrical Engineer II

70396

78463

86313

Electrical Engineer III

82583

94489

107386

Electrical Engineer IV

99243

106999

114990

Electrical Engineer V

115228

124574

134377

Hardware Engineer I

53110

58237

65744

Hardware Engineer II

62075

70848

78601

Hardware Engineer III

74289

85399

94336

Hardware Engineer IV

84128

91916

102182

Hardware Engineer V

94660

103215

118742

Design Engineer I

60769

67821

77379

Design Engineer II

74834

82994

96126

Design Engineer III

95297

108677

127039

Design Engineer IV

113352

124909

148304

Engineering Manager

110482

128783

152304

Engineering Director

163910

178921

203392

If there are any missing entries, such as Design Engineer V, it is because it is not available. The last two entries, Engineering Manager and Director didn’t seem to be specific enough. I expect that the data may be mixed with all kinds of engineering.

After my recent salary raise, it appears that I am still underpaid by about 10% to 18%, which will take a 11% to 22% salary increase to adjust to the market. Obviously, it is fairly unlikely to get such a big salary raise from the boss. The fastest route of adjusting your salary to the market price is still changing jobs.

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