San Francisco engineering salaries: You can make $325k with AI
Much like New York City did at the tail end of last year, California's technology capital San Francisco has enacted pay transparency laws, ensuring that all job listings within the city publish a lower and upper salary limit.
While the city is more known for the grandiose salaries paid out by their Silicon Valley tech companies, some banks and fintechs have teams out there too and are paying them mighty well.
JPMorgan's offering big salaries
JPMorgan have been making headlines for their San Francisco hiring for years, the new legislation shows just how much some of its most coveted engineers can make.
How does this compare to their compatriots in New York? A full stack developer listing at JPM in NYC specifying almost three times the experience pays the same as some of the current positions in San Fran.
The only problem is that JPM doesn't have many of these lucrative openings in San Francisco. Right now, the bank is advertising 250 software engineering jobs in NYC and only five in San Francisco.
It's not salaries that can be $300k+ at JPMorgan in California. One JPM executive director on Levels.fyi said their total compensation reached up to $518k. Not everyone's pay is that inflated, however; the most recent pay listed is from a senior associate making $130k, slightly under Levels' company-wide average.
Are fintechs any better?
Fintechs are finding their own ways to deal with the legislation. Stripe, for example, is advertising plenty of senior engineering roles at its San Francisco HQ but is asking candidates to email for additional salary information.
Below are some examples of salaries available at the fintechs still hiring in California.
As with fintech salaries in New York, things are a lot more varied than you would find at banks. Some want more experienced engineers, some want hardly any experience at all. Some have fairly simple salary ranges, others have oddly specific ones.
Scale, though not technically a fintech, has institutional clients like Blend and represents the kind of money you can make through AI in San Francisco. Their most senior position has a lower maximum salary than JPMorgan's AI role, but the minimum pay is significantly higher and are asking for 7 less years of experience.
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