The following report consists of all the data that we've collected this year within the United States that had associated gender and level mapping information. The following report represents a subset of the main Levels.fyi compensation dataset. Using these data points we are able to determine discrepancies in compensation by gender.
6,045
Total Data Points
With binary gender information
1in8
Submitted by women
The Levels.fyi Standard is a leveling hierarchy we've abstracted from company-specific names to make aggregation easier. Using this approximation for leveling, we model out the percentiles of total compensation by gender for software engineering across the US overall, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and New York City. For a deeper look, you can filter individual data points by gender on our compensation page.
As you will notice from our boxplots above, a wage gap is evident across the normalized levels. Although compensation is closer in margin at the lower levels (likely due to how standardized offer packages are for Entry Level Engineers [I] and Engineers [II]), the higher you go in level, the larger the gap.
The compensation discrepancies are likely exacerbated due to the flexible nature of compensation + negotiation opportunities at higher levels. Other contributing factors include potential biases in hiring practices (unintended or not) which lead to pay discrimination generally across the industry.
While we didn't have enough data at the Principal and Distinguished Engineer levels, the median female engineer earns significantly lower total compensation at the Senior and Staff Engineer levels as compared to their male counterparts. Even though at the beginning of the ladder, the gap may be lower, these values only compound over time as you grow in your career causing much wider gaps at the top.
Another resource: Randstad Study
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