Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) offer some of the highest salaries in Silicon Valley.
This allows the companies to attract some of the best talent and, in turn, deliver some of the most cutting-edge technology advancements every year.
While the tech industry as a whole has experienced workforce reductions in certain areas, these industry giants are actively expanding their teams in high-demand fields (i.e, artificial intelligence) and have demonstrated their unwavering commitment to securing top talent by offering substantial salary packages.
“You keep engineering talent but also you prevent a competitor from having it, and that’s very valuable,” said Manny Media, a former Microsoft executive. “It’s a defensive measure.”
Apple, Microsoft and Google don’t publicly disclose salary details, but the companies are required to report offers in work-visa applications submitted to the U.S. Office of Foreign Labor Certification.
According to a Business Insider report, out of the three technology juggernauts, Apple had the highest pay floor at just over $102,000. For comparison, Google offered salaries as low as $55,000 and Microsoft made offers as low as $77,000.
The data doesn’t include stock-based compensation and grants that can significantly increase overall pay. Additionally, individual performance rewards and bonuses are not accounted for in the provided data.
“They might know where the bodies are buried on some project, be called in as a last resort to debug a project, or they are known as a great pinch hitter,” said a former Facebook engineer.
Here’s a look at some of the base salary ranges the tech giants offered to prospective workers for open positions last year.
Apple
- Global Supply Manager: $145,000 to $185,000
- Architectural/Engineering Manager: $200,750 to $286,874
- Software Development Engineer: $138,762 to $216,300
- Manufacturing Design Engineer: $124,200 to $203,335
- Machine Learning Engineer: $155,000 to $205,000
- Systems Design Engineer: $134,307 to $217,990
- AR/VR Development Engineer: $127,000 to $230,000
- Application Development Engineer: $131,808 to $255,000
- Data Scientist: $119,000 to $186,929
- Legal Counsel: $210,000 to 225,000
Microsoft
- Support Engineer: $77,000 to $135,000
- Data Analyst: $104,000 to $140,000
- Content Developer: $133,000 to $156,000
- Technical Writer: $94,000 to $158,000
- Product Marketing: $106,000 to $164,000
- Business Analytics Specialist: $101,000 to $166,000
- Product Manager: $110,000 to $225,000
- Software Engineer: $175,000 to $250,000
- Data Manager: $133,000 to $270,000
- Business Planner: $135,000 to $310,000
- Product Analyst: $101,000 to $218,000
- Accountant: $111,000 to $191,000
- Solutions Consultant: $78,000 to $225,000
- Product Manager: $146,000 to $251,000
- Marketing Manager: $148,000 to $293,000
- Software Engineering Manager: $210,000 to 340,000
- Network Engineer: $106,000 to $266,000
- Privacy Engineer: $136,000 to $198,000
- Visual Designer: $148,000 to $205,000
- Data Scientist: $103,000 to $269,000
Produced in association with Benzinga
Edited by Alberto Arellano and Joseph Hammond