Staff Engineer job title trend since Apr 2011
Leadership · Established · in 8.8% of HN hiring posts · 868 open roles at 77 companies · median $255k · first seen Jul 2011
Who is hiring for it
Open postings on their own job boards, read 22h ago12 of 77 companies (top 12 shown)
Open roles
8 of 868; company pages list the rest| Role | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Staff Software Engineer: Compute AnthropicSan Francisco, CA | New York City, NY$320k to $485k | Anthropic | San Francisco, CA | New York City, NY | $320k to $485k |
Staff Software Engineer, Programmatic Ads PinterestSan Francisco, CA, US; Remote, US$177k to $365k | Pinterest | San Francisco, CA, US; Remote, US | $177k to $365k |
Staff Engineer, Electromechanical (R6043) Shield AISeattle, Washington$142k to $220k | Shield AI | Seattle, Washington | $142k to $220k |
Principal Software Engineer, Creator Collaboration RobloxSan Mateo, CA, United States$295k to $345k | Roblox | San Mateo, CA, United States | $295k to $345k |
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Platform SentrySan Francisco, California$260k to $400k | Sentry | San Francisco, California | $260k to $400k |
Staff Software Engineer, Platform Infrastructure (Foundations) AnyscaleSan Francisco$215k to $265k | Anyscale | San Francisco | $215k to $265k |
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Tech Foundations AirbnbRemote$244k to $305k | Airbnb | Remote | $244k to $305k |
Principal Software Engineer - Models CoreWeaveSan Francisco, CA, Bellevue, WA, Sunnyvale, CA, New York, Livingston, NJ$227k to $303k | CoreWeave | San Francisco, CA, Bellevue, WA, Sunnyvale, CA, New York, Livingston, NJ | $227k to $303k |
Share of Hacker News hiring posts
2,282 posts since Apr 2011 · -5% in 6 monthsSeptember 2026 21 of 256 postings, 8.2%
Related titles
About this title
The senior individual-contributor track: technical leadership without managing people.
Also counted: principal engineer, staff software engineer
First sighting
...openings for: * DevOps Systems Engineer * Front End (UI) Principal Software Engineer/ Architect * Principal Software Engineer - Reporting &...
Median posted salary $255k from 526 postings that state a base pay range (the median of their midpoints, USD a year). Not a survey of what people earn.
Sources: Hacker News Who is hiring threads and about 130 public job boards, read weekly. A title's share is not the job market's size. Logos via logo.dev; trademarks belong to their owners.