State of Startup Hiring: October 2026
69,494 open jobs from the public job boards of tech startups, read directly from their applicant tracking systems (Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Workable, SmartRecruiters and others). Pay figures come only from postings that publish a range.
The numbers in one minute
- Software Engineer (US): median $210k, middle half $182k to $250k (2036 postings, 377 companies).
- Best-paid common roles: Research Engineer $325k, Research Scientist $274k, Group Product Manager $265k.
- Pay bands are wide: the typical gap between P25 and P75 is $40k.
- Remote vs pay: correlation 0.07 across US roles, so remote roles are not paid less.
- Hiring bursts: the 10 fastest-hiring startups posted 24% of the 10,508 new roles among accelerating companies (excluding large enterprises: Bosch Home Comfort, Pilot Company, AbbVie, Centria Autism).
- ATS: Greenhouse and Ashby host 71% of open startup jobs.
US pay by role (10 most common)
| Role | Median | P25 to P75 | Postings | Remote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering Manager | $254k | $237k to $288k | 231 | 20% |
| Machine Learning Engineer | $243k | $206k to $276k | 140 | 27% |
| Product Manager | $210k | $175k to $236k | 546 | 35% |
| Software Engineer | $210k | $182k to $250k | 2036 | 18% |
| Product Designer | $205k | $168k to $232k | 169 | 24% |
| Technical Program Manager | $198k | $171k to $246k | 197 | 7% |
| Enterprise Account Executive | $175k | $146k to $282k | 188 | 41% |
| Electrical Engineer | $165k | $135k to $192k | 141 | 9% |
| Mechanical Engineer | $160k | $129k to $188k | 153 | 7% |
| Account Executive | $158k | $115k to $222k | 316 | 29% |
Who is hiring fastest
| Company | New roles (30 days) | Before | Top teams |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBCUniversal | 287 | 96 | Other; Production; Engineering |
| Capco | 279 | 140 | Business Consulting; Tech & Engineering; Data & Analytics |
| Stripe | 267 | 172 | Account Executives (EMEA); Global Operations; General University |
| SOCOTEC Global | 259 | 83 | Production; Engineering; Training |
| Avery Dennison | 253 | 99 | Operations; Sales; Customer Service & Support |
| Rocket Lab USA | 246 | 128 | USA Space Systems; Space Systems BD; Space Systems Software |
| ACCEL Schools | 244 | 6 | School Support; Elementary Teaching; Special Education |
| BIBIBOP | 233 | 31 | Bibibop - Team; Bibibop - Operational Leader; Bibi Restaurant Leadership |
| Shield AI | 219 | 99 | Hivemind Solutions Division; X-BAT Division; Aircraft Operations Division |
| StoneCo | 191 | 71 | Comercial; Logística; Engenharia & Tecnologia |
Busiest industries among accelerating companies (where industry is known): B2B (490 new roles), Fintech (447 new roles), Industrials (246 new roles).
Which ATS startups use
| ATS | Open jobs | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Greenhouse | 34,975 | 50.3% |
| Ashby | 14,283 | 20.6% |
| Smartrecruiters | 9,900 | 14.2% |
| Lever | 6,042 | 8.7% |
| Workday | 1,998 | 2.9% |
| Workable | 1,749 | 2.5% |
| Recruitee | 288 | 0.4% |
| Bamboohr | 225 | 0.3% |
| Personio | 34 | 0.0% |
Method
Jobs are read once a day from public job board endpoints. Pay is the midpoint of each published range; role and country groups need at least 5 postings from at least 3 companies. "New roles" counts still-open roles posted in the last 30 days. The sample leans to venture-backed tech companies, so it is not the whole market.
Get the data
- Free snapshot and notebook: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/ekkysoka/startup-hiring-and-salary-benchmarks-2026
- Live salary benchmarks for any role or country: Tech Salary Data API
- Growing and slowing companies: Company Hiring Trends
- Every open job, filterable: Company Jobs Search