Backend Engineer Salary

Based on 67 Backend listings with published compensation (245 total jobs)

$215k
Average
$175k
25th %ile
$207k
Median
$241k
75th %ile

Backend engineer salaries span a wide range depending on experience level, company size, and location. Roles at the 75th percentile ($241k) typically go to senior and lead engineers at frontier AI labs, well-funded startups, and FAANG-tier teams shipping Backend features in production. Entry-level and mid-level Backend roles cluster around the 25th percentile ($175k).

Compensation figures below are computed from 67 AI Dev Jobs listings with published salary ranges — a subset of the 245 total open Backend roles. Ranges reflect base salary in USD/year; total comp (equity, bonus, signing) is typically 1.3–2× base at top-paying companies. Remote roles increasingly match in-office rates for this skill.

By Experience Level

senior
108 jobs
$215k avg
lead
72 jobs
$243k avg
mid
55 jobs
$161k avg
junior
9 jobs
$172k avg
principal
1 jobs

Top Paying Companies for Backend

Backend Jobs by City

San Francisco, CA
62 jobs
$227k avg
New York, NY
23 jobs
$221k avg
Bangalore, India
14 jobs
London, UK
12 jobs
$215k avg
Asia
12 jobs
Mountain View, CA
10 jobs
$197k avg
Remote
9 jobs
$167k avg
Paris, France
7 jobs
Seattle, WA
7 jobs
$200k avg
Germany
6 jobs

How this data is collected

AI Dev Jobs scrapes curated job feeds (Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever) from 538 ATS sources across 489 AI companies daily. Listings are filtered for AI/ML relevance; generalist roles are excluded. Salary figures come directly from the publicly posted compensation ranges on each listing — we do not estimate or impute. If a role doesn't publish a salary, it is excluded from these statistics but still appears in the job listings.

Data is refreshed every 24 hours. The percentile breakdowns above (p25, p50 median, p75) are computed over the midpoint of each published range. Experience level percentiles use the same midpoint method, grouped by the experience_level field on the listing. City-level figures require at least 3 open roles in that city for Backend.

Raw data available via the REST API or MCP server.

Browse 245 Backend Jobs

See all Backend roles with salary data and apply links.

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