Posted salary ranges, the October 2026 startup-feed snapshot

Capy here, with numbers instead of a pep talk.

On October 17, 2026, we took one snapshot of a startup job feed: 809 listings. Then we asked a narrow question: what salary ranges were startups actually posting that day, role by role?

Here is the answer, and exactly how we got it, because a salary post you cannot check is just marketing.

The table: median listed minimum and maximum by role family

Read the two columns as two separate facts. The left is the middle posted minimum across the family's listings, the right is the middle posted maximum. They are calculated independently: not one typical range, and not median compensation.

Role families with at least 10 postings, 553 listings in total:

- Partner: n=23, median listed minimum $250K, median listed maximum $400K

- Engineering Leadership: n=23, median listed minimum $220K, median listed maximum $300K

- Counsel: n=12, median listed minimum $220K, median listed maximum $275K

- Machine Learning Engineer: n=13, median listed minimum $210K, median listed maximum $300K

- Product Engineer: n=35, median listed minimum $200K, median listed maximum $280K

- Infrastructure / DevOps / SRE: n=19, median listed minimum $200K, median listed maximum $280K

- Research Scientist: n=10, median listed minimum $200K, median listed maximum $350K

- Backend Engineer: n=40, median listed minimum $190K, median listed maximum $295K

- Full Stack Engineer: n=52, median listed minimum $180K, median listed maximum $240K

- AI Engineer / Applied AI: n=26, median listed minimum $180K, median listed maximum $277.5K

- Product Management: n=27, median listed minimum $175K, median listed maximum $250K

- Product Design and UI/UX: n=16, median listed minimum $175K, median listed maximum $250K

- Frontend Engineer: n=11, median listed minimum $175K, median listed maximum $230K

- Forward Deployed / Solutions Engineer: n=39, median listed minimum $170K, median listed maximum $230K

- Finance and Accounting: n=10, median listed minimum $167.5K, median listed maximum $220K

- Founding Engineer: n=46, median listed minimum $165K, median listed maximum $250K

- Growth Marketing: n=11, median listed minimum $160K, median listed maximum $225K

- People and Talent: n=13, median listed minimum $150K, median listed maximum $225K

- Electrical Engineer: n=17, median listed minimum $150K, median listed maximum $220K

- Sales / Solutions Engineer: n=10, median listed minimum $146.5K, median listed maximum $193K

- Operations and Strategy: n=37, median listed minimum $140K, median listed maximum $190K

- Account Management / Customer Success: n=10, median listed minimum $140K, median listed maximum $168K

- Account Executives / Sales: n=39, median listed minimum $130K, median listed maximum $165K

- Sales Development (SDR/BDR): n=14, median listed minimum $76K, median listed maximum $94.5K

The date matters. This table describes October 17, 2026. Salaries move; this snapshot does not update itself.

The method, in plain words

- Source: one partner job-feed export of startup postings, snapshotted October 17, 2026. Aggregates only: no company names, no partner names, no listing links.

- 809 listings in the snapshot. 787 posted a parseable US-dollar range; 22 were excluded: 20 in other currencies (Canadian dollars, pounds, euros), left out rather than converted, plus 2 cells that did not contain a usable range.

- The 24 families above cover 553 of those 787 listings. The rest sit in families too small to publish (we set the cutoff at 10 postings, so one unusual listing cannot become a number) or in a catch-all label we excluded for mixing unlike roles.

- US-dollar ranges say nothing about where the job sits; some of these roles are remote or based outside the US.

- Roles are grouped by their primary role family; a posting tagged with two families counts under the first one listed.

- Each line shows two medians: the median of the posted range minimums and the median of the posted range maximums. They are separate statistics, not one "typical range". Where a family has an even number of postings, the median is the average of the two middle values.

- A few employers post one number as both ends of the range (for example, $180K - $180K). We kept those; they are what was posted.

- Posted ranges are what employers advertise, not what anyone signed for.

- Role-family names and groupings are this feed's own. They will not match other groupings, including our own role pages, which use a wider family mapping. Different grouping, different medians, each accurate to its stated method.

What this is not

It is not a market-wide salary survey, and it is not "the benchmark" for your worth. One feed, mostly startups, mostly US-dollar postings, one day in October 2026. Treat this as one honest datapoint: what this slice of startup employers was willing to say out loud that day.

How to use it

Find your role family, note both medians, and bring them to your next negotiation as one named source among several. The salary negotiation script builder Power-up shows you where the number goes in the actual conversation, and "The offer is lower than you expected. What now?" covers the moment it comes back low.

Link note: the salary negotiation script builder Power-up linked near the end is still in the queue, so that forward link resolves only when that Power-up publishes; the lowball-offer Rant link is live.