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Ever wonder what Software Engineers at Netflix make? You heard that right: Software Engineers at Netflix tend to earn more than $300,000 a year in base salary. In terms of total annual compensation, Netflix seems to pay its Engineers even more than other large technology companies like Facebook and Google. Sound too good to be true?

All Netflix Software Engineers are titled “Senior Software Engineers”

Netflix structures its Software Engineer career ladder and pay differently than most technology companies. We can use the Salary Project’s data to better understand what’s going on.

At Netflix, all Software Engineers are titled “Senior Software Engineers”, and there isn’t a concept of “level”. Given that, here are the approximate salary ranges for a Netflix Software Engineer, according to the data on the Salary Project:

Base salary range: about $325,000 – $600,000, with a median of $380,000 .

. Total compensation range (includes stock RSU grants): $325,000 – $630,000, with a median of $399,000

Netflix Senior Software Engineers only get base salary

The data on the Salary Project suggests that most Senior Software Engineers at Netflix don’t get an annual stock grant, and if they do, it can range from being about $10,000 to $40,000 a year. Netflix seems to give its employees compensation as pretty much all salary, instead of also giving them stock grants and annual bonuses. Other large tech companies (like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) tend to give employees a lower base salary (relative to Netflix) but also a sizable stock grant.

Total Compensation for Netflix Senior Software Engineers seems to be on the high end of the market

How does total compensation stack up then, versus other technology companies? Comparing a Netflix Senior Software Engineer’s total compensation to a Facebook Software Engineer’s total compensation (for roughly the same years of experience), Netflix pays its (Senior) Software Engineers about 32% more than Facebook does. Using the years of experience filters on the Salary Project, we get the following Netflix vs. Facebook comparison (for Software Engineers with 2-5 years of experience).

Stock grows in value over time though, so even though a median Facebook Software Engineer has a lower total compensation than a median Netflix Senior Software Engineer, the value of the stock that the Facebook Software Engineer receives could be worth down the road.

The base salary for a Netflix Senior Software Engineer also appears to grow a lot for engineers who’ve had many years of experience in the industry. Using the years of experience filters on the Salary Project, we get:

2–5 years of experience: $325,000 – $350,000

6–13 years of experience: $380,000 – $600,000

Also note that the lowest end of the years of experience range, at least given the data on the Salary Project, is two years. This makes sense because all Software Engineers at Netflix are called Senior Software Engineers, and so Netflix likely requires at least a few years of experience for its Software Engineer hires.

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This analysis was powered by anonymous salary data contributions to the Salary Project, from people like you.

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