What Total Comp Looks Like at Each Level: Base, Equity, and Bonus
Curious about comp at each level?
Understand where you stand and what's ahead.
Ask most software engineers what they make and they'll tell you their base salary. That number shows up in the bank account every two weeks and it's the one people use when they think about whether a promotion "matters" financially.
It's also less than half the story. At big tech companies, base salary can be a minority of your total compensation once you hit senior levels. The rest is equity grants and bonuses, and both increase faster than base as you move up. If you're trying to understand why someone one level above you seems to live a different financial life, the total comp breakdown is where the answer lives.
Here's what the numbers actually look like at four major companies, level by level, with every component visible.
All figures below come from Levels.fyi median compensation data for US-based software engineers as of early 2026. Individual offers vary by location, team, negotiation, and stock performance. These are medians, not guarantees.
| Level | Title | Base | Equity/yr | Bonus | Total Comp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L3 | SWE II | $157K | $34K | $17K | $207K |
| L4 | SWE III | $191K | $78K | $29K | $298K |
| L5 | Senior | $224K | $160K | $38K | $422K |
| L6 | Staff | $252K | $271K | $47K | $570K |
| L7 | Senior Staff | $306K | $535K | $59K | $900K |
At L3, equity makes up 16% of your total comp. By L7, it's 59%. Base salary less than doubles from L3 to L7 ($157K to $306K), but total comp more than quadruples. The gap is almost entirely equity.
Google's bonus targets are 15% of base for L3 through L5, 20% at L6, and 25% at L7. Actual payouts depend on individual and company performance multipliers.
The L4-to-L5 jump is the most common promotion in this table and the most financially significant on a percentage basis: a 42% increase in total comp, driven by equity that more than doubles from $78K to $160K per year. If you're sitting at L4 thinking "my promotion is worth about $30K" because that's the base bump, you're miscounting by about $95K.
Meta
| Level | Title | Base | Equity/yr | Bonus | Total Comp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E3 | SWE | $150K | $30K | $12K | $192K |
| E4 | SWE | $185K | $105K | $32K | $322K |
| E5 | Senior | $230K | $195K | $37K | $462K |
| E6 | Staff | $267K | $474K | $51K | $793K |
| E7 | Senior Staff | $315K | $879K | $28K | $1,222K |
Meta's equity acceleration is the most aggressive of the four companies here. At E6, equity makes up 60% of total comp. At E7, it's 72%. An E7's annual equity grant is nearly three times their base salary.
The E5-to-E6 jump is where the comp curve bends. Total comp goes from $462K to $793K, a 72% increase. Most of that is a $279K jump in annual equity. Base goes up $37K. Engineers who fixate on base salary miss the fact that the E5-to-E6 equity grant increase alone is worth more than seven years of base salary raises at a typical 3-4% annual merit increase.
Meta also has strong refresh grants. Annual equity refreshes are benchmarked to your level band, which means the E6 refresh is dramatically larger than the E5 refresh. Every year you stay at E5 when you could be at E6, you're receiving the smaller refresh on top of the already-lower initial grant. How equity refreshes compound at big tech covers the full mechanics.
Amazon
| Level | Title | Base | Equity/yr | Bonus | Total Comp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SDE I | L4 | $136K | $38K | $9K | $183K |
| SDE II | L5 | $172K | $93K | $3K | $268K |
| SDE III | L6 (Senior) | $206K | $182K | $4K | $392K |
| Principal | L7 | $241K | $326K | $1K | $568K |
Amazon's comp structure works differently than Google or Meta in two ways. First, bonuses are negligible at every level. Your comp is base plus equity. Second, Amazon RSUs vest on a backloaded schedule: 5% in year one, 15% in year two, 40% in year three, 40% in year four. The numbers above represent the annualized value over the full vesting period, but your actual first-year cash will be significantly lower than what the table suggests.
Despite that quirk, the pattern holds. Equity goes from 21% of comp at SDE I to 57% at Principal. The SDE II-to-SDE III jump adds roughly $124K in total comp, with $89K of that coming from equity.
Amazon also historically capped base salary around $160K (since raised to roughly $350K). Even with the higher cap, equity still does most of the heavy lifting at senior levels. If you're at Amazon and thinking only about your base, you're looking at less than half the picture.
Microsoft
| Level | Title | Total Comp |
|---|---|---|
| 59 | SDE | $156K |
| 60 | SDE | $182K |
| 61 | SDE II | $197K |
| 62 | Senior | $204K |
| 63 | Senior | $247K |
| 64 | Principal | $269K |
| 65 | Partner | $322K |
Microsoft's total comp is lower than Google and Meta at every comparable level. The structure is also more base-heavy, which means Microsoft engineers are less exposed to stock price swings but don't get the same upside from equity when the market runs.
The 62-to-63 jump (both Senior level bands, but 63 is the higher Senior band) adds roughly $43K. The 64-to-65 jump (Principal to Partner) adds $53K. These are real money, but the absolute numbers are smaller than equivalent promotions at Google or Meta.
Many engineers choose Microsoft for the lower-variance comp structure. If raw compensation is the goal, the data is clear. If you're optimizing for stability, Microsoft makes more sense than the numbers suggest.
The pattern across all four companies
Three things are consistent in this data.
Base salary grows slowly. From entry to senior staff, base roughly doubles. At Google: $157K to $306K. At Meta: $150K to $315K. That's a ~$150K increase spread across four or five promotions.
Equity grows geometrically. At Google, equity goes from $34K at L3 to $535K at L7. That's roughly 15x. At Meta, it goes from $30K to $879K. About 29x. This is where the financial impact of promotion actually lives, and it's why a delayed promotion compounds so aggressively. Every year at the lower level means a year of smaller equity refreshes calculated on a lower band.
Bonus is the smallest lever. Bonuses range from $3K to $59K across every level at all four companies. They're nice. They're never the reason a promotion changes your financial life. Equity is.
What to do with these numbers
Know your total comp, not just your salary. If you've never looked up your level's comp breakdown on Levels.fyi, spend five minutes there today. The full picture changes how you negotiate at promotion time — you should be pushing on equity, not base, because that's where the band is widest and where the biggest delta between "standard offer" and "strong offer" lives.
These numbers also make something concrete that's easy to hand-wave. Every year at a level where you could be promoted is a year without the higher equity band. And that gap compounds through refreshes, vesting, and future grants for every year after.
CareerClimb helps you build the evidence for the promotion that changes your comp trajectory. Track your wins, map them to your level's expectations, and know exactly where your case stands before review season. Download CareerClimb
