How Much Does Salesforce Pay?

Salary has been traditionally a taboo subject for most Americans to discuss. Most people would rather describe the most embarrassing moment of their lives than tell a coworker how much they make. But that is changing.

New regulations across the country, like New York City’s pay transparency law, slated to now go into effect in November 2022, are forcing employers to publish salary information for jobs publicly. While the information might not reveal an exact paycheck, it lets workers know where they stand relative to each other.

The average U.S. tech worker earned a record high of $104,566 in 2021. While that sum doesn’t take into account other forms of compensation, like stock options and equity, it does paint a picture of how lucrative working in the industry can be—by comparison, at the end of 2021, the average U.S. salary was just $1,010 a week or approximately $52,520 a year.

Salesforce’s Pay Scale

Salesforce’s internal pay structure doesn’t follow a rigid, company-wide level system like those found at other tech giants. Instead of always assigning numbered levels, the company’s technical team largely relies on job titles. For instance, a software engineer joins as an Associate Member of Technical Staff (MTS) and can advance to MTS, Senior MTS and so on, while at Google, a programmer progresses through levels from L3 to L10. However, it should be noted that Salesforce does appear to use a numbered level system to denote the seniority of its non-technical roles.

On the management side of Salesforce’s career track, levels generally progress from Manager to Senior Manager, Director, Senior Director, VP, SVP and President.

Software Engineer

At Salesforce an entry-level software engineer starts as an Associate MTS, and can expect an average total compensation of around $175,000, which includes a base salary of $134,000, stock options worth $23,000 and a $17,000 bonus, according to tech salary transparency platform Levels.fyi. After grinding away on the lowest rung of Salesforce’s technical ladder, a software engineer can move up to become an MTS, making $189,000.

Compensation continues to grow as employees move up the ranks and become a Senior MTS, Lead MTS. If an engineer continues to follow the individual contributor track, as opposed to jumping to the management track, they can become a Principal MTS, Architect and finally a Principal Architect, bringing home an average salary of $754,000.

As total compensation grows, so does the share of stock options a software engineer at Salesforce receives, and a Principal Architect can expect an almost equal split between salary and stock. Though stock options can be a major money-maker, they are riskier and can even result in losses. For instance, some tech workers have seen losses up to $400,000 in a recent tech-stock collapse.

Product Designer

Product Designers at Salesforce help the software giant envision and execute its laundry list of innovative enterprise tools. On average, a product designer at Salesforce can expect to receive around $193,000 in total compensation per year, including a $168,000 salary and $25,000 bonus, per Levels.fyi. On the other hand, Glassdoor approximates that the average Product Designer as Salesforce brings in a $150,352 base salary, a $16,328 cash bonus and $26,164 stock bonus. Both estimates fall within the $188,095 and $225,940 salary range approximated by Salary.com.

Recruiter

Recruiters are the staff that keep Salesforce’s talent pool stocked with the brightest minds on the market. According to data from Levels.fyi, a member of Salesforce’s recruitment team can expect to earn an average salary of $110,000 per year along with a $10,000 cash bonus. This estimate is not too far off of Comparably’s estimated average of a $120,000 base salary with a $10,150 bonus.

Marketing

Salesforce’s marketing team ensures that decision makers and the general public know about its portfolio of business tools, which include popular messaging and collaboration app Slack. On average a member of the company’s marketing team brings home a median compensation package worth $184,000; however, salaries at the global company can dip as low as $73,700 and go as high as $360,000, spending on factors such as seniority and location.

Sales

The sales team is the revenue engine at Salesforce and forges deals with some of the world’s largest companies, including Spotify and Toyota. Sales compensation at Salesforce is typically highly variable and dependent on commissions, received by getting companies to sign on the dotted line. At Salesforce, the average member of the sales team brings in around $164,000 per year, evenly split between a $82,000 base salary and $82,000 bonus. Glassdoor pegs the average annual salary for a Salesforce sales role at $68,366 and estimates the average yearly commission to be around $63,465.

Sign up now: Stay up to date, level up and hire better with our behind the scenes newsletters at the world’s top startups.