See how much meta you pay engineers, researchers and other workers

Meta could be spending hundreds of millions of dollars seducing top AI talent from rivals. But how much does it pay for the broad workforce of software engineers, product managers and user experience researchers?

Thanks to data from federal submissions, there is a window into the company's pay range at a fierce moment in the Silicon Valley talent war.

META software engineers can earn up to $480,000. Machine learning will play a role of as much as $440,000. Even product designers and researchers routinely exceed $200,000.

The numbers come from filings that businesses must submit to the Labor Bureau when hiring foreign workers through the H-1B Visa program. These government-mandated disclosures provide a peek into actual wage measures, as tech companies typically provide a close protection for reward details.

The numbers only reflect annual salary, excluding stock options, signature bonuses, and in many cases other perks that could double or triple the total compensation package.

Data comes amid a fierce competition of AI talent in Silicon Valley. META is reportedly offering up to $300 million worth of AI researcher compensation packages over four years to build a new Superintelligence Lab.

A Meta spokesman declined to comment.

The frenzy extends beyond the tech giants. Thinking Machines Lab, a secret AI startup founded by Mira Murati, former Chief Technology Officer of Openai, is paying a basic salary of technical staff of up to $500,000 before the company launches a single product, Business Insider reported earlier this week.

The fight has become personal. Openai's chief research officer Mark Chen said in an internal memo that he felt “someone had broken into our home” after Meta seduced seven Openai researchers, including Trapit Bansal, a collaborator of the company's O1 reasoning model.

Based on H-1B filings from the first quarter of 2025, here are what Meta pays for in the main role: