- Home >
- Startup hiring data >
- Principle Developer Salary and Equity Compensation in Startups 2026
Principle Developer Salary and Equity in 2026
How much can a Principle developer expect to make at US-based startups? The average estimated salary for Principle developers is 185k per year, with a range from 133k to 290k. The salary range for Principle developers varies depending on factors such as location, industry, experience, and startup stage.
185.1k
Average Salary
5 years
Average years of experience
Salary
The average salary for a Principle developer is$185,083, which is 43.5% higher than the average startup salary of$129,000. Principle developer salaries are based on exclusive Wellfound data. All data is updated on a weekly basis. Factors that may influence salary include: location, years of experience, title, size of company, and industry.
Top of market
$263,750/yr
Range $224k - $290k
Average
$185,083/yr
Range $162k - $222k
Below Average
$154,500/yr
Range $133k - $185k
Top Locations
The highest average salary a Principle developer can get in Seattle, that is $161,500. This pay is 12.7% lower than the average Principle salary in startups, which is $185,083. Salaries will vary based on your location. The top-paying markets in the US, on average, are currently: Seattle (avg $161,500 per year). Remote jobs often pay based on the location you reside in.
Seattle
$161.5k
Industries
The highest average salary a Principle developer can get in Market Research, that is $221,500. This pay is 33.3% higher than the average Principle salary, which is $166,214. The highest-paying industries in 2023 are: Market Research (avg $221,500 per year), Enterprise Software (avg $181,000 per year), Information Technology (avg $181,000 per year).
Tech Stack
Top Tech Stacks
The top-paying developer skills of 2026 are:
1. Celery
$202k
2. Clojure
$195k
3. OpenCV
$192k
4. Cron
$190k
5. Clojurescript
$187.5k
6. rundeck
$176.5k
7. Scipy
$175k
8. Symfony
$175k
9. react
$175k
10. RESTful APIs
$174k
Years of experience
Below Average
Average
Top of Market
The highest average salary a Principle developer can get with 10+ years of experience, that is $221,500. This pay is 71.7% higher than the average salary in startups, which is $129,000. The salary range varies with years of experience and depends on other factors such as skill set, size of company, and industry.
Popular roles
Software EngineerMobile DeveloperAndroid DeveloperiOS DeveloperFrontend EngineerBackend EngineerFull-Stack EngineerSoftware ArchitectMachine Learning EngineerEmbedded EngineerData EngineerDevOpsEngineering ManagerQA EngineerData ScientistDesignerUI/UX DesignerUser ResearcherVisual DesignerCreative DirectorGraphic Designer Product DesignerProduct ManagerOperationsFinance/AccountingH.R.Office ManagerRecruiterCustomer ServiceOperations ManagerSalesBusiness DevelopmentSales Development RepresentativeAccount ExecutiveBD ManagerAccount ManagerSales ManagerCustomer Success ManagerMarketingGrowth HackerMarketing ManagerContent CreatorCopywriterSocial Media ManagerManagementCEOCFOCMOCOOCTOOther EngineeringHardware EngineerMechanical EngineerSystems EngineerOtherBusiness AnalystProject ManagerAttorneyData AnalystInvestorLimited PartnerStrategic InvestorInstitutional InvestorVenture DebtVCSeed FundIndividual InvestorAngelFounder
Popular skills
.NETAdobe InDesignAdobe PhotoshopAirflowAmazon ECSAmazon KinesisAmazon S3Amazon SQSAndroidAnsysApache TomcatAssemblyAutocadAWSAzureBackboneBootstrapBudgetingCC#C++CassandraCeleryClojureClojurescriptCodeigniterCronD3.jsDartDeep LearningDigital OceanDjangoDockerDrupalDynamoDBElasticSearchElectronElixirEmber.jsExpress.jsFirebaseFlaskFlutterFortranFramerGCPGoGradleGraphQLGroovyHaskellHbaseHerokuHibernateInvisionIonicJavaJavascriptjQueryJupyterKafkaKerasKotlinKubernetesLaravelLispLTELuaMachine LearningMAGENTOMatlabMicrosoft VisioMongoDBMongooseMySQLNagiosNeo4JNest.JsNginxNode.jsNumpyNuxt.JsObjective-CopenAIOpenCVPandasPerlPHPPostgreSQLPostmanPrinciplePrometheusProspectingPuppetPysparkPythonPyTorchQtRRabbitmqreactReact NativeRedisRESTful APIsRubyRuby on RailsrundeckRustSASScalascikit-learnScipySeleniumSequelizeSketchSoliditySOLRSparkSplunkSpringSQLSQLAlchemySQLiteSvelteSvnSwiftSwiftUISybaseSymfonyTypeScriptUnityUnity3DUnrealVerilogVisual BasicVueWeb3.JsWebAssemblyWebGLWebRTCWebsocketsXamarinXcodeZeplinZookeeper