Two markets share the title. Plank's September 2026 census of 1,333 postings found a median posted base of $193,000, about $150,000 at seed and $243,000 at frontier labs, and estimates equity at 44 to 70 percent of total comp at the labs. Levels.fyi has Palantir's FDE median total at $255,000. FDE Pulse found that only 24 percent of postings mention equity, and Pave's Matthew Schulman found FDEs paid 9.2 percent below generalist software engineers. On October 14, 2026, Indeed India reported FDE postings up 19-fold in a year, at a Glassdoor average base of about ₹12 lakh.
The salary spread is the visible part. The part that decides retention is whose stock. An FDE's work compounds into a product, and when the engineer is employed by a joint venture, an integrator, or a staffing arm, the equity they hold, if any, is in a business valued on hours staying up. Gergely Orosz called it in May 2026: if FDEs at the new OpenAI and Anthropic services companies get stock, "it will likely not be OpenAI or Anthropic stock."
Part 9 of The FDE Transition, FDE Comp and the Equity Problem: Whose Stock Goes Up When the Loop Closes, makes the case in full, with the three questions to ask of any offer. The handbook chapter on building the FDE team covers base, variable, and the reporting line.