Highest Paying Software Development Roles

Highest Paying Software Development Roles – 2025

As a Senior Consultant here at Motion Recruitment specialising in Software Development, I’m often asked: “What are the highest paying software roles in the market right now?” Whether you’re a developer planning your next move or a business wanting to stay competitive in attracting top tech talent, here’s a breakdown of where the top-end salaries are coming from — and what skills are in demand.

Topping the list is your strategic / managerial roles such as Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering. These salaries range from $200K up to $300K plus your bonus, equity etc but are often found on the higher end in your well funded startups such as AI companies coming into the market. 

You then move into your Staff / Principal / Lead Engineering roles. These are paid higher with the more niche tech you are using generally. So your Golang, Rust or other functional programming languages can get the upper end of that $230K mark with your more modern stacks like Node/TypeScript/Python edging closer to the $200K figure. 

Blockchain and Web3 space is still alive and well, these engineering roles are niche and have quite a unique skill set so demand a higher salary getting up to $220K base in some instances. 

The big emerging role on this list in the past 12 to 18 months is the ML/AI Engineers. With startups, FinTech, EdTech and other industries really adopting ML and AI the demand for these engineers has increased, with that comes a higher salary due to the specialist knowledge now required. These can range from $150K up to $230K base depending on industry and experience. 

Finally on the list is your Senior Software Engineer, a staple role for any organisation. Depending on the technology being used and industry you’re in these roles range from $140K up to the $200K base. Similar to the Staff / Principal roles, the more unique/niche the tech stack the higher salary. 

 Top-Paying Roles in 2025

1. Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering

• Salary Range: $200k–$300k+ (base) + equity/bonuses
  
• Industries: FinTech, SaaS, Crypto, AI/ML startups
  
• Common Tech Stack: Varied — typically oversee teams using modern stacks (React, Node, Python, Go, AWS/GCP, Kubernetes)
• Why It Pays: Strategic role with responsibility over delivery, hiring, and scaling engineering functions.

2. Staff / Principal Engineer

• Salary Range: $180k–$230k (base) + stock/equity
• Industries: Product-focused tech companies, AI/ML startups, Cloud platform
  
• Technologies: Go, Rust, Python, TypeScript, Kubernetes, AWS/GCP
  
• Why It Pays: Deep technical expertise with system architecture and high-scale problem-solving

3. Blockchain / Web3 Developer

• Salary Range: $160k–$220k (base), often higher with tokens/equity
• Industries: Crypto exchanges, DeFi, Layer 1/2 platform
• Technologies: Solidity, Rust, Go, Web3.js, Ethereum, Cosmos SDK
• Why It Pays: Niche, emerging tech with limited talent pool and high commercial upside.

4. Machine Learning / AI Engineer – This is one of the more emerging roles in the past 12 months

• Salary Range: $150k–$230k
• Industries: HealthTech, FinTech, EdTech, AI start-ups
• Technologies: Python, TensorFlow, PyTorch, AWS/GCP ML stack, LLMs
• Why It Pays: Specialised knowledge in data science and ML infrastructure is rare and in high demand.

6. Senior Software Engineer (Golang, Node, .NET Core)

• Salary Range: $140k–$180k+
  
• Industries: FinTech, SaaS, Payments, PropTech
  
• Tech Stack: Go, Node.js, .NET Core, PostgreSQL, Docker, AWS
  
• Why It Pays: Backends are the engine rooms of modern apps, and backend devs who can build scalable, secure services are gold.

James Psarakis is a leader in software engineering recruitment. Get in touch with him at James@motionrecruitment.com.au