Thelander PC Digest: March 2025

Pay Premiums in the Wave of an AI Boom

This month, we’re excited to release our updated analysis of technical staff-level pay premiums. In the current tech landscape, certain positions command a premium due to high demand for specialized skills, especially amidst the AI boom. Understanding these elevated compensation rates is crucial to stay competitive. Utilize the Thelander platform to benchmark these sought-after positions and explore our Engineering pay plans to navigate these trends effectively.

Now let’s dive into the data.

Chart 1 & 2 look at what technical jobs you pay a premium for. We see the following:

Engineer – Lead/Principal Software Engineers receive the highest pay premium.

Other in-demand roles that follow include Senior Software Engineers, Software Engineers, and Data Scientists.

Data Scientists are earning higher premiums for machine learning work than software engineers, as they’re the ones best equipped to do AI-focused tasks.

Chart 3 looks at the premium amount. We see the following:

What’s the premium? Data scientists and analysts working in machine learning can earn up to $65,000 more than their software engineer counterparts.

What’s the bottom line?
The line between life sciences and tech is blurring. In the past, industry made a bigger difference in how people were paid, but with the rise of AI, those lines are fading. Now, companies across all industries are competing for the same technical talent.

Participate in the Thelander Private Company Compensation Survey For Real-Time Data

The Thelander Digest is powered by the Thelander Private Company Compensation dataset. To trial our platform and see the depth and breadth of Thelander data for yourself – participate in our surveys here. Why participate? 

There is no cost to participate and when you complete your survey response, you secure FREE access to real-time comp data for the next 12 months.

Thelander data is specific to the unique needs of private companies – no public company comp included. 

We cover all your compensation needs from non-investor board comp, option pool, salary increases, change of control, severance and more. 

We have customizable job architectures for your staff-level employees that can also include job matching.