Tech Sales Salary Guide 2026: What SDRs, AEs, VPs & CROs Actually Earn

If you've spent five minutes on Glassdoor, you know the salary numbers are all over the place. Self-reported. Years out of date. Skewed by whichever disgruntled employee posted last.

We built this guide differently. Every number below comes from an actual, live job listing on UpliftGTM. 1,279 published-salary listings across 21 roles, aggregated directly from Ashby, Greenhouse and Lever ATS boards. Real ranges. Real jobs. Updated on every aggregation cycle.

If you're job-searching, interviewing, negotiating an offer, or just trying to figure out whether the base your recruiter quoted is fair — this is the number you actually want.

TL;DR — the numbers, sorted

Median pay band + the top 10% of the market for every GTM role we track. All figures are base + commission on-target earnings (OTE), US-normalised, from postings where the employer publishes the range.

Role	Median Range	Top 25% Reach	Top 10% Reach	n
Enterprise AE	$250K – $346K	$424K	$462K	110
Sales Leader / VP Sales	$276K – $310K	$355K	$396K	14
Sales Engineer	$180K – $245K	$275K	$301K	144
Account Executive (AE)	$181K – $230K	$340K	$446K	140
Business Development	$185K – $240K	$260K	$284K	13
PR & Communications	$185K – $237K	$291K	$295K	16
Demand Generation	$180K – $235K	$295K	$325K	37
Growth Marketing	$177K – $231K	$286K	$385K	21
Product Marketing	$169K – $225K	$245K	$273K	48
Marketing Leader / VP	$170K – $225K	$258K	$310K	18
Partnerships	$180K – $220K	$275K	$338K	29
Sales Enablement	$150K – $204K	$235K	$235K	11
Performance Marketing	$137K – $200K	$204K	$214K	20
Events Marketing	$175K – $198K	$280K	$400K	15
Account Manager (AM)	$114K – $189K	$190K	$240K	47
Customer Success	$150K – $185K	$235K	$291K	76
Revenue Operations	$140K – $185K	$231K	$308K	16
Mid-Market AE	$125K – $149K	$240K	$313K	35
SDR	$109K – $110K	$151K	$246K	25
BDR	$95K – $110K	$115K	$143K	9

Two things jump out even before you get into the details:

1. The gap between the median and the top 10% is enormous. Median AE = $230K. Top-decile AE = $446K. Same job title. Same role. Nearly 2× the total comp. Company selection matters more than most people realise.
2. The SDR → AE jump is roughly 2×. SDR median $110K → AE median $230K. If you're an SDR mapping your two-year plan, this is the actual math.

The methodology (so you can trust the numbers)

• Source: 1,279 live job listings on UpliftGTM as of the article date. Only listings where the employer published a salary band are included in the aggregate below.
• Currency: US dollars, annualised. Non-USD listings (£, €, A$, S$) are excluded from the aggregate table to keep it apples-to-apples.
• Total comp basis: Base + on-target commission (OTE) where broken out; total published range where not.
• Statistical basis: p50 (median), p75 (top quartile), p90 (top decile) of the maximum end of published ranges. Percentiles are less noisy than averages.
• Freshness: this data refreshes every time we run our aggregator (4× daily), so the numbers here reflect the current live market — not last year's Glassdoor snapshot.
• Sample sizes: shown as n for every row. Trust roles with n ≥ 25. Roles with n < 15 (BDR, Sales Leader, PR & Comms) are directional — real signal but wider confidence intervals.

We don't estimate. We don't average scraped Reddit posts. If a number is in this table, an employer is actively hiring for that role at that band, right now.

SDR Compensation

Median: $109K – $110K · Top decile: $246K

The Sales Development Representative role is where 80% of tech-sales careers start. It's the "make 80 calls a day, book 8 discovery meetings" job — hard, coachable, and the most-published salary band in the market.

Why the tight median band? Almost every SDR listing anchors around the same $100-$120K OTE band (typically ~$65K base + ~$45K variable). The market has essentially standardised.

Why the huge p90? Because "SDR" at OpenAI, Databricks, or a hot Series C is a different animal from SDR at a Series A. Top-of-market SDR at a category-defining company can hit $200K+ OTE. That's the reality behind the outlier.

Where these numbers come from: browse open SDR jobs on UpliftGTM. Every listing shows the salary — no exceptions.

Account Executive (AE) Compensation

Median: $181K – $230K · Top decile: $446K

The transition from SDR to AE is the biggest step-change in tech-sales careers. Median base compensation nearly doubles.

Regional read: AE in the US: $166K–$210K median. Global/remote AE: $292K–$401K (small sample, n=4). Non-US AE roles are rare in ATS data because most European employers still don't publish salary.

The p90 story: top-decile AEs at hyper-growth companies hit $446K OTE. Think Databricks, Stripe, OpenAI. The Enterprise AE segment overlaps — many "AE" titles at these companies are effectively Enterprise AE work.

Browse Account Executive jobs for the current live band.

Enterprise AE — The Sweet Spot

Median: $250K – $346K · Top decile: $462K

Enterprise AEs are the highest-paid individual contributor role in GTM. They close 6- and 7-figure ACV deals with 6-12 month cycles at Fortune 2000 accounts. And they get paid for it.

Why the number is legitimate: 110 published listings. This is the most trustworthy figure in the entire guide. If you're an Enterprise AE and your OTE is under $250K, you're being underpaid for the median market.

Career math: SDR ($110K) → Mid-Market AE ($150K) → AE ($230K) → Enterprise AE ($346K). That's roughly 3× in 4-6 years for people who navigate the ladder well.

Browse Enterprise AE jobs.

Sales Engineer / Solutions Engineer

Median: $180K – $245K · Top decile: $301K

The technical GTM role. Deep product knowledge, live demos, RFP responses, prototype builds. In modern SaaS + AI, this role is increasingly critical — you can't close a $500K deal to a Fortune 500 CTO without an SE in the room.

144 listings makes this one of the most reliable bands in the guide. If you're an SE and your comp is under $180K, you have real leverage to move.

Browse Sales Engineer jobs.

Customer Success

Median: $150K – $185K · Top decile: $291K

CSMs sit between Sales and Support. In the retention-first era of SaaS (net-revenue-retention is the metric public-market investors care about now), the good ones are effectively second AEs — running QBRs, uncovering expansion, negotiating renewals.

Top-decile CSM ($291K) reflects the strategic-CSM tier at growth-stage companies where expansion is quota-carrying.

Browse Customer Success jobs.

RevOps

Median: $140K – $185K · Top decile: $308K

The wide p90 ($308K) reflects the "Head of RevOps" or "Director of Revenue Operations" tier — a small number of high-paid RevOps leaders at scale-up companies where the role is treated as a strategic function, not a Salesforce admin.

Practitioner RevOps analysts sit in the $140-185K median. Directors and Heads-of push into $250-300K+.

Browse RevOps jobs.

Product Marketing (PMM)

Median: $169K – $225K · Top decile: $273K

PMM comp has quietly climbed. Median PMM now sits above Growth Marketing and Demand Gen. The reason: PMM is closest to the pipeline in modern GTM — positioning, messaging, launches, sales enablement all flow through Product Marketing.

Browse Product Marketing jobs.

Demand Generation & Growth Marketing

Demand Gen median: $180K – $235K · top decile: $325K Growth median: $177K – $231K · top decile: $385K

The two overlap in scope at most companies. Growth's p90 stretches higher because "Head of Growth" at Series B/C companies with product-led motion is one of the fastest-appreciating titles in tech.

Browse Demand Gen jobs and Growth jobs.

Marketing Leadership (VP / CMO)

Median: $170K – $225K · Top decile: $310K

This band is honestly conservative. Public-company CMOs are earning $500K+ base and multi-million total comp with equity. The published-listing sample skews toward Director-and-below Marketing Leader roles. Take the median as a director-level number, not CMO-level.

Sales Leadership (VP Sales / CRO)

Median: $276K – $310K · Top decile: $396K

Small sample (n=14) so directional, but consistent with what's publicly known: VP Sales / CRO OTE anchors around $300K base + $300K+ variable + significant equity. The equity is where the real money is, and equity doesn't show up in an ATS listing.

Browse Sales Leader jobs.

BDR — the Outbound Specialist

Median: $95K – $110K · Top decile: $143K

BDRs run cold outbound to net-new accounts. The role overlaps with SDR at most companies; the distinction is usually "SDR handles inbound, BDR handles outbound." Because outbound is harder, some companies pay BDRs a small premium — but at the aggregate level, BDR and SDR bands are functionally identical.

Browse BDR jobs.

The Career-Progression Math

If you plot GTM compensation as a career ladder, the medians look like this:

Stage	Role	Median Comp	Time to Reach
Year 0	SDR / BDR	~$110K	Entry
Year 2-3	Mid-Market AE	~$150K	+40%
Year 3-5	AE	~$230K	+50%
Year 5-7	Enterprise AE	~$346K	+50%
Year 7-10	VP Sales / Director	~$310K	± flat
Year 10+	CRO / VP Sales at scale	$500K+	(equity dominates)

The inflection point is the SDR → AE jump. Roughly 2× in total compensation. Every SDR should be optimising for the fastest, most-signalled path to their first AE seat.

The plateau at Sales Leader/CRO is misleading — the total OTE stalls but the equity begins to dominate. A CRO at a Series C on a $2-3M+ base + equity package can end up out-earning the top-decile Enterprise AE by an order of magnitude on exit.

Where the Big Money Lives (by Company)

Roles at these companies consistently show top-decile bands in our data:

• AI-native companies: OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Cohere, Sierra, Harvey, Cursor
• Data infrastructure: Databricks, Snowflake, MongoDB, Elastic, Datadog
• Payments + fintech: Stripe, Airwallex, Adyen, Ramp, Klarna, Wise
• Modern SaaS: Notion, Airtable, Attio, Linear, Vercel, Retool

Browse jobs by company to see live bands: Companies hiring on UpliftGTM.

Regional Reality Check

US still dominates published-salary data. Of the 1,279 listings analysed, ~90% are US-based. This isn't because non-US roles pay poorly — it's because non-US employers still under-publish salary. Legal pressure is changing this fast:

• NYC, California, Colorado, Washington: salary publication legally required
• EU Pay Transparency Directive: mandatory across the EU by mid-2026
• UK + Australia: voluntary, but growing pressure
• Rest of world: mostly opaque

If you're job-searching outside the US, expect to negotiate more without market comps. The UK typically pays 60-70% of US comp for the same role. Continental Europe: 50-65%. Australia: 65-75%.

What This Actually Means for You

If you're an SDR / BDR: your leverage is the SDR → AE promotion, not raising your SDR base by 10%. Focus every quarter on the metrics that convert to internal AE promotion (or laterally to another company's AE seat).

If you're an AE: the top-decile is nearly 2× the median. That gap is company selection. Late-stage growth companies with strong retention and expansion motion pay top of market. Series B/C in a slower sector pays middle.

If you're a CSM: strategic CSM at scale-up companies now approaches AE compensation. If your role is renewals-only and quota-free, look at expansion-carrying CS roles.

If you're at the leadership stage: OTE stops being the interesting number. Equity does. Read every offer's equity terms with a lawyer.

Browse Live Jobs by Role

Every role above links directly to the current open listings — the numbers you just read are the actual bands from those pages.

• SDR jobs
• Account Executive jobs
• Enterprise AE jobs
• Sales Engineer jobs
• Customer Success jobs
• RevOps jobs
• Product Marketing jobs
• Growth Marketing jobs
• Demand Gen jobs
• Sales Leadership jobs

Or browse all current GTM jobs. Every listing shows salary — published by the employer or, where not published, estimated from the exact same data behind this article.

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Methodology footnote: percentiles computed from the maximum end of each published range. Currency-normalised to USD, annualised. Only listings with salary_source = 'published' (real employer data, not our estimates) are used for the percentile calculation. Sample sizes noted per role; roles with n < 8 excluded from the table entirely.