The seniority gap in US tech hiring

1. Where the openings are

Every posting is placed on one of four levels. The distribution is not a pyramid — it is a market with almost no bottom.

1. Junior 10.3% · 2,404
   posted by 158 of 253 employers
2. Mid 9.4% · 2,200
   posted by 159 of 253 employers
3. Senior 55.9% · 13,024
   posted by 245 of 253 employers
4. Staff+ 20.4% · 4,745
   posted by 215 of 253 employers

A further 916 postings (3.9%) carry no level signal at all — no seniority word in the title, no stated seniority, no years figure — and are excluded from the level percentages above.

2. What “entry level” actually asks for

The complaint is familiar enough to be a joke. It is also measurable. Of the junior-level postings that name a years-of-experience figure, the median demand is 2.0 years.

Years demanded on junior-level postings

Amber bars are postings that call themselves junior while asking for two or more years. Based on 1,482 junior-level postings that state a figure.

3. What each rung pays

Advertised base-salary ranges, by level. The bar spans the 25th to 75th percentile of posted midpoints; the line marks the median. Only postings that disclose a range are counted.

1. Junior $128,000
   $105,000 – $150,000 · 90th percentile $177,700 · 1,339 priced postings
2. Mid $150,000
   $122,275 – $177,300 · 90th percentile $210,700 · 1,687 priced postings
3. Senior $178,750
   $150,000 – $216,000 · 90th percentile $248,860 · 10,464 priced postings
4. Staff+ $215,000
   $177,250 – $256,000 · 90th percentile $300,000 · 4,056 priced postings

4. The 5-year wall

Experience demands are not smoothly distributed. They cluster on round numbers, and one number dominates: 5 years, named by 4,424 postings. Employers are not measuring a requirement so much as reaching for a familiar figure.

What kind of experience is being asked for

• Total professional experience 19.5% · 4,545
• Experience in the field 62.4% · 14,532
• Experience with a named technology 4.2% · 980
• No figure stated 13.9% · 3,232

Most experience demands attach to a field or a named technology rather than to a whole career. A posting asking for five years of a framework that has existed for four is a different claim from one asking for five years of professional work, and this report does not merge them: years tied to a single named technology are excluded from the level classification entirely.

5. Seniority buys more than money

Pay is the obvious gradient. Two less obvious ones run in the same direction: the more senior the role, the more likely it can be done remotely — and the more likely the employer will tell you what it pays before you apply.

The disclosure column is the one worth sitting with. The candidates with the least leverage, the least salary information of their own, and the weakest position to negotiate are also the ones least likely to be told the number before they spend an evening on an application.

6. “Senior” is not one job

A single word covers ranks whose advertised pay differs by six figures. These are the seniority labels employers actually use, before any of them are folded into a level.

• senior 25.3% · 5,903
• lead 9.5% · 2,215
• manager 8.7% · 2,029
• principal 6.8% · 1,574
• staff 5.6% · 1,297
• junior 4.0% · 931
• director 3.8% · 891
• exec 3.1% · 726
• mid 2.6% · 601
• intern 1.6% · 367
• distinguished 0.3% · 76
• fellow 0.1% · 21

19.3% of postings (4,497) are people-management roles; the remaining 80.7% are individual contributors.