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 10.4% · 3,363
   posted by 183 of 270 employers
2. Mid 10.1% · 3,249
   posted by 187 of 270 employers
3. Senior 56.0% · 18,071
   posted by 260 of 270 employers
4. Staff+ 19.1% · 6,172
   posted by 219 of 270 employers

A further 1,428 postings (4.4%) 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 2,068 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 $132,600
   $107,250 – $152,875 · 90th percentile $179,000 · 1,682 priced postings
2. Mid $158,550
   $126,800 – $194,300 · 90th percentile $214,000 · 2,170 priced postings
3. Senior $186,600
   $152,000 – $222,500 · 90th percentile $254,750 · 12,141 priced postings
4. Staff+ $215,000
   $180,000 – $257,100 · 90th percentile $299,000 · 4,394 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 5,536 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 18.9% · 6,116
• Experience in the field 64.3% · 20,756
• Experience with a named technology 2.8% · 910
• No figure stated 13.9% · 4,501

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 26.5% · 8,540
• lead 8.5% · 2,739
• principal 7.2% · 2,333
• manager 6.9% · 2,217
• staff 5.7% · 1,840
• director 2.8% · 891
• junior 2.7% · 878
• intern 2.1% · 687
• mid 1.0% · 331
• exec 0.7% · 220
• distinguished 0.6% · 195
• fellow 0.1% · 17

15.5% of postings (4,992) are people-management roles; the remaining 84.5% are individual contributors.

7. What employers ask for, by level

The skills named most often in postings at each level, as a share of that level’s postings with an extracted skill list. A posting counts a skill once; spellings are folded to one name.

A skill is listed from 5 postings and 10% of the level’s skilled postings, top 12 shown; a level needs 30 postings with a skill list. Download this table (CSV).