Staff Pays More Than Principal: Advertised Tech Salaries by Seniority Across Europe
Job titles are supposed to be a ladder: Junior, Mid, Senior, Staff, Principal. Advertised salaries say the ladder is not that tidy in Europe. Across the 7,849 salary-transparent postings JobSnout has recorded, Staff roles had a median of €129,000, while Principal roles had €102,000. That puts Principal closer to Senior than to Staff.
Explore the live table and see which companies pay most in each cell →
The European picture
Every figure is the median advertised salary in EUR, rounded to the nearest €1,000. The middle half is the range between the 25th and 75th percentiles.
| Level | Salaried postings | Median | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior | 111 | €44,000 | €33,000–€60,000 |
| Mid | 28 | €69,000 | €52,000–€79,000 |
| Senior | 2,568 | €82,000 | €70,000–€103,000 |
| Staff | 323 | €129,000 | €103,000–€179,000 |
| Principal | 212 | €102,000 | €82,000–€117,000 |
| Architect | 655 | €80,000 | €70,000–€89,000 |
| Level not stated | 3,952 | €70,000 | €53,000–€98,000 |
| All postings | 7,849 | €79,000 | €61,000–€104,000 |
Three things stand out before any country breakdown:
- Staff is the best-paid level, with by far the widest range. A quarter of Staff postings advertise €179,000 or more.
- Architect sits just below Senior (€80,000 against €82,000), with a narrow range. In many markets "Architect" is an enterprise or consultancy title, not a step above Staff.
- Half the postings name no level at all. The 3,952 postings without a recognisable level have a lower median (€70,000) than Senior postings.
Why Staff beats Principal
The companies at the top of each cell explain much of the gap. The best-paying Staff postings came from AI labs and venture-backed product companies such as Anthropic, Wayve and Ashby. They use the Silicon Valley ladder, where Staff is a senior individual-contributor level paid in international bands.
"Principal" is used more widely. It appears at product companies (Cloudflare's Principal postings had a median of €225,000), but also at consultancies, enterprise employers and recruitment agencies. There it often means a senior consultant or lead engineer. Elastic alone contributed 32 Principal postings with a median of €95,000. Recruitment agencies such as Hackajob and Spectrum IT Recruitment were among the most frequent Principal advertisers.
So the gap is mostly about who uses each title, not about what the job involves. For a candidate, the practical reading is that "Staff" signals the international pay band more reliably than "Principal" does.
Country by country
Figures appear only where at least five salaried postings share the cell.
| Country | Senior | Staff | Principal | Architect | All levels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | €89,000 (1,088) | €133,000 (125) | €100,000 (115) | €67,000 (236) | €87,000 |
| Germany | €75,000 (218) | €148,000 (27) | €89,000 (10) | €80,000 (247) | €75,000 |
| France | €64,000 (145) | €125,000 (20) | €97,000 (8) | €61,000 (8) | €48,000 |
| Spain | €85,000 (461) | €110,000 (39) | €104,000 (22) | €105,000 (77) | €85,000 |
| Poland | €64,000 (233) | €52,000 (10) | — | — | €62,000 |
| Netherlands | €78,000 (79) | €151,000 (12) | — | €84,000 (46) | €72,000 |
| Ireland | €99,000 (103) | €129,000 (31) | €133,000 (12) | €76,000 (8) | €105,000 |
| Portugal | €77,000 (85) | €179,000 (7) | €87,000 (16) | — | €72,000 |
Sample sizes are in brackets. Staff out-earns Principal in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal. Ireland is the exception: its Principal median (€133,000) is slightly above Staff (€129,000), on 12 postings.
Spain's Senior median is higher than Germany's
Salary-transparent Senior postings in Spain had a median of €85,000 (461 postings). That is above Germany (€75,000) and close to the United Kingdom (€89,000).
This is not a claim that the average Spanish engineer out-earns the average German one. The best-paying Spanish Senior postings come from international remote-first employers hiring in Spain, such as ClickHouse, n8n, Aircall and Affirm, whose bands are set internationally. The figure describes the jobs that publish pay, and in Spain those lean towards this international segment. For a Spanish candidate, that part of the market is real and reachable.
Spain is also the one large market where Architect pays well: €105,000 across 77 postings, above its Senior median.
France's low overall median is a level problem
France's overall median (€48,000) is far below its Senior median (€64,000). The reason is the 723 French salaried postings with no stated level, which had a median of only €45,000. Read the French figures by level, not overall.
Juniors are almost invisible
Only 111 of 7,849 salaried postings, 1.4%, were labelled Junior. Mid-level was rarer still: 28 postings. Part of this is classification. Many entry-level roles are titled "Software Engineer" with no level. But it also reflects a market where publicly advertised, salary-transparent roles are overwhelmingly for experienced engineers.
How to use the table
- Compare within a column first. The same level across countries is a fairer comparison than different levels within one country.
- Check the sample. A Staff figure from seven postings (Portugal) says less than a Senior figure from 461 (Spain).
- Open the cell. Selecting a cell on the live table lists the companies advertising the most there, and links to the matching jobs. Companies with fewer than three postings in the cell are flagged.
Methodology and limitations
- Data: 7,849 salaried postings recorded up to 3 November 2026, active and closed, recruiters included.
- Salaries: employer-advertised, midpoint of the range, converted to EUR at ECB rates. A posting naming several countries counts in each. Cells need at least five postings and are rounded to €1,000.
- Seniority: detected from titles and descriptions. "Not stated" means no level was found, not mid-level.
- Caveat: salary-transparent postings are not a random sample and over-represent international employers in some countries.