Counted November 8, 2026 · from employers’ own postings
System Software Engineer: $222K median posted pay.
From 10 salary bands employers posted on 94 open system software engineer roles in software engineering. Never an estimate.
The ladder, by level
What each rung pays.
| Level | Open roles | Median posted band | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | 74 | — (3 of 8 bands) | — |
| Principal | 3 | — (1 of 8 bands) | — |
Levels as the postings name them. A rung shows a median only where eight or more postings at that level carried a band.
Who is hiring
The employers with the most open.
| Employer | Open roles | Entry level |
|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA | 81 | — |
| Kla | 3 | — |
| Hp (Exteu Ac Careersite) | 1 | — |
| d-Matrix | 1 | — |
| Everpure | 1 | — |
| Hp | 1 | — |
| Gdit | 1 | — |
| Baidu USA | 1 | — |
| OpenAI | 1 | — |
| HP IQ | 1 | — |
Counted from employers’ own job boards. The ten with the most open system software engineer roles right now.
The skills, as the postings name them
What these postings ask for.
| Skill | Postings | At entry |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineering | 94 | — |
| C | 78 | — |
| Debugging | 59 | — |
| Linux Administration | 52 | — |
| Python | 52 | — |
| Electrical Engineering | 39 | — |
| Embedded Systems | 29 | — |
| Deep Learning | 26 | — |
| System Architecture | 16 | — |
| Performance Profiling | 15 | — |
Where the work is
3% of these roles are remote.
- Remote3%3 roles
- Hybrid1%1 roles
- On site51%48 roles
- Not stated45%42 roles
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How this was counted
Every figure is counted from 94 open postings read from employers’ own job boards on November 8, 2026, and recounted every night. Pay is the band the employer posted — never an estimate, never a model — and 10 of these postings carried one. Titles are grouped by the words the postings use, with levels, shifts and schedules removed, so “Senior System Software Engineer (Nights)” counts here too. 100% of roles with this title sit in software engineering, which is why this page belongs to that career. A title gets a page only where twenty-five or more roles are open, eight or more of them posted a band, three or more employers are hiring for it and four in five of its postings sit in one career, so no page here is a guess.