Here's How Much a Typical Microsoft Employee Makes in a Year Data from thousands of new federal filings shows how much Microsoft is paying its employees, from software engineers to product designers.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- New filings show how much Microsoft is paying its employees.
- Software engineers can take home $82,971 to $284,000 in base salary.
- The typical mid-level Microsoft employee earned $193,744 for the fiscal year 2024.
How well does it pay to work at Microsoft?
According to federal filings, seen by Business Insider on Tuesday, Microsoft is compensating software engineers from $82,971 to $284,000 in base salary. It's slightly lower than other tech giants; Google pays software engineers from $109,180 to $340,000, and Meta pays anywhere from $120,000 to $480,000.
Related: Here's How Much a Typical Salesforce Employee Makes in a Year
Microsoft product managers can make up to $250,000, while product designers can take home up to $208,058. Data scientists are offered salaries of up to $274,500 at the tech giant, as business analysts are paid up to $191,580.
The data is drawn from 5,400 documents Microsoft filed with the U.S. Department of Labor during the first quarter of 2025. The filings are required when Microsoft hires foreign workers through the H-1B visa program, which allows highly skilled professionals to work in specialty occupations.
The documents show the base annual salaries awarded to H-1B visa workers, excluding additional compensation in the form of signing bonuses and stock options.
The typical Microsoft employee makes nearly $200,000. A mid-level employee at Microsoft made $193,744 for the fiscal year 2024, per a filing the company submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in December.
According to the H-1B filings, Microsoft pays other roles as follows:
- Business Program Manager: $102,380 to $195,100
- Cloud Network Engineer: $122,700 to $220,716
- Customer Experience Engineer: $126,422 to $239,585
- Data Analyst: $132,385 to $205,000
- Electrical Engineer: $138,995 to $247,650
- Research Scientist: $146,054 to $208,000
- Technical Program Manager: $120,900 to $238,000
The SEC filing showed that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella received an annual total compensation of $79.1 million in 2024, or 408 times more than that of the median employee. Stocks comprised most of Nadella's compensation.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made nearly $80 million in 2024. Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In comparison, Google CEO Sundar Pichai earned over $10.7 million in 2024, roughly 32 times more than the $331,894 earned by the median Google employee last year.
Related: Here's How Much a Typical Nvidia Employee Makes in a Year
Microsoft recently laid off thousands of employees, including 6,000 employees in May. Earlier this month, the company announced that it would be cutting an additional 9,000 workers, or around 4% of its workforce.
Microsoft is one of the most valuable companies in the world, second only to Nvidia, with a market value of $3.769 trillion at the time of writing.
For the full list of roles and salaries at Microsoft for H-1B workers, click here.
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