Here's How Much Palantir Pays Its Top Tech Talent, From Software Engineers to AI Researchers With stock up nearly 500% in a year, Palantir is booming. Here's how that translates into pay for its employees.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Carl Stoffers
Key Takeaways
- New federal filings show how much Palantir pays its nearly 4,000 employees.
- The data shows that a Palantir software engineer can make up to $240,000 in base pay, while product designers make $135,000.
- The defense technology company’s CEO, Alexander Karp, made $4.63 million in 2024, about 20 times more than the median employee.
Palantir stock is up nearly 500% over the past year at the time of writing. As the software and defense technology company's value skyrockets, the question remains: How well does it pay its staff?
According to new federal filings, obtained by Business Insider, Palantir pays competitively for top tech talent. Software engineers, for example, can make anywhere from $155,000 to $240,000 in base pay.
The range aligns with what other major tech companies offer for the same role, though others have a higher ceiling. Meta pays $120,000 to $480,000, Google pays $109,180 to $340,000 and Microsoft pays $82,971 to $284,000 for software engineering talent.
Palantir builds platforms to help analyze and manage data, mainly for large organizations and the U.S. government and its allies. The company helps break down complex data to drive better decision-making, operations and security. Palantir's data analysis software is considered a military intelligence tool. The company operates across the world, in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, but is headquartered in the U.S., in Denver, Colorado.
Palantir CEO Alexander Karp. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
According to its careers page, Palantir is hiring across the board, from engineering roles targeting new college graduates to product designer jobs.
The company submitted federal filings showing salary information for the first quarter of the year. The filings are required when companies hire foreign workers through the H-1B visa program, which enables highly skilled workers to take on specialty occupations.
The documents only show base annual salaries for H-1B workers and do not include signing bonuses, stock options, or other forms of compensation. They only represent one part of the compensation picture, not the entire view.
The filings show that Palantir pays other roles as follows:
- AI Machine Learning Researcher: $210,000 to $250,000
- Deployment Strategist: $120,000 to $192,000
- Product Designer: $135,000
- Quality Engineer: $136,000
- Technical Program Manager: $165,000
According to Palantir's proxy statement, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in April, CEO Alexander Karp's total compensation in 2024 was $4.63 million, while the median employee's total compensation for the same year was $229,912. Karp made 20 times more than the mid-level worker at the company.
Related: Here's How Much a Typical Nvidia Employee Makes in a Year
Palantir has nearly 4,000 U.S. employees.
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