Figures in this piece are a snapshot taken on 2026-06-09, drawn from 488 active listings across 327 companies. The board has grown since, and medians move with it. For figures recomputed from the live board, see our guide to finding a remote job or the salary data page.
We pulled the numbers off our own board this month: 488 active remote roles across 327 companies. The median advertised salary is $125,000. That is the single most useful anchor we can hand you, and it is also the most misleading number on this page if you stop reading here.
This report does two things. First, it tells you what remote employers are actually printing in their listings right now, broken down by function. Second, it explains why the number in the ad is only half of a compensation decision, and what the other half looks like once you run it against real cost-of-living data.
The Headline Number: $125,000
Across every role on the board that advertises a salary, the median lands at $125,000 per year in USD. We use the median rather than the average on purpose. Remote boards attract a long tail of very high offers from well-funded companies, and a handful of $300,000 staff engineering posts would drag an average up by five figures while telling you nothing about the job you are actually likely to get. The median is the middle of the pack. Half the roles pay more, half pay less.
Two structural facts shape that number. The board carries 488 active roles from 327 distinct companies, which works out to roughly one and a half openings per employer. This is not a board dominated by three enterprises posting fifty seats each. It is a wide, shallow distribution of companies, most of them hiring for one or two positions at a time. A median drawn from that kind of spread is more representative than one drawn from a handful of very large employers.
The second fact is composition. Engineering accounts for 246 of the roles, more than half the board. When you read "$125,000 median remote salary" anywhere on the internet, including here, you are mostly reading a statement about what companies pay engineers. Everything below breaks that apart.
Median Salary by Category
Six categories carry enough salaried listings to compute a median worth publishing. Each figure comes with its role count so you can weigh how much confidence to place in it.
- Product: $137,500 (15 roles)
- Data & Analytics: $135,000 (21 roles)
- Engineering: $125,000 (246 roles)
- Design: $112,500 (18 roles)
- Marketing: $112,500 (13 roles)
- Customer Support: $104,000 (5 roles)
Product pays the most, on the thinnest evidence
At $137,500, product management posts the highest median on the board. It is also one of the smallest samples at 15 roles. Read that pairing carefully. Remote product roles are rare relative to remote engineering roles, and the ones that do get posted skew senior, because companies are generally unwilling to hire a first-time PM they will never sit next to. A high median on a small, senior-skewed sample is a real signal about the roles that exist, not a promise that any product job you find will clear $137,500.
Data and analytics is the quiet winner
$135,000 across 21 roles puts data and analytics $10,000 above the board-wide median. This category has been converging with engineering pay for several years, and the listings reflect it. Analytics engineering, data platform, and machine learning roles now compete for the same infrastructure-literate candidates that backend teams want, and the salary bands have followed.
Engineering sets the baseline
Engineering's median is $125,000, identical to the board-wide median, which is what you would expect when engineering is 246 of 488 listings. The important thing about this category is not the midpoint but the spread. With that many roles, the distribution runs from junior support-engineering posts well under six figures to staff and principal roles that clear $200,000. Browse the full listings and you will see both extremes on the same page.
Design and marketing sit together
Both land at $112,500, roughly ten percent below the board median. Design has 18 roles and marketing 13, so neither sample is large, but the agreement between them is consistent with what we see quarter over quarter. These are functions where remote hiring is normal and competition is global, which keeps bands tighter than in engineering.
Customer support is the floor
At $104,000 across 5 roles, customer support posts the lowest median we can compute. Treat this one with the most caution: five roles is a very small sample, and support is the function where companies most aggressively apply geographic pay adjustments. The listings that advertise a salary at all tend to be senior support engineering or customer success roles at US companies, which pulls the visible median up relative to what the category actually pays worldwide.
Why the Nominal Number Is Not the Answer
Here is the part almost every salary report skips. A salary is a claim on goods and services in a specific place. Two identical $125,000 offers produce completely different lives depending on where you sign the lease.
We carry cost-of-living data for 30 cities, indexed against New York City at 100. A city with an index of 50 costs roughly half what New York costs for the same standard of living. Run $125,000 through that and the picture changes fast.
The New York case. $125,000 is $10,417 per month gross. Our data puts a typical monthly cost of living in New York City at about $4,000 for a single person living reasonably. Before tax, that leaves roughly $6,400 per month, or about 2.6 months of living expenses earned for every month worked. After US federal and New York State and city taxes, the honest surplus is closer to $3,000 to $3,500 per month.
The Lisbon case. The same $125,000, taken to a city with an index of 52 and typical monthly costs near $1,800, leaves about $8,600 per month gross, or roughly 5.8 months of living expenses earned per month worked. Flip the comparison and it is starker: to match the purchasing power of $125,000 in Lisbon, a New York employer would have to pay you roughly $240,000. Nothing about the job changed. Only the denominator did.
The Bangkok case. An index of 35 and typical monthly costs near $1,100 mean that $125,000 covers about 9.5 months of expenses for every month you work. The New York equivalent is roughly $357,000. You can see the full breakdown on our Bangkok city page, and the same math laid out for Lisbon.
How to Actually Use This Report
Three things follow from the numbers above.
Use the category median as a floor, not a target. If you are an experienced engineer and an offer comes in at $105,000, you now know that is below the middle of the market for remote engineering roles. That is a negotiating fact, not an opinion. Pull up the live figures on our salary explorer before the call.
Compare offers in real terms, not nominal ones. A $118,000 offer from a company that will let you live anywhere beats a $132,000 offer that requires a high-cost metro, and it is not close. Run both through the cost-of-living calculator before you decide which one is bigger.
Watch the sample sizes. Product looks like the best-paid function on this board, but it is 15 roles. Engineering's median rests on 246. When a category median is built on single digits, treat it as a hint about what kinds of roles get posted rather than a reliable market rate.
The median remote salary in 2026 is $125,000. What that is worth to you depends entirely on the city you type into the second box. That is the whole argument of this site, and it is why every salary we list is shown against the cost of living where you plan to actually live. Start with the city index and work backwards from the life you want.