What is the Highest Amazon Data Engineer Salary?

Amazon Data Engineer Offer Components

Amazon base salary:
base salary at Amazon is fairly standard. The one unique element was that for almost all of 2021 there was a $160K/$185K base salary cap in Seattle/SF
Amazon equity (RSUs):
Amazon's equity vesting schedule is non-standard and heavily back weighted. You will vest equity (i.e. you receive shares) over a 4 year period but only 5% in year 1, 15% year 2, 40% in year 3 and 4. Amazon quotes a specific number of shares rather than dollar value, but you can calculate a decent approximation of the dollar value by looking at the average share price over the past month
Amazon signing bonus:
Amazon has a signing bonus in year 1 and year 2. These are typically much larger than at other companies to make up for the tiny portion of equity that is vesting in year 1 and 2
Amazon performance bonus:
Amazon does not have set targets for performance bonuses. You shouldn't factor this into your total comp at Amazon
Amazon stock refreshers:
Amazon stock refreshers are very hit or miss and depend on your manager/team in addition to your own performance. You will almost always receive additional stocks at the end of your initial 4-year grant, but the usual stacking of stock refreshers in year 2 and 3 doesn't typically happen at Amazon

Note: levelling is critical to understanding compensation bands. If you aren't familiar with Amazon levels (which are quite unique), skip to the bottom to read this.

L5 Amazon Data Engineer Salary

2021 Top of Band Numbers

Base Salary

$175K

Equity (4 years)

$180K

Yr 1 Signing Bonus

$82K

Yr 2 Signing Bonus

$58K

Reminder: Amazon's level structure is unique and an L5 DE at Amazon is equivalent to an L4 DE at Facebook or Google. The top of band numbers are based on SF/NYC pay bands - Seattle will be lower.

L6 Amazon Data Engineer Salary

2021 Top of Band Numbers

Base Salary

$185K

Equity (4 years)

$500K

Yr 1 Signing Bonus

$200K

Yr 2 Signing Bonus

$145K

The numbers above are for L6 data engineering roles in SF/NYC. Typically data engineering manager roles pay 10-15% higher TC.

L7 Amazon Data Engineer Salary

2021 Top of Band Numbers

Base Salary

$185K

Equity (4 years)

$750K

Yr 1 Signing Bonus

$335K

Yr 2 Signing Bonus

$250K

Early 2022 offers have a much different structure with the removal of the $160K/$185K base salary cap. Senior DE manager positions will be 10-15% higher than the numbers listed above.

Amazon Data Engineer Negotiation

So now you've got the comp data, are you ready to negotiate? Not quite.

First off, comp data is constantly changing and Amazon made significant modifications to its compensation approach in 2022. 2022 numbers are higher than the 2021 numbers listed above, and it’s critical to know the full range for each component to optimize your negotiation. Amazon also fundamentally changed how they structure offers with the removal of their artificially low base salary caps. But even more than that, many people think knowing the compensation data is the most important part of a negotiation, but it’s not. You can go tell your Amazon recruiter that you read online the top of band is $X and you want that number, but in 90% of cases that won’t work. So what will?

Companies negotiate when they believe you won’t accept their offer. But, since you just finished a long and arduous interview process with them, they know you are likely to accept the job unless you have higher competing offers from other great companies.

This means you need to create leverage and make it believable that you are considering other options but would prefer Amazon if the compensation is comparable. This sounds easy but quickly becomes challenging if you don’t have other offers or if your other offers aren’t higher than the top of band comp numbers you are targeting.

Assuming you do have a higher competing offer (i.e. above your top of band target) from another good company, the negotiation can still be surprisingly difficult. Amazon has many unusual policies. For example, they by default assume 15% stock appreciation in their offers - though they don't openly disclose it. This means they will claim to have "matched" a competing offer when in fact their offer is much lower. There are multiple rules like this at Amazon, and the strategies that we've found work best to get around them are often not intuitive. In our experience, Amazon's comp team operates like a bureaucracy where through trial and error you can figure out how to reliably turn specific pieces of information (inputs) into your target output.

Amazon Data Engineer Levels

Amazon Levels

L6 (Senior DE)

L8 (DE Director)

Google Levels

Between L6 and L7

Amazon does not follow industry standards when it comes to levelling, though to be fair many companies take a unique approach. We'd recommend using Google levels as the benchmark. Other companies like Facebook, DoorDash, etc. use the Google system just with different names (e.g. IC5/L5/E5 are the same at those companies). Amazon inflates levels by +1 for more junior levels (e.g. Amazon L4 = Google L3, both are entry level positions). However, this trend breaks at Amazon L7, which is closer to Google L7 than Google L6 in terms of compensation and scope. The 3 other main levelling systems to be aware of are: 1) Microsoft where 65 = Amazon L6 2) Apple where ICT4 is in between Amazon L5 and L6 3) Stripe/Robinhood/etc. where L2/IC2 = Amazon L5.