Recomputed every morning · 2026-09-04
Do these jobs include equity?
Usually the posting says yes and stops there. 106 of the 219 roles that publish a salary band also mention equity. Not one says how much.
48%
of postings with a published band also flag equity. The other side of that number is the interesting one: zero attach a figure to it.
What employers actually write
Almost all of it is the checkbox an applicant tracking system renders on its own. The rest is a phrase with no number in it.
| What the posting says | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| $225K – $400K · Offers Equity | That a grant exists. Nothing about its size. |
| $150–300k with significant equity | That someone considers it significant. |
| $200,000 – $280,000 + equity + benefits | That it is part of the package. |
| $250,000 to $400,000 OTE + equity | That the cash figure already includes variable pay. |
Companies that flag equity on every posting
Employers with three or more published bands where every one of them mentions equity. This is a disclosure habit rather than a measure of generosity, but it is the closest thing to a signal available.
| Company | Bands published |
|---|---|
| Cohere | 10 |
| Mercor | 9 |
| Decagon | 5 |
| Fireworks AI | 4 |
| Abridge | 3 |
| Harvey | 3 |
Companies whose postings never mention it
Three or more published bands, equity mentioned in none of them. That may mean the roles are cash only, or only that the posting does not say. Nonprofits are left out of this list, because they cannot grant equity at all and are not withholding anything.
Apollo Research, Astera Institute, CoreWeave (Weights & Biases), Distyl AI, HumanSignal, LangChain, Microsoft AI, Patronus AI, Scale AI, Thinking Machines Lab, Wayve, xAI.
Do the ones that mention equity pay less in cash?
No, and the intuition that they would is worth checking rather than assuming. Median midpoint where the posting mentions equity: $313k. Where it does not: $240k. The companies granting equity tend to pay more cash as well, not less. A grant is not being traded against salary here, it is stacked on top of a salary that was already higher.
Read that as a description of who publishes what, not as advice. Startup equity can be worth more than every year of the salary combined, or nothing at all.
What the band leaves out
Every figure on this page is annual base cash. Equity, bonus and sign-on are not in it, because postings almost never state them. How much that matters depends on who is hiring, and it varies more than most people expect.
So the honest way to read a band here is as a floor that means different things in different places. Against a nonprofit it is the whole number. Against a private lab it is the part that is certain, and the uncertain part may be larger.
Questions that turn "offers equity" into a number
An employer that will not put a figure in the posting will usually give you one when asked directly. Worth asking all five, because the answers only mean something together:
- What is the grant worth in dollars at the most recent preferred price, not the number of shares?
- What is the strike price, and what was the last 409A valuation?
- What is the vesting schedule, and is there a cliff?
- Is there a refresh grant after year one, and roughly what size?
- Has the company ever run a tender offer or secondary sale, and do you expect another?
The last one matters most and gets asked least. A grant you cannot sell for eight years is worth substantially less than the same grant at a company that buys shares back from employees every year, and the posting will never tell you which you are looking at.
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