Women in Tech Salary Report 2026
The definitive, citable snapshot of women in tech salaries and the gender pay gap — median pay by city and role, gap by seniority, and representation across 15 global tech hubs.
Updated February 2026 · Free to citeExecutive summary
The state of women in tech pay in 2026
Women in tech earn about 84 cents for every dollar earned by men — a gender pay gap of roughly $15,000 a year. Yet pay varies enormously by city, role, and seniority: a woman technologist's median pay ranges from $110,000 in lower-cost US markets to $150,000 in San Francisco, the highest-paying benchmark hub. This report distills WomenHack's salary and representation data into the numbers journalists, researchers, and candidates ask for most — every figure below is drawn from our live salary guides, career guides, and statistics report.
The gender pay gap
Cents earned per $1, by group and seniority
The headline 84-cent gap is not evenly shared. It narrows to 92 cents at director level and widens sharply for Black and Latina women. Longer bars are better — each shows cents earned for every dollar a man in the same tier earns, against a $1.00 reference.
Scale: 100¢ = pay parity. Source: WomenHack Women in Tech Statistics 2026.
Director-level 92¢ and overall 84¢ from BLS/Hired; 63¢ (Black women) and 54¢ (Latina women) from National Partnership. Pay-transparency policies are associated with a further ~7% narrowing of the gap.
Pay by location
Median women-in-tech pay by city
Across the 15 hubs WomenHack benchmarks, the US markets pay the most in absolute terms. Below are the top US cities by median annual pay for a mid-level woman technologist. Tap any city for its full salary breakdown by seniority and role.
Median = midpoint of each market's mid-level pay range.
Source: WomenHack salary guides (all 15 cities). Local-currency markets (London, Berlin, Singapore, and more) are covered on the individual city pages.
Pay by discipline
Median US pay by tech role
Engineering Leadership tops the pay table at a median of $250,000. These are US national midpoints across all seniority levels; each role links to its full career and salary guide.
Median = midpoint of each role's national pay range across all levels.
Source: WomenHack career guides (avg_salary ranges).
Representation
Women's representation by tech role
Pay is only half the story — representation ranges from near-parity in design and writing to the mid-teens in infrastructure and leadership. Bars show the share of women in each discipline (blue to distinguish from the pay charts).
Scale: 0–100%. Source: WomenHack career guides.
Bar width uses the midpoint of each stated range; the label shows the full range. Overall, women hold ~26.7% of tech jobs (Deloitte, via WomenHack statistics).
Pay by experience
How pay scales with seniority
Using San Francisco — the highest-paying benchmark market — as the reference, pay roughly doubles from junior to staff level. These bands apply WomenHack's standard experience multipliers to each market's mid-level range, so they match the tables on every city page.
Bar = band midpoint; label shows the full range.
Source: WomenHack salary model (seniority multipliers on the San Francisco range). The 84¢ gap means a woman at each band still earns less than a man at the same band.
For reporters & researchers
Key findings you can quote
- Women in tech earn 84 cents for every dollar earned by men — an average gap of about $15,000 a year.
- The gap widens to 63¢ for Black women and 54¢ for Latina women, and narrows to 92¢ at director level.
- Women hold 26.7% of tech jobs globally and 28% of US computing roles.
- Representation by role runs from ~40–50% in UX design down to ~15–20% in DevOps and engineering leadership.
- San Francisco is the highest-paying benchmark market, with a median women-in-tech salary of $150,000.
- Engineering Leadership is the highest-paying discipline at a median of $250,000.
- All-women founding teams receive just 2.3% of venture capital; about 50% of women leave tech by age 35.
- Companies with pay-transparency policies show a 7% smaller gender pay gap.
Methodology
How this report is built
Salary figures are aggregated from WomenHack's candidate and salary dataset, drawn from a community spanning 120+ cities and benchmarked into conservative estimates for 15 global tech hubs and 15 tech disciplines. City medians are the midpoint of each market's mid-level annual pay range; seniority bands apply WomenHack's standard experience multipliers to that range; role pay uses each discipline's national range. Representation figures reflect WomenHack's career-guide data (shown as ranges). Gender pay-gap, workforce, venture, and retention figures come from WomenHack's Women in Tech Statistics report, which cites primary sources including the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, McKinsey, Deloitte, PitchBook, Hired, and the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Estimates are updated annually. Local-currency salary detail for non-US markets lives on the individual city salary pages.
Cite this report
Journalists, researchers, and bloggers are welcome to reference these figures. Please cite as:
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is the gender pay gap in tech in 2026?
Women in tech earn about 84 cents for every dollar earned by men — an average gap of roughly $15,000 per year. The gap is wider for Black women (63¢) and Latina women (54¢), and narrows to 92¢ at director level.
How much do women in tech earn on average?
Median pay for women in tech ranges from about $110,000 to $150,000 a year across the highest-cost US markets, depending on city, role, and seniority. San Francisco is the highest-paying benchmark market at a median of $150,000.
Which tech roles have the most women?
Representation is highest in UX design (~40-50%), technical writing (~40-55%), and data science (~35-40%), and lowest in DevOps/SRE (~15-20%), engineering leadership (~15-18%), and blockchain (~15-20%). Overall, women hold about 26.7% of tech jobs.
Does the gender pay gap in tech shrink with seniority?
Yes. The overall gap of about 16 cents on the dollar narrows to roughly 8 cents (92¢ per $1) at director level, and pay transparency policies are associated with a further 7% reduction in the gap.
Where does the data in this report come from?
Salary figures are aggregated from WomenHack's candidate and salary dataset across 15 benchmarked global tech hubs and 15 disciplines, expressed as conservative estimates and updated annually. Gender pay-gap and representation figures come from WomenHack's Women in Tech Statistics report, which cites BLS, McKinsey, Deloitte, PitchBook, and other primary sources.
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