2026 Executive Pay Trends: A National Overview

Two approaches exist for writing an annual remuneration report. One method involves surveying hundreds of people about what they intend to pay, average the responses, and call it a benchmark. Most published comp reports work this way. We have not found these especially informative. People asked what they will pay say one thing; people putting their names on an offer letter behave differently.

The alternative approach — our methodology — is to look only at offers that were extended, accepted, and counter-signed. This analysis draws from 389 such offers from our completed senior US placements between January 2025 and the first week of April 2026. Each figure you’re about to read is from a verified, executed offer document for a professional who has since started in the position.

The top-line: a bifurcating market

If there is a single takeaway from this report, take this: the senior US remuneration market in 2026 is not flat, growing, or contracting. It is bifurcating. The very top of the market — C-suite, Board-adjacent, and the equivalent of "named executive officer" roles — saw total remuneration grow 6.4% year-over-year. The middle of the market — VPs and Senior Directors — was nearly flat at 1.8%. The bottom of our dataset — Director-level individual contributors and managers — actually declined 0.6% on a like-for-like basis after adjusting for sector mix.

That spread — seven percentage points between the top and bottom of the senior labor market in a single year — is the largest we’ve recorded since we started keeping internal data in 2022. To give you a sense of what those numbers actually look like in context:

This bifurcation is the architectural story of 2025 and 2026 so far, and it has consequences. The assumption many candidates carry — that "the comp market" moves as a single thing, and a rising tide lifts everyone — is no longer how it works. Whether your seniority is paying more or less this year depends considerably on which line of the divergence you’re sitting on.

Why is the top growing faster than the rest? Three compounding dynamics. First, shortage at the top. The cohort of executives who have run a Fortune 1000 finance function, a 500-engineer organization, or a Phase 3 clinical program is, for any particular search, often fewer than fifty people. When demand picks up — as it has in finance and AI — that pool is bid against itself. Second, public-board accountability. Public-company boards in 2025 expressly approved larger CEO and CFO packages as a response to shareholder pressure on retention. We observed multiple offers in our dataset where the Board justified the package by reference to a comparable peer-group benchmark we had run for them. Third, the leverage of carried interest and equity at top private companies, which we explore in detail in section 9.

The middle and bottom of the senior market lack all three of these forces. Director-level talent is abundant, not bid against itself in most searches. There’s no shareholder pressure to retain a particular Director. And the equity packages at that level are generally too small to matter in negotiation terms. Result: real wages, in this segment, were approximately flat for three years.

Finance & capital markets

The finance practice was our largest single category in 2025: 93 placements, of which 36 were in the New York metro and 24 were in Texas (across Austin, Dallas, and Houston). The structure of finance remuneration in 2026 is the most foreseeable of any sector we address — nearly every senior offer is a variant of base + target bonus + equity or carried interest — but the relative weights and the absolute numbers have evolved materially.

For Chief Financial Officer roles at companies in the $500M to $5B revenue range, headquartered in or operating primarily out of New York, our 2025 dataset shows the following:

The 75th-percentile equity figure of $1.05M is worth examining closely. A few years back, this number might have sat closer to $380K for the same role. The transition mirrors a considerable change in how PE-backed and pre-IPO companies are paying senior finance leadership: equity-at-grant is now regularly the largest component of the package, not a sweetener on top of cash. This is both an opportunity (upside is real if the company exits well) and a risk (the rest of the package is often markedly lighter than a comparable public-company offer).

For the deeper breakdown on CFO comp in New York — including the public-vs-PE-vs-pre-IPO split, the under-discussed components of an offer letter, and where to push during negotiation — we have published a separate piece dedicated to NYC CFO comp.

Below the CFO level, the story is less generous. Median base for a Controller at a $1B+ company in New York held at $233K in 2025, virtually unchanged from 2023 in nominal terms (and considerably down in real terms once you account for inflation). VP Finance, Director of Financial Planning & Analysis, Director of Tax — all roles in the $181K–$304K base range — have witnessed comp stagnate. We have encountered several conversations with candidates at this level who are surprised, on receiving an outside offer, to find that the offer is essentially their current package with a one-time sign-on bonus to bridge the differential. The narrowing is real.

The foremost underpriced senior finance role in 2026, from our perspective, is the strong VP of Finance at a sub-$500M private company. The base is light. The equity at most companies is too thin to matter. And the work is closer to a CFO’s job than the title indicates. If you have the option, strongly advocate for the title — the remuneration will follow eventually. — Margot Sinclair, Talent Partner · Finance Practice

The other considerable sub-trend in finance: Texas has materially reshaped the finance hiring map. Of our 24 Texas finance placements in 2025, 17 were in Dallas-Fort Worth at firms that either relocated their HQ to Texas or maintained considerable Texas operations. The remuneration in DFW is now within 10–15% of NYC for equivalent CFO roles — and after state-tax adjustment, often net-of-tax higher. We examine the Texas finance migration in detail in a separate piece.

Technology & engineering

If finance is the most foreseeable sector in our dataset, technology is the most unpredictable. The Bay Area technology remuneration market in 2026 has bifurcated more sharply than any other sector we address, and the divergence is no longer linear. Same job title, same engineering team size, same industry — and we have observed total remuneration ranges from $456K to over $2 million for the same role profile depending solely on which company is hiring.

This is, frankly, an unusual chart. In the same time frame, the same labor pool, doing essentially the same job, comp at one type of employer rose 62% and at another fell 8%. There’s no economic theory that explains both sides cleanly. What there is, instead, is a two-sided narrative: capital is flooding into AI infrastructure and applied AI in a way it isn’t flooding into mature SaaS, and the comp packages mirror that. The landscape for the same person is authentically splitting in two.

Why the AI premium is so large reduces to two specific dynamics. The first is authentic talent shortage. The set of engineering leaders who have credibly run a large-scale ML infrastructure team is small — by our count, fewer than eight hundred people in the entire United States, and fewer than three hundred of those have managed engineering organizations above fifty people. When a foundation-model company or large AI-infrastructure company opens a VPE search, they are generally contending for a subset of those three hundred people with three to five other companies running parallel searches.

The second is the equity-grant inflation that the AI-native segment is exhibiting. A typical VPE at a Series C AI company today receives an initial equity grant of 0.3–0.7% of fully diluted equity, valued at the most recent round. With those companies often carrying primary valuations of $5–$50 billion, the face value of even a 0.3% grant is $15–$150 million. The 409A discount and vesting risk mean the realized number is expected to be a fraction of this, but the top-line is what closes the candidate.

The corresponding compression at public, post-IPO software companies is the same dynamic in reverse. Public-company stock-comp packages were set in 2022–2023, when the share prices were higher. As share prices declined and refresh grants in 2024–2025 were sized based on then-current prices, the dollar value of new grants fell. A VPE who joined a public SaaS company in mid-2021 has, on average, seen the dollar value of their unrealized equity decline 20–35% over three years — and the new grants haven’t fully made up the differential.

Beyond the VPE level, we observe considerable variance across other senior engineering roles. Director of Engineering at public tech firms in our 2025 dataset showed median total comp of $394K (Bay Area), up only $5K from 2024. Senior Engineering Manager showed median total comp of $325K, essentially flat. The markup for AI specialization, however, applies all the way down the ladder — we completed placements for multiple Senior Engineering Managers at AI-native companies with total comp at or above $618K.

The full picture of how Bay Area VPE comp has fractured is the subject of a separate piece focused entirely on VP Engineering remuneration in San Francisco, including how to think about equity vesting, refresh policies, and the long-term realized-vs-grant gap.

Healthcare & life sciences

Our healthcare and life sciences practice had the smallest dataset in 2025 — 36 placements — but the most internally consistent trend: remuneration is rising at companies with positive clinical data and falling at companies without it.

Chief Medical Officer roles at clinical-stage biotech firms with positive Phase 2 or Phase 3 readouts in 2024 saw median total comp grow 11.2% year-over-year. The same role at companies with stalled or failed trials — a not-uncommon outcome in our sample — saw remuneration decline. In several cases we negotiated, the structure was heavily weighted toward performance-vesting equity tied to specific clinical milestones. The top-line number on the offer letter looked contested; the realized comp depended considerably on whether the next trial succeeded.

The foremost active sub-segment of our 2025 life-sciences practice was metabolic disease and weight-loss therapeutics. The follow-on success of GLP-1 receptor agonists has reshaped capital allocation across biotech, and the talent market has followed. We completed placements for eleven senior leaders in this space alone — CMOs, VPs of Clinical Development, Heads of Commercial — with median base salaries 18% higher than comparable roles in cardiovascular or oncology. Sign-on bonuses in this sub-segment averaged $238K, up sharply from $119K in our 2023 placements.

Commercial leadership in life sciences — VP and CCO roles at companies launching or scaling a commercial product — showed median total comp of $684K in 2025, up 4.8% year-over-year. The structure heavily favors variable comp tied to revenue milestones, particularly at companies whose first products are in their first or second year of commercial sales.

Medical-device commercial leadership tracks approximately with biotech commercial in our findings, but with one conspicuous distinction: sign-on bonuses are larger and more often guaranteed. Medical-device companies contending for senior commercial talent — particularly companies running contested launches against established players — were more willing to offer cash sign-on as a way to bridge from a candidate’s current package to a future-state equity component that won’t fully vest for years.

Sales, marketing & revenue

The revenue side of the org tells a cleaner, more concentrated story than the engineering side: variable remuneration is up, base salary is flat. Across 83 sales and revenue placements in our 2025 dataset, median base salaries rose just 2.1%, while median on-target variable remuneration rose 14.3%. Companies are pushing more of the senior revenue-team package into pay-for-performance, and they are willing to fund larger plans when the performance materializes.

For Chief Revenue Officer roles at $50M–$200M ARR SaaS companies in 2025:

The architectural detail worth highlighting is the rise of considerable accelerator structures. The multiplier on commission rates beyond plan attainment used to be capped around 1.5× in most senior sales-leader packages. In 2025, we observed five offers with accelerators of 2.5× or higher for over-quota performance. The calculus produces a powerful incentive: a CRO who overdelivers by 30% on a $5M new-business target could realize $380K+ in incremental commission alone in a single year. This structure barely existed three years ago and is now a authentic negotiating lever.

Marketing leadership tells a different story than sales. Median Chief Marketing Officer remuneration in our 2025 dataset was $518K total, essentially flat year-over-year. Sub-segments diverged, however. CMOs at AI-native and FinTech companies showed total comp 22% above the median; CMOs at traditional consumer-goods and retail companies were 14% below. The markup for being adjacent to the high-growth sectors flows down through marketing as it does through engineering.

A particular sub-segment in 2025 that surprised even us: VP of Brand and Creative roles. Long under-paid relative to growth and demand-gen marketing peers, brand leadership saw median total comp grow 11.4% in 2025 as companies came to terms with the actuality that performance marketing alone wasn’t producing efficient growth. The pendulum, in our placements at least, is swinging back toward investment in brand — and the comp mirrors that.

Legal & general counsel

The legal practice is smaller (28 placements in 2025) but high-leverage — almost all retained engagements at the General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, or M&A Partner level. The market here is steady, with comp tracking inflation closely — median total comp growth of 3.4% across our 2025 legal placements.

The most conspicuous structural development is the emergence of dedicated AI Counsel roles as a distinct senior position. We completed placements for seven AI-specific in-house counsel roles in 2025, with company types ranging from Series C startups to a Fortune 500 incumbent. Median base for those roles was $295K, with equity packages averaging $176K. Both of those numbers are considerably above the equivalent generalist Senior Counsel role at the same companies. The markup for AI-regulatory specialization is now real, large, and almost certainly growing as state and federal AI regulation matures.

General Counsel roles at $1B+ public companies remained the apex of the legal pay structure: median total comp of $1.38M, with equity grants comprising more than half of the package. Sign-on bonuses at this level grew considerably — median $238K in 2025, up from $143K in 2023 — as companies competed for the relatively small pool of GCs willing to switch from comparable seats.

Geography & cost-of-living math

Beyond sector, the geography of US senior remuneration has evolved considerably. The pay gap between SF/NYC and the secondary markets has not disappeared in the way some pundits predicted in 2020–2021, but the expense-of-living gap has broadened, and the after-tax math is now considerably different.

Our 2025 dataset by office, for VP-level total remuneration across all sectors:

What this table doesn’t show is what determines actual disposable income: cost of housing, state and local taxes, and the household-level decisions about education and quality of life. A VP earning $440K in Austin and paying no state income tax often nets out approximately comparable to a VP earning $581K in NYC after taxes and housing differential — with the larger remaining quality-of-life delta being a matter of personal preference. For dual-income households, the differential widens further; the tax-free Texas, Washington, or Florida income applies to both spouses’ earnings.

This is not a hypothetical exercise. Of the 389 placements in our dataset, 45 involved an interstate relocation. Of those 47, 32 moved from a higher-cost market to a lower-cost market (NYC→Miami, SF→Austin, Boston→Atlanta, etc.). The relocation wave of senior US talent toward lower-tax states is a measured, accelerating trend, and the comp deltas you see in the table above are part of the story.

For the specific market dynamics in Texas — which has absorbed more senior US talent than any other state outside California — see our piece on why Austin and Dallas are outpacing the coasts. For the parallel story in Florida — the rise of Miami as a credible finance hub — see our piece on Miami’s rise as a US finance center.

The architectural shift in equity

The single biggest structural change in 2025 senior US remuneration wasn’t the magnitude of pay — it was the architecture of equity. Three developments, each of which materially changes the calculus of accepting one offer versus another.

First, refresh grants are getting smaller but more frequent. The traditional structure was a large initial grant with a 4-year cliff vest, followed by an annual refresh of approximately 25–40% of the initial grant value. Many late-stage tech companies are now moving to smaller, more frequent refreshes — bi-annual or even quarterly — which has two effects. It reduces year-over-year instability in realized comp, which the companies see as a feature. And it tightens the golden handcuffs, since you’re always inside a relatively recent vesting window. Walking away costs more.

Second, performance-vesting equity (PSUs) is back in fashion. Approximately 18% of senior offers we negotiated in 2025 included some form of performance-vesting equity. In 2022, that share was under 5%. This is particularly common at PE-backed companies and at public tech firms with newer CEOs who are trying to align senior-team comp with operational metrics rather than just stock-price performance. The candidate side of this trade was mixed — PSUs that pay out are generally more valuable than equivalent time-vesting grants, but the realization rate is lower, and the metrics tied to vesting are sometimes outside the candidate’s direct control.

Third, sign-on grants have expanded materially. The one-time sign-on grant — usually cash or RSUs vesting on a 12-month cliff — has crept up from a median of $71K in 2023 to $138K in 2025 for our VP-level placements. The catalyst: companies are using sign-on grants to bridge the differential between target base and what candidates’ current employers will counter with. The sign-on is the most flexible single component of an offer, and when the rest of the package is band-constrained, it’s where the negotiation happens.

If you take only one piece of practical advice from this report, take this: in 2026, the structure of an equity package matters more than the top-line grant number. The same $1M of equity, vesting over 3 years versus 6, with versus without performance triggers, with versus without acceleration on change of control, may carry an expected-value difference of $300K to $451K. Most candidates — including the ones in our dataset who later said they wish they’d negotiated harder — focus on the top-line. The structure is where the true money is.

For deeper coverage of how to think about equity packages in particular — including the right questions to ask in final-round negotiations — see our piece on VP Engineering remuneration in San Francisco, where the equity dynamic is the most extreme.

What this means if you’re looking

Three actionable consequences if you’re a senior US professional thinking about your next move.

Sector matters more than title. A VP Engineering at an AI-native company and a VP Engineering at a post-IPO public software company are doing approximately the same job for very different money. Choose your sector before you choose your role. The same logic applies in finance (PE-backed vs. public), healthcare (positive-data vs. stalled-trial biotech), and to a lesser degree in sales (high-growth vs. mature). The "what kind of company" question now has a larger comp impact than the "what title" question.

Geography is a tangible lever. The pay gap between SF/NYC and Austin/Miami has not closed, but the expense-of-living gap has broadened. Net-of-tax, net-of-rent, the secondary markets often produce better disposable-income outcomes — particularly for dual-income households and for executives who would otherwise be in the highest state-tax brackets. Whether this trade is right for you depends considerably on personal factors (family, schools, professional network depth), but the financial side of the calculus has tilted further in favor of relocation than it was three years ago.

Negotiate structure, not just numbers. The divergence of senior US comp means the differential between a good package and a great one is increasingly about how the equity is structured, what the severance triggers are, whether refreshes are guaranteed, and how acceleration works on change of control. Most candidates — based on our observations — spend 80% of their negotiation energy on base salary, where the flex is smallest. The leverage is elsewhere.

If you’d like a confidential conversation about how your current remuneration compares to our 2025–2026 dataset, or about how to think through a particular offer you’re considering, reach out to us. We do this kind of benchmarking weekly for senior professionals who aren’t actively on the market but want a reality check.

What this means if you’re hiring

The counterpoint of the divergence matters if you’re the one writing the offer. Three findings from our 2025 client-side data:

Comp benchmarks based on title alone are no longer reliable. The 75th-percentile VPE salary at a Series C AI company has almost nothing to do with the 75th-percentile VPE salary at a public B2B software company. If your remuneration committee is using a generic "tech VP" benchmark, you’re either materially over- or under-paying. The best clients we work with run two benchmarks: one against direct industry peers (e.g., other Series C AI infrastructure firms), and one against the specific contested set the candidate is choosing between.

The window between offer and signature has shortened. Median time from offer extension to counter-signature in our 2025 finance and tech placements was 8 days, down from 13 days in 2023. Candidates are moving faster because they have more contending offers; the days of leaving a senior offer on the table for two weeks while the candidate "thinks about it" are mostly behind us. If your internal approval process can’t move at this pace, you’re effectively pricing yourself out of senior searches.

Sign-on bonuses are increasingly the closing lever. Candidates with unvested equity at their current employer face a "make-whole" calculation when considering a move. The most effective way to bridge that gap, in our 2025 negotiations, was a sign-on grant calibrated to the candidate’s specific unvested equity timeline. Generic sign-on amounts are less effective; modeled-to-the-candidate sign-on amounts close. If your offer-package framework doesn’t allow custom sign-on calibration, you’re leaving deals on the table.

Methodology & caveats

This analysis is derived from 389 verified, finalized and countersigned offer documents from senior US placements made by Emerson Search in calendar year 2025 plus partial 2026 data through April 7. We exclude offers that were extended but rejected, withdrawn, or never finalized.

All remuneration figures are reported gross (pre-tax), in nominal US dollars. Equity is valued at grant using the company’s most recent 409A valuation for private companies and the trailing 30-day average closing price for public companies. Target bonuses are reported at target, not actual payout (which is not yet known for 2025 in most cases). Sign-on bonuses are reported as full one-time amounts, not annualized.

We exclude data on candidates we did not place, candidates currently in active process, and candidates we sourced for searches that closed without a hire. Our sample is therefore biased toward successful matches — offers that were both attractive to candidates and acceptable to clients. That bias is worth being aware of, as it likely understates how aggressive some hypothetical offers might be in a different segment of the market.

Year-over-year comparisons control for company stage and sector mix where possible. Where the foundational mix has evolved dramatically (e.g., AI-native companies were a much smaller share of our 2021 dataset), we’ve flagged this in the pertinent section.

This report does not constitute legal, financial, or remuneration advice. Past performance and historical comp ranges are not predictive of future outcomes for any individual offer or search. Specific remuneration outcomes will vary based on candidate qualifications, company budget, role specifics, and market conditions at the time of negotiation. For questions about methodology or to request the foundational anonymized dataset for academic or research use, contact our research team at research@emersonsearch.com.

The annual report is authored by Claire Whitmore (Managing Partner) with considerable contributions from Margot Sinclair on the finance practice, Priya Kapoor on technology, Terrence Holt on healthcare and life sciences, Marcus Ellison on regional dynamics, and the Emerson Search research team on data assembly and analysis.