How Much Spotify Pays Software Engineers, Marketers, and More Jobs

  • Spotify is hiring engineers and data staff as it remains the top music streamer by subscriber count.
  • Insider analyzed 2021 data for hundreds of jobs to find out how much it pays.
  • Staffers made between $75,000 and $293,000 depending on the job, the data showed.

Spotify remains the audio streamer to beat.

It owned about a third of all paying subscribers among global music-


streaming

platforms last year, media-research firm Midia Research reported. Apple Music came in second, with 15% of the subscriber market. 

The company said it’s continuing to make progress on its podcasting strategy, despite facing internal and external pushback around its contract with podcaster Joe Rogan and a creative bottleneck with some of its other high-profile talent. Last quarter, Spotify crossed 4 million podcasts on its platform, up 53% from the previous year. 

“There’s an enormous amount of appetite among existing and new Spotify users to consume podcast content,” CEO Daniel Ek said during the company’s most recent earnings call.

More recently it’s been dipping its toes into newer tech trends, testing tools for artists to promote NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and building out a virtual world called “Spotify Island” on the gaming platform Roblox. 

The company is staffing up to support its big ambitions in entertainment tech, though it’s possible that Spotify could slow down its hiring this year, like others in the tech industry. Companies like Snapchat and Meta Platforms have cut back to prepare for a looming economic downturn. 

Spotify currently has 596 open roles listed on its jobs portal. 58% of its openings are based in the US. 314 of those roles are for hires at its headquarters in New York. And over half of its job listings are for engineering and data-focused employees.

To see how much Spotify pays US staffers, Insider analyzed salary information from 114 work-visa applications that the company filed with the US government in 2021. The data included salaries ranging from a business operations analyst making $75,440 to staff engineers earning up to $293,356 per year.

That’s just base salary. It doesn’t include stock options, bonuses, or other forms of compensation. Spotify, for example, has an incentive program that offers staffers grants, which they can put toward stock options, cash bonuses, and restricted stock units.

The data also has other limitations. It only covers US-based jobs for which Spotify was hiring from other countries. Thus, it includes a lot software engineer and data-related roles, and few executive and administrative jobs.

Still, the data offers solid insight into Spotify salary levels.

Here’s a breakdown of what the companies pay for more than 70 different roles.

Accountants, Auditors, and Financial Analysts

  • Account strategist: $90,930
  • Analyst, financial planning & analysis: $85,000
  • Director, global process owner of record to report: $215,000 to $266,836
  • Director, internal audit: $230,000
  • Manager, technical accounting: $145,000
  • Senior manager: $225,000

Business Intelligence Analysts

  • Analyst, publishing solutions: $100,000
  • Business operations analyst: $75,440
  • Project manager: $91,000
  • Robotic Process Automation business analyst: $140,000

Research Scientists & Statisticians

  • Associate data scientist: $125,000
  • Data scientist: $144,250 median; ranging from $130,000 to $160,249
  • Data scientist, growth insights: $149,350
  • Data scientist, music analytics: $133,250
  • Research analyst: $100,000
  • Research scientist, HCI – personalization: $178,010
  • Senior data scientist: $160,000

Computer and Information Systems Managers

  • Associate product manager, content platform: $145,000
  • Engineering manager: $210,600
  • Engineering manager II: $216,230 median; ranging from $200,740 to $231,720
  • Engineering manager II, fan commerce: $225,000
  • Machine learning engineering manager: $208,720
  • Product manager: $168,500 median; ranging from $140,000 to $197,000
  • Senior product manager, financial systems: $182,000

Graphic Designers

  • Art director: $109,810
  • Associate product designer: $110,000 median; ranging from $101,120 to $151,680
  • Product designer: $125,000
  • Product designer, marketplace core: $124,000

Lawyers

  • Legal counsel, Latin America: $240,240
  • Manager, legal counsel – content compliance: $225,000
  • Senior manager, legal/senior counsel: $240,240

IT Project Managers

  • Manager, data science – music analytics: $143,200 to $214,800
  • Program manager, business systems: $147,000
  • Senior internal audit analyst: $120,000

Marketing Managers

  • Product marketing manager: $149,110
  • Senior subscriptions manager, North America: $153,296 to $166,704

Software Developers

  • Associate machine learning engineer: $125,000
  • Android engineer: $178,500
  • Android engineer II: $166,910 median; ranging from $162,000 to $198,966
  • Backend engineer: $160,445 median; ranging from $160,000 to $198,966
  • Backend engineer, free product: $113,410
  • Backend engineer I: $144,800
  • Data engineer, data & metrics: $175,000
  • Data engineer, machine learning: $190,740
  • Data engineer II: $149,060 to $203,256
  • Detection engineer: $171,500
  • Engineer II: $155,000 median; ranging from $148,500 to $165,900
  • Engineer II, data: $188,700 to $198,966
  • Engineer II/senior engineer: $172,640 to $211,177
  • Experienced developer: $157,500
  • Fullstack engineer II: $141,400
  • Machine learning engineer: $166,400 median; ranging from $160,000 to $200,000
  • Machine learning engineer I: $153,200 median; ranging from $140,000 to $166,400
  • Robotic Process Automation developer: $130,000 median; ranging from $113,300 to $130,000
  • Salesforce developer: $157,000
  • Senior art director: $118,500
  • Senior backend engineer: $201,930 median; ranging from $180,000 to $223,860
  • Senior backend engineer, ad platform: $240,000
  • Senior data engineer, data & metrics: $215,000
  • Senior developer/engineer: $189,000 to $251,741
  • Senior engineer: $191,100 median; ranging from $175,270 to $251,741
  • Senior engineer for artists, promotional tools: $175,000 to $258,840
  • Senior machine learning engineer: $235,000
  • Senior salesforce engineer: $211,360
  • Senior software engineer/staff engineer: $198,900 to $293,356
  • Software engineer: $172,560 to $258,840
  • Software engineer/backend engineer: $178,850 to $198,966
  • Staff engineer: $212,840 to $293,356
  • Staff software engineer: $230,270 to $293,356

Other

  • Content writer: $79,560
  • Procurement operations manager: $150,000
  • Sales trainer: $130,000
  • Senior recruiter: $154,000