Ashby’s Engineering Levels & Compensation

Hi 👋🏾, I’m Abhik, our Co-Founder and VP of Engineering. As a candidate, knowing how we evaluate your performance and pay you can be the difference between spending the time to apply and interview for 5 hours or spending it elsewhere.

Most companies aren’t transparent about leveling and compensation, or worse, obfuscate compensation with extremely wide bands that are ultimately meaningless. I’ve felt this as a former candidate, and the result is that I’ve been in too many interview processes where I spent a significant amount of time interviewing only to receive an offer that fell below my expectations (even in cases where I tried to set expectations upfront!).

I wrote this post to help you decide whether what we value in the best engineers and how we pay them fits what you’re looking for. My goal is to introduce you to our approach to leveling and compensation. This post is a combined, yet abridged, version of three internal documents that describe our Engineering levels, compensation philosophy, and compensation bands. We’ve omitted some details from the internal documents to ensure this post is easier to read and digest (it’s already quite long!). You may still have some nonessential questions after reading it, and I expected that. If you end up interviewing with us, we’re more than happy to answer them, and we will share the internal documents with you at various stages.

How We Determine Your Level (And Compensation) As a Candidate

Before we dive in, I think it’s essential to start by explaining how we determine your level and compensation during the interview process, since it helps frame the rest of this document.

Our goal is to ensure that, at every stage of our interview process, you have an accurate picture of what your offer might look like based on the signal we’ve collected so far.

Two variables affect your offer: your location and incoming level. Your location is most likely constant, and we make it relatively easy to determine what you could make in your location.

We set the level you’re targeting at the beginning of the interview process. That is a combination of your compensation expectations and the seniority of the role you're applying for (e.g., Senior vs. Staff). The combination allows us to handle situations where, for instance, you apply for Staff, don’t meet the requirements, but do meet the requirements for Senior, and are happy with the Senior range. During the first call, we’ll discuss your compensation expectations and ensure they align with what we can offer at that level or adjust the level to match (so, please come prepared with them!).

For each role (e.g., Product Engineer, Design Engineer), we have a set of interviews that we use for all Levels, and we adjust our expectations based on the level you’re targeting. For candidates targeting Levels 4 to 6 (our three highest levels), we extend one interview in the final round by 15 minutes so we can get into more details. For candidates targeting Levels 5 to 6 (our two highest levels), we’ll do reference checks after the final round, and these checks will influence whether you receive an offer at those levels.

For some versatile roles, such as Product Engineer, we can swap in a different interview to play to your strengths (e.g., for Product Engineer, we can switch a full-stack interview for a frontend interview).

As you proceed through the interview process, we may adjust your target level up or down depending on your performance. We will be transparent about it, so if we level you down, you can decide whether continuing is worth your time. If you disagree with a downlevel, we’re happy to discuss ways we can derisk bringing you in at a higher level (e.g., a supplemental interview or work trial).

Your offer will consist of a salary and equity package (in the form of stock options), and we’ll offer two to three options that allow you to trade salary for equity or vice versa.

The equity portion of your offer will be meaningful, but it can be challenging to benchmark since it is an illiquid asset, and every company (and candidate) has different circumstances that affect how you perceive its value. If you receive an offer, I’ll walk you through the results of our last quarter and company financials, including our runway, growth, retention, margin, and efficiency metrics. This presentation should help you determine the value our equity holds for you.

Engineering Excellence

Defining excellence before describing leveling allows me to align with you on what we aspire our Engineers to be and helps you opt into our values and way of working.

To recap from our job postings, the best engineers deliver reliably magical outcomes. Consequently, an excellent engineer at Ashby consistently creates leverage with high velocity, minimal direction, and without compromising quality. Examples of leverage creation include:

• Conceive, implement, and document abstractions and libraries that allow colleagues to build powerful, reliable products faster.
• Lead the research, product decisions, design (both UX and technical), and implementation of new products significantly impacting Ashby's business.
• Identify and enhance the productivity and quality of engineering by improving key areas, including developer experience, documentation, processes, and tooling.
• Lead the roadmap for product areas (e.g., enterprise, scheduling) and engineering areas (e.g., infrastructure, performance, reliability), and be a critical part of executing this roadmap.

I use the word “leverage” purposefully to distinguish that we value many types of impact at our highest levels and not just the industry-common “influence” or “tech lead.” Put another way, you can reach our highest level by, for example, conceiving and implementing industry-leading products or abstractions, and you can do that individually versus steering a team. It’s hard, but it is possible, and we have Engineers today that match that archetype.

Excellent engineers don't eschew the small, less glamorous tasks (e.g., fixing a bug, updating a library, writing a post-mortem). I did the less glamorous things as an individual contributor, and Benji (CEO and Co-Founder) did too; I rely on many excellent engineers at Ashby to do the same. What separates the excellent engineers from the up-and-coming is that they complete the small, less glamorous tasks in parallel with larger initiatives (to the point it feels "magical"). They also identify opportunities to ensure the type of issue is automated, doesn't recur, or is easier to resolve the next time.

Levels

Ashby has six engineering levels that outline the progression we want to see in your performance to reach excellence.

Regardless of level, you’re expected to own projects and run them independently in teams of one, even as a Level 1. This includes making product, design, and technical decisions, communicating and vetting those decisions effectively with others, and creating your own process to progress your project (we don’t do sprint planning). Each step in the level requires engineers to take on larger, more impactful initiatives while advancing in three key areas: quality, speed, and decision-making. Each engineering level outlines several behaviors that determine whether you satisfy the level's requirements. We also expect you to satisfy the requirements of all levels below any given level.

A couple of things to note:

• There are no caps on the number of people who can be at Level 3 and above. We want you to be ambitious, and no caps encourages you to reach for our highest level. For Level 1 and 2 engineers, we want to ensure our team has the appropriate bandwidth to mentor and guide your growth. Sometimes we might not have the bandwidth to accommodate more Level 1s and 2s.
• The expectations of our Level 1 and 2 engineers do not match those of the industry for a Junior and Mid-Level Engineer (respectively). Many companies employ a more hierarchical structure, where teams of engineers accomplish initiatives, and leads or managers divide up the work. As a result, engineers can be effective without taking on significant responsibility. Instead, we expect every engineer, including Levels 1 to 2, to be able to run projects independently and only need help with decision-making as the level of ambiguity, breadth, or challenge increases.
• To reiterate, technical skill is not the sole criterion for increasing your level. There may be engineers who are less skilled or less knowledgeable in software engineering than you, but who are ranked higher. They can create leverage through excellence in project management, product development, design, and process, among others.
• You do not need to satisfy each behavior completely to reach that level; we will consider wide breadth (e.g., versatility) or extreme depth (e.g., specializations) as substitutes.

To put our levels in context with the rest of the industry, I've also mapped them to commonly used industry titles. We do not use these titles internally, and the expectations associated with the title or level you are given at your current company may not align with our equivalent.

Level	Our General Expectations	Common Industry Titles
1	You execute without much guidance from your manager or other members of the team (your decision-making skills may still be developing): You can take well-defined initiatives from writing the specification to releasing it while meeting our quality and maintainability standards with minimal oversight and high velocity. In skills that need guidance, you learn quickly and rarely regress. Put another way, when given feedback and coaching, we expect you'll rarely receive that feedback again.	Junior Software Engineer, Software Engineer
2	You complete initiatives that are loosely defined and make good product and architecture decisions more often than not: You can execute initiatives with high-level descriptions, communicate with the right colleagues at the right time, and drive ideas from writing the specification to release with high velocity. You make decisions that strike the right balance of pragmatism, creativity, and long-term thinking more often than not. You may need guidance from others on large, ambiguous, or open-ended initiatives, and your velocity decreases with size, ambiguity, and the number of decisions you need to make. You provide valuable contributions to your colleague's initiatives. You generate product, technical, or process ideas but may need guidance on executing them with company-assigned initiatives.	Software Engineer, Senior I
3	You complete initiatives with little definition, make great decisions more often than not, and elevate the performance of the team: You can execute against ambiguous, open-ended initiatives with high velocity and make decisions that often strike the right balance of pragmatism, creativity, and long-term thinking. You provide invaluable contributions to your colleague's initiatives. You generate product, technical, or process ideas and make good decisions on when and how to execute them.	Senior, Senior II
4	You make great decisions consistently and elevate a product (e.g., QueryDSL, Enterprise), infrastructure (e.g., Design System), or skill (e.g., Maintenance) area in the team: You can execute against ambiguous, open-ended initiatives with high velocity and consistently make decisions that strike the right balance of pragmatism, creativity, and long-term thinking. You influence product, technical, or design roadmap. You make invaluable contributions to our product, system, design, and maintenance infrastructure or our engineering organization.	Staff
5	You elevate multiple product, technology, and skill areas in the team: Your decisions set the standard for balancing pragmatism, creativity, and long-term thinking. Your initiatives often result in improvements in how we approach similar initiatives. You significantly influence or start to own product, technical, or design roadmap. You generate product, technical, or process ideas and strategically execute them to drive tangible impact at Ashby.	Senior Staff, Principal
6	You exhibit world-class execution and decision-making and your initiatives: Significantly change the trajectory of Ashby through individual projects Significantly change the trajectory of Ashby through the successful execution of responsibilities over large parts of Ashby (including the ownership of product, technical, or design roadmaps). Develop software, processes, or standards that are widely used throughout the software industry.	Principal, Distinguished, Fellow

Goal Levels

We aim to build a small (relative to the surface area of the product), high-performing team where each engineer can drive large, ambiguous projects with minimal oversight. The performance we expect from engineering Levels 1 and 2 is below this target, and we need engineers to grow beyond those levels. Your manager's goal is to give you the feedback, training, and opportunities to:

• If you're Level 1, reach Level 2 within one year.
• If you're Level 2, reach Level 3 within one year.

We consider not reaching these goals as underperformance because we need engineers to reach a certain level of autonomy. Once you reach Level 3, you don't need to continue leveling.

Promotion

We consider level changes at your annual performance review. Like compensation, we can make exceptions. If you’re close but not yet operating at the next level to warrant a promotion, we’re happy to reassess your situation before your next annual review.

New employees who significantly outperform or underperform at their level will have their level adjusted after 6 months. For employees who outperform, this may result in a change to their compensation.

To consider you for a level change, we need to see you perform at the target level consistently and sustainably for a reasonable period:

• “Consistently” means we see you maintain target-level performance across multiple initiatives.
• “Sustainably" means we feel confident that you're not pushing yourself beyond your physical, emotional, or mental limits and can maintain target-level performance in the long term.
• “A reasonable period” refers to our observation of your target-level performance for at least six months.

You and your manager work together to guide your progress and determine when you are eligible for a promotion. Your manager then works with me and the rest of Engineering Leadership to confirm eligibility.

Compensation Philosophy

At Ashby, your compensation is market-rate indexed to your level of performance. We aim to build the best possible team and are happy to pay well; the amount we need to pay depends on the market in which we are hiring. In this context, we (and other companies) look to others to set the price in the market.

For Engineers, “market-rate” is determined by your location. For instance, we pay a senior-level software engineer in San Francisco more than in London and London more than in Hamburg.

Importantly, our compensation is not indexed to the “cost of living” or other factors — only to the market rate (although “cost of living” is often an input into how a market is “priced”). There are non-obvious reasons for higher rates in certain markets. For instance, top performers hired in “dense” markets often bring a larger network of other high performers.

We target your total compensation (salary + equity-to-be-vested) to be greater than the 75th percentile for your level of performance. We expect some companies to compensate more than we do, but they may do so for reasons that don’t align with how we value a role or level of performance. It could be because that role is incredibly important to them, they're compensating for poor culture, or they’re desperate to hire (for example). Paying top-of-market can also create a mercenary culture, prevent employees who want to leave from leaving, and create unsustainable burn for the company. By aiming for 75th percentile compensation, we ensure that compensation is not a blocker for top performers, but not the sole reason someone decides to work at Ashby.

We utilize multiple data sources to determine compensation, including real-time compensation data (e.g., Pave.com), public compensation data (e.g., Levels.fyi), and private data collected from candidates and our network.

Equity

Equity comes in the form of stock options, is a meaningful portion of your compensation, and is a high-risk, high-reward asset. Your equity's current value will not match that of later-stage or public companies, but we expect Ashby equity to outpace compensation from those companies over time.

When determining your total compensation, we only consider equity that remains unvested. We also risk-adjust equity from previous rounds to ensure you are more eligible for compensation increases despite having more equity than a new hire.

We grant equity refreshes throughout your tenure at Ashby based on performance and market data. We value folks staying at Ashby long term, and so we always ensure that strong performers reaching the end of their initial equity grant receive generous refreshers that put them on par with or beyond folks who would be hired into their role today. Many companies don't do this, and that creates a disincentive for staying more than the 4 years of a typical initial equity grant.

Compensation Bands Mechanics

Publicly, a compensation band defines a salary range for the role. Your offer will include multiple options that balance salary and equity in different ways. In most cases, we can offer options with both the minimum and maximum salary for the band you’re in (e.g., if the salary range is $160K to $180K, we can offer $160K salary with higher equity and $180K salary with lower equity). Internally, our bands consider both salary and equity, and allow us to benchmark tenured employees, especially those with equity from previous rounds. We cannot share the full bands publicly because basis points/percentages are meaningless without knowing our valuation, strike prices, and other sensitive information. We’ll share this information once you receive an offer, and we’re happy to discuss at a high level before that.

Based on your location and historical performance, you fall into a compensation band. Put another way, a band is the combination of a metro area (or aggregate metro area) and Level (e.g., SF Bay Area & NYC - Level 3).

We have four regions with compensation bands: US, Canada, UK, and the EU. We do not have compensation bands for LATAM, Africa, APAC, and Switzerland.

Every region is divided into either metro area bands (for individual high-cost markets, such as London) or tiers that aggregate metro areas (for example, U.S. Tier 2 encompasses multiple cities).

As your level increases, the metro differences in total compensation become smaller. In both the UK and Europe, there is no metro difference between Level 4 to 6. For example, as an L5 you can earn the same in Amsterdam and Milan or Belfast and London.

As your level increases, the regional difference in total compensation also narrows. At a regional level, the difference between an L5 in EMEA and an L5 in US is much smaller than an L3 in the same regions. The perspective here is that as individuals reach L4 and higher, their talent and proficiency become increasingly rare and sought after (even by companies that aren’t remote).

Why Doesn’t My Region or Metro Area Have Bands?

It requires extensive research to establish an accurate regional or metro area band. Depending on the region or metro area, data aggregators may provide us with incomplete, inaccurate, or low-confidence data, so we need to spend time finding supplemental data and verifying the bands we derive against individual data points.

We require a minimum amount of active candidate volume and employees to justify the investment, and we don’t yet have that in LATAM, Africa, APAC, and Switzerland.

If you’re in one of these unsupported regions or metro areas, we will do individual research to determine your compensation when we extend an offer and at your annual reviews. We’re happy to work with you to ensure our research and decisions accurately reflect the market.

How We Define “In Metro”

Ashby’s approach anchors “in-metro” locations on a specific distance from a metro city center, supplemented with county or city-based clarity. Our approach varies slightly by country to account for local differences, but the same principles generally apply. The goal is for you to easily understand whether your location falls “in-metro” for a given region and how that connects to our overall compensation framework.

US

For the US, we define “in-metro” areas as locations within county boundaries that are 50–60 miles from a city center. We created separate US tiers (SF Bay Area & NYC, Seattle, Tier 2, & Tier 3 and below) to reflect the differences in compensation markets across regions. SF and NYC consistently benchmark at the top of the US market, while Seattle sits just below but remains one of the most competitive tech labor markets in the country. Tier 2 includes other major metropolitan areas, such as LA, Boston, Chicago, and Austin, among others. These cities have strong, established labor markets with steady competition for talent, though not at the same intensity as SF, NYC, or Seattle. Tier 3 includes all other regions, where labor markets are broader and compensation tends to be more consistent across locations.

We settled on a 50-60 mile range after reviewing public labor market data, commuting patterns, and how other tech companies define their metropolitan areas. In most regions, 50 miles captures the realistic economic area of a metro, while 60 miles allows for some flexibility in cities where nearby communities are still strongly tied to the core labor market.

Rather than defining pay zones by city limits, we use county boundaries. This is more inclusive and representative of how compensation is set across the industry.

US - SF Bay Area & NYC

Metros

San Francisco Bay Area	Counties
California	Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco
NYC
New York	Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, Richmond, Nassau, Westchester, Rockland
New Jersey	Hudson, Bergen, Essex, Union, Passaic
Connecticut	Fairfield

Bands

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	$135,000	$165,000
2	$155,000	$185,000
3	$180,000	$220,000
4	$210,000	$255,000
5	$225,000	$275,000
6	$270,000	$330,000

US - Seattle

Metros

Seattle	Counties
Washington	King, Snohomish, Pierce, Kitsap

Bands

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	$124,000	$152,000
2	$145,000	$178,000
3	$175,000	$215,000
4	$200,000	$245,000
5	$220,000	$268,000
6	$270,000	$330,000

US - Tier 2

Metros

Los Angeles	Counties
California	Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura
Boston
Massachusets	Suffolk, Middlesex, Norfolk, Essex, Plymouth
Chicago
Illinois	Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will, Kane
Austin
Texas	Travis, Williamson, Hays
Denver
Colorado	Denver, Arapahoe, Jefferson, Adams, Douglas, Broomfield, Boulder
Washington D.C.
	District of Columbia
Virginia	Arlington, Fairfax, London, Alexandria
Maryland	Montgomery, Prince George’s
San Diego
California	San Diego
Portland
Oregon	Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Yamhill
Washington	Clark
Miami
Florida	Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania	Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester, Bucks
New Jersey	Camden
Sacramento
California	Sacramento, Yolo, Pacer, El Dorado

Bands

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	$100,000	$124,000
2	$130,000	$158,000
3	$162,000	$198,000
4	$195,000	$234,000
5	$208,000	$254,000
6	$250,000	$306,000

US - Tier 3

Metros

All other metros in the US.

Bands

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	$98,000	$120,000
2	$122,000	$150,000
3	$153,000	$190,000
4	$190,000	$227,000
5	$202,000	$248,000
6	$250,000	$306,000

Canada

For Canada, we define “in-metro” areas as locations within 50-60km (30-40 miles) of a city center, using specific municipality boundaries for clarity. We followed the same overall approach used for the US but adjusted the distance to account for differences in geography and commuting behavior. Data suggests that average commuting distances are much shorter than in the US, and metro areas in turn are much narrower.

This distance captures the realistic labor market around Toronto and Vancouver, where most Canadian tech talent is concentrated, without extending into secondary markets.

CA - Toronto, Vancouver

Metros

Toronto	Municipality
	City of Toronto
Peel	Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon
York	Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Newmarket, Aurora
Halton	Oakville, Burlington, Milton, Halton Hills
Durham	Pickering, Ajax, Whitby
Vancouver
	Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Surrey, Delta, White Rock, Langley, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, Anmore, Belcarra, Electoral Area A, and Tsawwassen First Nation

Bands

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	CA$112,000	CA$138,000
2	CA$128,000	CA$156,000
3	CA$163,000	CA$200,000
4	CA$188,000	CA$230,000
5	CA$267,000	CA$326,000
6	CA$338,000	CA$414,000

CA - Other

Metros

All other metros in Canada.

Bands

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	CA$98,000	CA$121,000
2	CA$117,000	CA$144,000
3	CA$151,000	CA$184,000
4	CA$173,000	CA$212,000
5	CA$220,000	CA$268,000
6	CA$301,000	CA$368,000

UK

For the UK, the "London" metro is a higher cost-of-market than the rest of the country. Here, we took a slightly different approach. Rather than defining specific counties as we did in the U.S. and Canada, we used a 70-mile radius from Charing Cross (the traditional city center) to capture the broader London labor market.

This radius encompasses Greater London and nearby high-paying commuter cities, including Oxford and Cambridge. These areas are economically and professionally tied to London. We felt this broader boundary was the best fit given how companies and compensation surveys typically reference “London” or “Greater London” pay zones without publishing strict geographic criteria.

If you live within a 70-mile radius of Charing Cross, you’re considered “in-metro” for London. We may define specific city/county criteria in the future.

UK - London

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	£55,000	£67,000
2	£70,000	£85,000
3	£112,000	£137,000
4	£138,000	£170,000
5	£182,000	£224,000
6	£232,000	£285,000

UK - Other

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	£42,000	£51,000
2	£55,000	£67,000
3	£103,000	£126,000
4	£138,000	£170,000
5	£182,000	£224,000
6	£232,000	£285,000

EU

We’ve defined two tiers for the EU based on the available compensation data and market research.

• EU Tier 1 - This covers the most expensive metros in the EU (excluding Switzerland and Iceland). As of now, that’s defined as Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Dublin, and Denmark.
• EU Tier 2 - This covers every other EU metro, and includes Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Eastern European countries.

EU - Tier 1

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	€59,000	€73,000
2	€75,000	€93,000
3	€108,000	€133,000
4	€141,000	€174,000
5	€185,000	€226,000
6	€259,000	€317,000

EU - Tier 2

Level	Min New Hire Salary	Max New Hire Salary
1	€44,000	€54,000
2	€58,000	€72,000
3	€98,000	€122,000
4	€141,000	€174,000
5	€185,000	€226,000
6	€259,000	€317,000