Refery’s salary guides use selected public employer postings to help hiring teams compare clearly defined roles. The September 15, 2026 edition contains 11 distinct postings from 10 employers: three founding engineer roles, three forward deployed engineer roles, three AI or applied AI roles, and two founding account executive roles.
This is an editorially selected set of examples. It is not a compensation survey, a random sample, a census of startup vacancies, or a record of salaries paid.
How the examples were selected
We began with role records in Refery’s job library that were marked open, contained a salary range in USD, and linked to a public job posting. We focused on the titles and locations relevant to the guides, then checked a shortlist against the employer’s public Ashby posting data.
We included the 11 listed examples where the job was publicly listed and the compensation type could be interpreted from the employer’s fields and notes. We excluded examples with missing current ranges or unclear total-compensation definitions. This selection favors discoverable postings with disclosed pay and does not represent all employers.
What we verified
- The public posting matched the role and source URL.
- The posting was listed on the employer’s public job board when checked.
- Numeric amounts had a stated currency and annual interval.
- Notes were read alongside field labels, including whether a number meant base salary or OTE.
- Current public figures took precedence over older stored values.
- Each source URL appears once in the downloadable table.
Ashby’s public posting API documentation describes the compensation fields used in this check. The employer’s own posting remains the source for each amount.
Definitions used in the guides
| Term | Meaning in this edition |
|---|---|
| Annual salary | A published annual USD salary component; any explicit base-salary label is preserved in the guide |
| OTE | Published on-target earnings, kept separate from base salary |
| Equity percentage | A percentage reported by the employer, with no conversion into cash value |
| Offered, amount unspecified | A component is mentioned but no numeric amount is disclosed |
| Posting date | The publication timestamp supplied by the public source; it may reflect a republished listing |
| Verification date | The date Refery checked the public source |
The date a record entered Refery’s library is not treated as the original job publication date. A status of open in that library alone is not enough to establish that the public role is still listed.
How to interpret the numbers
We publish the source ranges directly. We do not combine base salary and OTE, assign zero to missing components, convert equity into cash, or calculate a market median from this selected set. Averages of advertised endpoints would not be salaries accepted by candidates.
The sample mixes company contexts and is concentrated in San Francisco and New York, with one FDE posting listing the United States. It does not support conclusions about city premiums, compensation trends, company stage, pay equity, or hiring outcomes. A listed employer is not necessarily a Refery client.
Download and reuse the source table
Download the September 15, 2026 source table (CSV). It contains the employer, role, advertised location, pay type, ranges, disclosures, source link, and dates. It contains no candidate records or private recruiting notes.
When citing the data, say “selected public job postings checked by Refery on September 15, 2026” and link to this method and the underlying postings. Do not describe the figures as a market-wide benchmark.
The guides
- Founding engineer salary and equity
- Forward deployed engineer salary
- AI engineer salary
- Founding account executive base salary and OTE
Corrections and future editions
These pages describe a dated snapshot. Postings can change or close. A future edition should repeat the source checks, keep the old snapshot date, and explain changes to the selection method. A larger benchmark would require a consistent sampling process, stable role definitions, and a broader verified set of employers.
If a figure is wrong, contact Refery at lily@refery.io with the source URL and the correction. We will check the evidence before updating the article.