Australian tech engineering salary guide.

Executive summary

What changed in 2026.

AI engineering compensation continued to pull away from the broader engineering market in 2026. Senior AI engineers in Sydney now command base salaries 12-16% above senior software engineers in like-for-like roles, with similar premiums at principal and tech lead levels. The Sydney-Melbourne gap is now within 3-5% across all levels.

Contractor day rates softened in 2026 as several large transformation programs deferred to permanent hiring. Senior cloud, platform and software engineering day rates settled into a tighter band than 2025. Cleared cyber and cloud day rates remain elevated.

Remote-first compensation now tracks Sydney bands within 3% at senior IC level, ending several years of "regional discount" pricing. Most remote-first AU employers no longer regional-discount; the few that do lose senior candidates at offer.

Headline numbers

• Senior software engineer, Sydney: AUD 160-190k base
• Senior AI engineer, Sydney: AUD 180-220k base
• Principal software engineer, Sydney: AUD 190-220k base
• Senior software engineer day rate, Sydney: AUD 900-1,100
• Senior AI engineer day rate, Sydney: AUD 900-1,200

Sydney NSW

Sydney permanent salary bands.

Sydney is Australia's deepest tech engineering market. Bands below cover senior, principal and tech lead levels for permanent placements. Base only.

Senior bands run consistent across most well-funded scale-ups and listed financial services. Frontier AI scale-ups (foundation model and platform-AI companies) often exceed the senior AI band by 30-50%, particularly on equity. Forward deployed engineers in AI-native scale-ups command top-of-band base plus structured equity.

Read the full Sydney market page →

Melbourne VIC

Melbourne permanent salary bands.

Melbourne bands run roughly 3-5% below Sydney for like-for-like senior roles, with parity at principal and tech lead. Listed financial services and large scale-ups pay parity to Sydney.

Read the full Melbourne market page →

Brisbane QLD

Brisbane permanent salary bands.

Brisbane bands run roughly 10% below Sydney for like-for-like senior roles. Defence and government roles are typically pegged to APS classifications or contractor day rates rather than commercial bands.

Read the full Brisbane market page →

Remote-first Australia

Remote-first compensation in 2026.

Remote-first base salary now tracks Sydney bands within 3% at senior IC level. Staff and above run at parity. Travel allowance for in-person quarters and home-office allowance should be in the offer at signing.

Most remote-first employers settle into a quarterly in-person cadence (one to two days, often Sydney or Melbourne). The few employers that still regional-discount lose senior candidates at offer stage.

Read the full remote-first page →

Contractor day rates

Senior contractor day rates 2026.

Sydney day rates listed below. Melbourne tracks Sydney within 5%; Brisbane runs 10-15% lower. Day rates exclude GST.

Cleared (NV1, NV2, TS) day rates run 15-25% above the bands above for cyber and cloud roles in defence-adjacent contexts. Strict-onsite mandates compress the candidate pool and command a premium.

Total compensation

Beyond base salary.

Bands above are base only. Total compensation typically runs:

• Listed companies (CBA, Macquarie, Atlassian): base + 10-25% bonus + equity (RSU). Total comp 25-50% above base for principal and above.
• Series C-D scale-ups: base + small bonus + equity (options). Total comp commonly 20-50% above base; equity outcome highly company-dependent.
• Frontier AI / AI-native scale-ups: base + meaningful equity (often RSU at later stage, options earlier). Total comp commonly 50-100% above base; some equity packages exceed total comp 200%+.
• Public service / government: APS classifications, no equity, base + super (typically 15.4% PSSAP).

Superannuation is currently 11.5% of base (rising to 12% on 1 July 2026 per the SG step-up schedule). Most permanent offers state base "plus super" rather than including it.

Methodology

How we calibrated this.

This guide is calibrated against Re:Sourced active and recent search briefs in the 12 months ending Q1 2026, supplemented with public salary data points from Glassdoor AU, Levels.fyi (Australia filter), the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and SEEK job-listing salary data.

Bands represent the 25th to 75th percentile of accepted offers for like-for-like senior roles. Outliers (top 10% AI engineering at frontier labs, bottom 10% at low-stage early-startup) are excluded from the band but discussed in the totalcomp section.

For specific role calibration on a live brief, request a market read from your Re:Sourced specialist. We do not publish individual data points or named-employer figures.

For hiring managers

What to do with this.

• If you are pricing a 2026 brief, anchor on the 50th to 75th percentile of the relevant band. The 25th-50th percentile drives offer-acceptance issues at final stage.
• If you are renewing a 2025 retention package, expect senior IC base to be 4-10% above last cycle for software roles, 8-12% above for AI/ML, 10-15% above for cyber and senior cloud.
• If you are competing with frontier AI scale-ups for ML talent, plan equity structure into the offer at signing rather than as a retention lever 12 months later.
• If you are positioning a remote-first role, do not regional-discount AU candidates against your Sydney band. The 2026 candidate market closed that arbitrage.

For a full brief read with named-employer comp data, submit a brief or browse specialisms.