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Updated 2026-07-03

Salesforce levels, MTS to Distinguished,
decoded band by band.

What this page covers

Salesforce publishes no official level map and lists no level on its job postings. This is the MTS ladder as commonly reported, with levels.fyi pay, scope, and the resume signal per band, including where comp stops being public.

Check my level signalsFree to scanScope per bandlevels.fyi cross-reference
By the numbers
Ladder
MTS to DE
Assoc MTS to Distinguished
First senior band
SMTS
Senior MTS
Where comp goes dark
Distinguished
No public median
Comp source
levels.fyi
Accessed 2026-07-03, crowdsourced

The quick answer

What are Salesforce's engineering levels, and which should I target?

Target the band your scope actually demonstrates, then confirm the pay on levels.fyi. As commonly reported by the community, the Salesforce IC ladder runs Associate MTS, then MTS, then Senior MTS (SMTS), then Lead MTS (LMTS), then Principal MTS (PMTS), then Architect, Principal Architect, and Distinguished Engineer at the top. MTS (Member of Technical Staff) is the first fully independent mid band, and Senior MTS is the senior bar most external senior hiring targets. Rounded levels.fyi medians run about $210K at MTS, about $253K at SMTS, and about $322K at Lead MTS, per crowdsourced data accessed 2026-07-03, which is not official Salesforce compensation. Salesforce publishes no official level map and lists no level on its postings, so you cross-reference levels.fyi to estimate scope and pay. Because there is no external surface where your band is printed, your resume has to quantify the scope of the band you are targeting. Check my level resume signals.

Salesforce does not publish an official level map for engineering. The ladder below, Associate MTS through Distinguished Engineer, is commonly reported by the community: levels.fyi crowdsourced compensation uploads plus practitioner accounts. Every comp figure on this page is levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03, not an official Salesforce number.

The structural reason this matters: Salesforce job postings name the title and the location, but never the level. There is no external surface where the band is printed. Candidates who do not cross-reference levels.fyi consistently misjudge the band they are targeting and either underpitch the resume or aim at the wrong band entirely. Behind the posting, applications submit through Salesforce’s Workday tenant (wd12) at salesforce.wd12.myworkdayjobs.com, which parses the resume, and Salesforce separately discloses an automated tool that helps evaluate applications, with a candidate opt-out and no vendor named.

MTS (Member of Technical Staff) is the first fully independent mid band, and Senior MTS is the senior bar most external senior hiring targets. Those two bands are where most applicants land, so getting the MTS versus SMTS pitch right matters more than any other single call on the ladder.

Higher up, the public data thins and then goes dark: Architect and Principal Architect rest on few submissions, and Distinguished Engineer has no public median at all, because levels.fyi masks it. Past a certain rung, comp simply stops being public. For any single anchor number on a resume or in a negotiation, cite levels.fyi by name and date the data as 2026-07-03.

The MTS ladder, band by band

Each band: scope, comp,
and the resume signal it expects.

For each band, the audit covers the commonly reported title, years of experience, levels.fyi-anchored compensation, scope of ownership, and the resume signal the level expects. Titles and bands are community-sourced, not official Salesforce figures. All compensation is levels.fyi crowdsourced data accessed 2026-07-03. For the wider hiring picture, start with the Salesforce resume guide.

AMTS
AMTS

Associate Member of Technical Staff (entry / new grad)

0 to 2 years. New-grad and Futureforce campus hires land here.

Total compensation

Median total compensation approximately $176K USD, with a typical range of roughly $150K to $190K plus, per levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03, not an official Salesforce number. It varies by location, team, and stock performance.

Scope of ownership

Executes well-scoped tasks with guidance. Works inside a single team on defined pieces of a larger system, with code reviewed by MTS and Senior MTS peers. Learning the codebase, the review culture, and the on-call rotation is the core of the Associate year.

Resume signal expectations

Lead with shipped outcomes paired with a numeral: a latency cut, a test-coverage gain, a feature delivered. Internship and capstone outcomes count at Associate MTS if each bullet attaches a measurable result rather than a list of technologies touched.

MTS
MTS

Member of Technical Staff

Roughly 2 to 5 years. The first fully independent, mid-level IC band.

Total compensation

Median total compensation approximately $210K USD, with a typical range of roughly $185K to $231K plus, per levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03, not an official Salesforce number. Comp scales with location and stock cadence.

Scope of ownership

Owns features end to end with little oversight. Drives a project from design through launch, coordinates with adjacent engineers, and starts being a default reviewer for a part of the codebase. The shift from Associate is independence, not just output. MTS is the mid, first fully independent rung.

Resume signal expectations

Each bullet should show end-to-end ownership of a feature or service surface with a quantified result. Reviewers reading for MTS want evidence you shipped without a tech lead holding your hand, so name the surface you owned and the metric you moved.

SMTS
SMTS

Senior Member of Technical Staff (the senior bar)

Roughly 5 to 9 years. The senior bar, and where much external senior hiring targets.

Total compensation

Median total compensation approximately $253K USD, with a typical range of roughly $218K to $290K plus, per levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03, not an official Salesforce number. These are community-sourced figures that vary by team and stock.

Scope of ownership

Leads projects, mentors less-senior engineers, and owns system design within a team. Senior MTS is the senior bar at Salesforce: the band most external senior hiring targets, and a level a strong engineer can hold for a long stretch of a career.

Resume signal expectations

Show sustained project leadership and system-design ownership, not just feature delivery. Bullets should carry a team-level denominator (a service you designed, a launch you led, engineers you mentored) and a quantified outcome at each.

LMTS
LMTS

Lead Member of Technical Staff

Roughly 9 to 12 plus years. Cross-team technical leadership.

Total compensation

Median total compensation approximately $322K USD, with a typical range of roughly $262K to $375K plus, per levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03, not an official Salesforce number. The stock fraction rises sharply at this band.

Scope of ownership

Provides technical leadership across a team boundary and sets technical direction for a surface several engineers build on. The work shifts from owning a system to shaping how a group builds, including design review, cross-team alignment, and sponsoring the growth of MTS and Senior MTS engineers.

Resume signal expectations

Single-contributor artifacts read as down-level signal at Lead MTS. Every senior bullet needs a cross-team denominator: a platform several engineers adopted, a technical direction you set, a design standard you authored. Quantify at the broadest defensible boundary.

PMTS
PMTS

Principal Member of Technical Staff

Roughly 12 plus years. Org-level technical impact, and rare.

Total compensation

Median total compensation approximately $358K USD, with a typical range of roughly $314K to $416K plus, per levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03, not an official Salesforce number. The range is wide and community-sourced; treat any single figure as a levels.fyi estimate.

Scope of ownership

Drives impact from the org level, influencing technical direction well beyond a single team, often as the named technical owner of a platform or program multiple teams depend on. The population at Principal MTS is small and sponsorship into it is a multi-year effort.

Resume signal expectations

A Principal MTS resume that reads like a long Senior MTS resume (single team, single platform) calibrates down. Lead with two or three artifacts at org scale: programs multiple teams adopted, direction you set across an org, engineers you grew into Senior.

Architect
Architect

Architect (senior IC / architecture track)

Deep-specialist band. Broad architectural ownership.

Total compensation

Median total compensation approximately $468K USD, with a typical range of roughly $357K to $594K plus, per levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03, not an official Salesforce number. This figure rests on relatively few submissions, so read it as indicative, not precise.

Scope of ownership

Owns architecture across systems and sets standards other engineers build against. The Architect band sits on a senior IC and architecture track: the deliverable is a durable technical direction and the systems that encode it, not a stream of individual features.

Resume signal expectations

At the Architect band the resume supports a track record of architectural ownership: systems you designed, standards you set, and the engineers who built against them. Bullet density gives way to a small set of high-scope architectural artifacts, each with a quantified footprint.

Principal Architect
Principal Architect

Principal Architect (rarefied architecture band)

A rarefied band most engineers never reach.

Total compensation

Total compensation reported around $1.14M USD, with a range of roughly $810K to $1.54M plus, per levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03, not an official Salesforce number. This band rests on very few submissions (sparse data), so treat the figure as a rough indicator, not a reliable median.

Scope of ownership

Operates at a company-scale architectural level, owning technical direction that crosses many systems and teams. At this band the resume is a credential sheet supporting a track record of company-scale technical influence rather than a list of projects.

Resume signal expectations

At Principal Architect the resume supports a narrative of company-scale architectural impact: foundational systems, multi-team platforms, and the engineers and architects you sponsored. The handful of levels.fyi submissions at this band means comp is only a rough indicator; the resume rests on scope, not a number.

Distinguished
Distinguished

Distinguished Engineer (comp goes dark)

The top of the reported IC track, where public comp stops.

Total compensation

levels.fyi shows NO public median for Distinguished Engineer: the figure is masked. No compensation number is asserted here, because there is no reliable public one. Past this rung, comp stops being public. Any specific Distinguished Engineer figure should be treated as unverified.

Scope of ownership

Operates at the top of the reported IC ladder, owning technical direction that spans the whole engineering organization. The band is a recognition-driven, appointment-style tier, not a level most engineers progress through, and its compensation is not publicly reported.

Resume signal expectations

At the Distinguished band the resume is a small set of company-scale artifacts supporting an already-known reputation: foundational systems, org-wide technical direction, and the Principal and Architect promotions sponsored. There is no public comp number to anchor to, so the case rests entirely on demonstrated scope.

Where the numbers stop

The public data thins as the ladder climbs. Architect and Principal Architect rest on relatively few levels.fyi submissions, so their figures are indicative rather than precise. Distinguished Engineer has no public median at all: levels.fyi masks it, and no number or headcount is invented for it here. Past a certain rung, compensation simply stops being public, and the only honest answer is that there is no reliable figure.

Salary reference

Salesforce pay by band,
the MTS ladder at a glance.

Median total compensation and the typical reported range for each band, consolidated from the levels.fyi Salesforce uploads. Total compensation means base salary plus target bonus plus the annualized value of equity, which is why the stock-heavy upper bands widen so far. Every figure is community-sourced, not an official Salesforce number.

LevelTitleMedian total compTypical range
Associate MTSAssociate Member of Technical Staff~$176K~$150K to $190K plus
MTSMember of Technical Staff~$210K~$185K to $231K plus
Senior MTSSenior Member of Technical Staff~$253K~$218K to $290K plus
Lead MTSLead Member of Technical Staff~$322K~$262K to $375K plus
Principal MTSPrincipal Member of Technical Staff~$358K~$314K to $416K plus
ArchitectArchitect (few submissions)~$468K~$357K to $594K plus
Principal ArchitectPrincipal Architect (sparse data)~$1.14M~$810K to $1.54M plus
DistinguishedDistinguished EngineerNot publicly reportedlevels.fyi shows no figure

Source: levels.fyi crowdsourced data, accessed 2026-07-03. Not official Salesforce compensation, and it varies by location, team, and stock performance. Architect and above rest on few submissions, and Distinguished Engineer has no public median on levels.fyi.

MTS to SMTS, Member of Technical Staff to Senior Member of Technical Staff, is the most consequential step on the Salesforce ladder for most applicants, because it is where the bulk of external senior hiring targets. MTS is the mid band: the first fully independent rung, where you own features end to end without a tech lead holding your hand, but the unit of work is still the feature.

SMTS is the senior bar. It calibrates a candidate against sustained project leadership and system design within a team, not strong execution on individual features. The deliverable shifts from a feature to a system: a service you designed, a launch you led, and the less-senior engineers you mentored along the way. That is the substance a Senior MTS packet has to show.

Because Salesforce prints no level on the posting and the Workday intake plus the disclosed automated evaluation read the resume before a human does, the band you demonstrate on paper is the band you get compared against. A resume pitched at SMTS whose bullets quantify only feature delivery reads as MTS, and the candidate is effectively down-pitched before the first conversation.

The resume rewrite from MTS-pitch to SMTS-pitch means replacing feature-level denominators with team-level ones: a system you designed, a launch you led end to end, the reliability or velocity metric you moved for the team, and the engineers you mentored. Feature-only bullets read as down-level signal at Senior MTS.

PA

Principal Architect

Scope of impact
Company-scale architecture. Owns technical direction that crosses many systems and teams, often as the named owner of a foundational platform.
Population
A rarefied band most engineers never reach. levels.fyi has only very few submissions at this band, which is why its comp figure is sparse.
Comp visibility
Reported around $1.14M total compensation on levels.fyi (accessed 2026-07-03), but on very few submissions, so it is a rough indicator, not a reliable median.
Resume shape
A small set of company-scale architectural artifacts: foundational systems, multi-team platforms, and the engineers and architects sponsored, each with a quantified footprint.
DE

Distinguished Engineer

Scope of impact
Top of the reported IC ladder. Owns technical direction spanning the whole engineering organization as a recognition-driven, appointment-style tier.
Population
Rarer still, and Salesforce discloses no headcount. The population narrows sharply above Principal, and no specific count is asserted here.
Comp visibility
Not public. levels.fyi shows no median for Distinguished Engineer; the figure is masked. Past this rung, comp stops being public, and no number is asserted.
Resume shape
A short credential sheet supporting an already-known reputation: org-wide technical direction and the Principal and Architect promotions sponsored. No public comp to anchor to.
Job family

Software Engineering (IC)

  • AMTSAssociate Member of Technical Staff
  • MTSMember of Technical Staff
  • SMTSSenior Member of Technical Staff
  • LMTSLead Member of Technical Staff
  • PMTSPrincipal Member of Technical Staff
  • DEDistinguished Engineer (comp not public)

The reference IC track: the MTS ladder. MTS is the first fully independent mid rung; SMTS is the senior bar. Comp goes dark at the top.

Job family

Architecture track

  • ArchitectArchitect (~$468K, few submissions)
  • PrincipalPrincipal Architect (~$1.14M, sparse)

A senior IC and architecture track that parallels the upper MTS bands. levels.fyi comp here rests on few submissions, so read it as indicative. Accessed 2026-07-03.

Job family

Sales (Account Executive)

  • AEAccount Executive

Benioff has said engineering headcount held near 15,000 for about two years while growth ran in sales. levels.fyi reports an Account Executive median around $170K US; no OTE ramp schedule is asserted here.

Job family

Comparison to Google

  • Noofficial crosswalk exists

Engineers discuss a rough, unofficial alignment on forums, but Salesforce and levels.fyi publish no crosswalk and no internal grade codes. Treat any MTS-to-L mapping as forum folklore, not fact.

FAQ

Salesforce levels FAQ

The questions most candidates surface when they cross-reference their experience against Salesforce's MTS ladder. Answers are byte-identical to the FAQPage JSON-LD, because AI engines that extract HTML and AI engines that extract JSON-LD should not see different text.

Does Salesforce publish its official engineering levels?

No. Salesforce publishes no official level map for engineering and lists no level on its job postings. The ladder, Associate MTS through Distinguished Engineer, is commonly reported by the community: levels.fyi crowdsourced data plus practitioner accounts. Candidates cross-reference levels.fyi (accessed 2026-07-03) to estimate scope and pay, because there is no external surface where the band is printed.

What is the difference between MTS and SMTS at Salesforce?

MTS (Member of Technical Staff) is the mid, first fully independent IC rung: you own features end to end without a tech lead holding your hand. SMTS (Senior Member of Technical Staff) is the senior bar: you lead projects, mentor, and own system design within a team. The rewrite from MTS to SMTS means replacing feature-level bullets with sustained project leadership and system-design ownership, each with a team-level denominator.

How much does a Salesforce SMTS make?

Per levels.fyi crowdsourced data accessed 2026-07-03, a Salesforce SMTS (Senior Member of Technical Staff) reports a median total compensation around $253K, with a typical range of roughly $218K to $290K plus. These are community-sourced levels.fyi figures, not official Salesforce numbers, and they vary by location, team, and stock performance.

What is the full Salesforce engineering IC ladder?

As commonly reported: Associate MTS (~$176K), MTS (~$210K), Senior MTS or SMTS (~$253K), Lead MTS or LMTS (~$322K), Principal MTS or PMTS (~$358K), Architect (~$468K), Principal Architect (~$1.14M on few submissions), then Distinguished Engineer, whose comp levels.fyi does not report. All figures are levels.fyi crowdsourced data accessed 2026-07-03, not official Salesforce numbers.

How many Distinguished Engineers does Salesforce have?

Salesforce does not disclose how many engineers hold each level, and no headcount is published for Distinguished Engineer. It is a rare, recognition-driven, top-of-ladder band whose population narrows sharply above Principal, and whose compensation levels.fyi does not report. Any specific count should be treated as an unverified estimate, not an official Salesforce figure.

Where does Salesforce engineering compensation stop being public?

Public levels.fyi data thins from the Architect band up: Architect (~$468K) and Principal Architect (~$1.14M) rest on few submissions, and Distinguished Engineer has no public median at all, because levels.fyi masks it. Past a certain rung, comp simply stops being public, so any Distinguished Engineer number should be treated as unverified. Figures are levels.fyi crowdsourced data accessed 2026-07-03.

How do Salesforce levels compare to Google?

There is no official crosswalk. Salesforce and levels.fyi publish no mapping between the Salesforce MTS ladder and Google's L-scale, and Salesforce uses no internal grade codes on postings. Engineers discuss a rough, unofficial alignment on forums (for example equating SMTS with a senior IC band), but it is forum folklore, not a documented equivalence, and should not be relied on for leveling or negotiation.

What resume signal does each Salesforce band expect?

Each band expects scope quantified at its own radius: Associate MTS shows shipped outcomes with a numeral, MTS shows end-to-end feature ownership, SMTS shows project leadership and system design, and Lead and Principal MTS show cross-team and org-scale direction. A resume pitched at one band whose bullets quantify the band below reads as the lower band, so quantify the scope of the band you are targeting.

Continue

Go deeper on the rest
of the Salesforce stack.

01 / Pillar

Salesforce resume guide

The pillar covers how Salesforce hiring works end to end: the Workday application, what recruiters screen for, the disclosed automated evaluation, and the level summary. Start here if you have not already.

Read
02 / Spoke

Salesforce core values and culture

The values Salesforce screens for, what each one means in practice, and how to evidence them on a resume without resorting to values statements.

Read
03 / Spoke

The Salesforce interview process

The stages from recruiter screen through onsite, what each loop assesses, and how leveling gets decided after the interviews.

Read
04 / Resume example

Software engineer resume example

A worked software engineer resume with scope quantified at each bullet, the format that survives an ATS, and annotations on what moved the score.

Read
Related cornerstone

Big tech leveling and layoff recovery: re-entering at the right band.

If you are re-applying after a big-tech layoff, the cornerstone covers how leveling works on the way back in, how to frame a gap before a screen sees it, and how to pitch the band your scope actually supports rather than the title you last held.

Read the big tech leveling and layoff recovery guide
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