None of 2,667 US Engineering Job Applications Asks Your Current Salary. 87 Ask What You Expect
Elena VasquezHead of Talent
Last updated:
November 10, 2026
We read the application forms of 2,667 engineering roles at 136 US tech companies. None asks your current salary. 87 ask your desired salary; 76 of those already print the range.
Table of content:
Application forms for engineering jobs at American tech companies do not ask what you earn now. A few ask what you want to earn, and most of those have already told you what they pay.
We read the public job boards of 186 technology companies on 10 November 2026 and kept every software engineering role open in the United States at the companies based there: 2,667 roles at 136 companies, counting only roles whose application form could be read. Not one form asks for current or past pay. 87 forms (3.3 percent) ask what pay the candidate expects, and 76 of those 87 sit behind a posting that already prints a pay range. 93 percent of the roles print the pay in the posting. Every role, every pay question and the pay each posting prints are published, so each count below can be checked line by line.
2,667 software engineering roles open in the US at 136 US-based tech companies, read on 10 November 2026. The posting prints the pay if a US dollar range or rate appears in the board's pay field or in the text. The other bars count the application forms that ask each kind of question.
The question no US form asks: what you earn now
None of the 2,667 forms asks what the candidate is paid now or was paid before. In the whole sweep, which also has 1,024 roles outside the United States, two forms ask it. Both are Smartsheet roles in Bangalore, and both ask “What is your current compensation” as a required question.
At least 18 states bar employers from asking job applicants about their pay history, and so do New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia and several Ohio cities. Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries says it plainly: “Employers cannot ask about a job applicant’s salary history in a job application, even if the question is optional.” The NYC Commission on Human Rights and Philadelphia’s regulation say the same. The counts and sources, as checked on 10 November 2026, are in legal-timeline.md.
The laws fit what the forms show, but they are not the whole explanation. No company here asks the question even for roles in states without a ban, and outside the United States, where these laws do not apply, it is nearly as rare: 2 of 1,024 roles. Several bans, California’s and Maryland’s among them, cover questions asked orally as well as in writing, so they reach a recruiter’s call; this study reads only the forms.
The question some forms ask: what you expect
87 of the 2,667 forms (3.3 percent), at 13 of the 136 companies, ask what pay the candidate expects. The question is required in 73 of the 87. Nine companies ask it in every US engineering role they have open, four of them with a single role; Rocket Lab, Fireworks AI, Twitch and Cockroach Labs ask it in some.
The ten companies with the most roles in the sample (SpaceX, OpenAI, Roblox, Anthropic, Databricks, Waymo, Snowflake, Palantir, Coinbase and Zoox) hold 44 percent of them, and none of their forms asks. Without those ten, the share rises to 5.8 percent: the question is more common at companies with fewer open roles. By board system it appears on 5.4 percent of Ashby forms, 2.4 percent of Greenhouse forms and 2 of 146 Lever forms, but five companies make up all 45 asking roles on Ashby, so this mostly reflects which companies use which system.
The laws that bar pay history questions mostly leave this one alone, and some allow it outright. California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon and Vermont do so in the statute or the official guidance, and the NYC Commission’s FAQ says “A job application can request information about applicants’ compensation expectations or demands”. Massachusetts adds a warning: an employer should not follow up by asking what the expectation is based on, because that leads back to pay history.
The 13 companies whose forms ask what pay you expect
Company
US roles asking
Required
Range printed in those roles
The question
Rocket Lab
19 of 20
19 of 19
16 of 19
“Please share with us your salary expectations.”
Fireworks AI
16 of 18
8 of 16
16 of 16
“Do you have any initial compensation expectations?”
ClickUp
13 of 13
13 of 13
13 of 13
“What is your desired salary range for this role, including base and any variable or on-target earnings?”
Replit
10 of 10
10 of 10
10 of 10
“What is your desired salary range?”
Bandwidth
7 of 7
7 of 7
0 of 7
“Desired Total Compensation?”
Justworks
7 of 7
7 of 7
7 of 7
“What are your salary expectations for this role?”
Twitch
5 of 7
0 of 5
5 of 5
“What is your expected total base pay compensation for your next role. Please do not disclose current or past compensation.”
Vultr
5 of 5
5 of 5
5 of 5
“What are your compensation expectations?”
15Five
1 of 1
1 of 1
1 of 1
“What is your desired salary range for this role?”
Cockroach Labs
1 of 2
0 of 1
1 of 1
“What are your salary expectations?”
Gopuff
1 of 1
1 of 1
1 of 1
“What projected base salary are you looking for? *Note this role is eligible for a performance bonus and equity package*”
Rho
1 of 1
1 of 1
1 of 1
“What are your salary expectations?”
Workato
1 of 1
1 of 1
0 of 1
“What is your expected compensation?”
US-based tech companies, software engineering roles open in the United States with a readable application form, read on 10 November 2026. The other 123 of the 136 companies ask no such question on any of these forms. Every role and form question is in the data appendix.
76 of the 87 asking forms come after a posting that already prints a range. Ten of the 13 companies print one in every role where they ask. Replit prints a range in each of its 10 asking roles, two of them a base salary of $130K to $290K, and its form then asks “What is your desired salary range?” The candidate is asked to name a number inside, above or below a range the company has already set.
The 11 that ask without printing a range are at three companies. Bandwidth’s seven roles are in Raleigh, North Carolina, a state with no posting law, and ask “Desired Total Compensation?” Rocket Lab has three, two of them in Tucson, Arizona. Workato has one in San Francisco.
All 87 questions are free text boxes. None names a currency. 61 of them do not say whether they mean base salary or total pay; ClickUp and Bandwidth ask for the total, Twitch and Gopuff for base. Twitch, which makes the question optional, adds a line no other form has: “Please do not disclose current or past compensation.”
Accepting the range instead
Skip the screening, get vetted candidates in 48h
Senior engineers at $50 to $80/hr, each through a paid 10-hour assessment. No fee until you hire.
Four companies ask a different question: whether the candidate accepts the range the posting prints. It appears on 25 forms (0.9 percent) and is required on all of them. Samsara asks “Do you accept the listed salary range for this position?” on 16 roles, with Yes or No. Palantir asks “Are you comfortable with the compensation range advertised on the role posting?” on 7, and Instacart on one.
Klaviyo’s one asking role, in Boston, asks whether the candidate has “reviewed the salary range for this position and acknowledge that any offer will be within the posted range”. Neither of its two postings for that role printed a range on the board, in the text or in the pay field, when we read them on 10 November.
Palantir’s forms also ask, on 20 US roles, “Do you have any, or anticipate any upcoming offer deadlines?” No other pay-related question appears on more than three forms.
Where the range stops: the state line
US roles by where the posting says the job is, against the state pay range posting laws in force on 10 November 2026 (Colorado, Washington, California, New York, Hawaii, Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maine, Connecticut and DC). Roles in each group, top to bottom: 442, 1,901, 156, 94 and 74.
On 10 November 2026, 14 states and DC require a pay range in job postings, along with New York City and a few other cities and counties. Virginia, Maine and Connecticut started in the second half of 2026. 96.7 percent of the 1,901 roles located only in those states print the pay. 10.8 percent of the 74 roles located only in states without such a law do.
The second group is small, 74 roles at 11 companies, and SpaceX and Cloudflare make up 54 of them. Without those two, 8 of the remaining 20 print the pay. The comparison inside one company is clearer than the totals. SpaceX prints a range in all 163 of its roles located only in posting law states and in none of its 34 roles located only in Texas, Florida and Tennessee. Cloudflare prints a dollar range in 22 of the 29 roles that list Austin together with a city in a posting law state, and in none of the 20 whose only US location is Austin; some of the 20 print a euro range for Lisbon instead. xAI prints in 45 of 45 roles in posting law states and in neither of its 2 in Tennessee and Mississippi. Rocket Lab prints in 13 of 14 and in neither of its 2 in Arizona.
Some companies print it on both sides of the line. Databricks, Relativity Space and Samsara print a range in all six of their roles located only in states without a posting law (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas).
Remote roles print it almost always: 96.8 percent of the 442 roles open to remote work anywhere in the US. Colorado, California and Washington apply their posting rules to remote jobs that someone in the state could take, and a role open anywhere in the US can be done from those states.
Outside the United States
Share of software engineering roles whose application form asks what pay the candidate expects, by where the company is based and where the role is: 2,667, 768 and 256 roles.
Outside the US, the question is concentrated in a few companies. The US companies in the sample ask it in 4.4 percent of their 768 roles outside the United States, close to the 3.3 percent at home. Companies based outside the United States ask it in 36.3 percent of their 256 roles outside the US, and print a range in 16.8 percent. Five companies account for all 93 asking roles: Airwallex (45), Lovable (22), Nubank (18), Adyen (4) and Mollie (4). Among the 256 roles, 42.3 percent of the 213 with no printed range ask, against 7.0 percent of the 43 with one.
What this means if you apply
At these 136 companies, no US form asks what you earn now. If a form elsewhere does, in many states it is a question the law bars covered employers from asking, though whether a given law covers a given employer depends on its size and where the job is.
When a form asks what you expect, 87 percent of the time the range is printed in the posting above it. The answer box takes any text, and most of the questions do not say whether they mean base salary or total pay, so a number without a unit can be read either way. Saying base or total, and the currency, removes that doubt.
What this means if you hire
If the posting already prints a range, a required expected pay question puts the candidate in the position of bidding against it. Samsara asks a Yes or No question instead: does the posted range work for you. That tells you less than a number, but it does not ask the candidate to bid. If you keep the expected pay question, say whether you mean base or total, as ClickUp, Bandwidth, Twitch and Gopuff do, and which currency; none of the 87 forms names one. Massachusetts guidance also warns against the usual follow-up, asking what the number is based on, because it leads back to pay history.
Most companies in this sample print the range where the law requires it and in remote roles offered nationwide. A few stop at the state line: SpaceX’s Texas postings print no pay range, and its California postings do.
The sample and its limits
The list of companies is the one used in our earlier studies: a hand-made list of technology companies, mostly venture-backed software companies and the public companies that grew out of them. 387 board names were tried on Greenhouse, Ashby and Lever on 10 November 2026, and 186 boards were used: 23,359 postings, 4,908 of them software engineering postings, grouped into 3,971 roles. A role is one company’s postings with the same title and the same opening text. The main sample keeps the 2,667 roles open in the United States at the 136 companies based there whose application form could be read. The largest employers run their own systems, so there is no Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Meta here, and employers on Workday or iCIMS are not in it either; their forms may ask differently.
Pay was read from each board’s own pay field and from the posting text. A role counts as printing the pay if any of its postings has a US dollar range or a dollar rate stated as the pay (interns are often paid by the hour or month). The count records whether a range appears, not how wide it is. Where each role is comes from the location the board gives. A role listing several states is counted in the posting law group only if all of them have such a law.
Forms were read the way a browser reads them: Greenhouse through its job board API, Ashby through the request its job page makes to load the form, Lever from its apply page. Nothing was submitted. Every question that mentions salary, compensation, pay, wages, earnings, bonus, equity, expectations, offers or similar words was kept, 227 distinct questions, most of them not about pay. A language model (Claude) labeled each under written instructions, twice, the second time in a different order and without seeing the first answers. The two runs gave the same label and attributes for all 227. Two runs of one model can make the same mistake. No person checked the labels; every one is printed in the appendix.
The data shows what candidates are told and asked on one day, not what happens to the answer, not what recruiters ask on calls, and not how any of it has changed over time. The laws are described as of 10 November 2026; several states change them every year.
This website uses its own and third-party cookies for analytical purposes and to offer you advertising of interest to us and third parties. You can consult all the information in our Cookies Policy. You can manage the acceptance or rejection of cookies by clicking on “Configure”.
Privacy is important to us, so you have the option of disabling certain types of storage that may not be necessary for the basic functioning of the website. Blocking categories may impact your experience on the website. More information
