Hiring Engineers in San Francisco vs New York City
Dover
June 9, 2025
•
4 min
A Tale of University Pipelines in Both Cities
San Francisco taps Stanford and UC Berkeley. These schools put out fresh graduates who chase deep infra challenges, compiler tweaks, and novel AI tooling. Many earn master’s or doctoral degrees before stepping into industry.
The Big Apple draws talent from Columbia, NYU, Cornell Tech, and its many city colleges. This creates a rich pool of engineers who blend technical expertise with finance calculations, media operations, and healthcare data security.
Sector Strengths and Skill Sets
City | Core strengths | Typical side talent |
|---|---|---|
San Francisco | Distributed systems, AI safety, robotics, climate-tech R&D | Growth hacking, product-led growth metrics |
New York City | Payments, market data pipelines, streaming video, risk modeling | Brand design, user research, regulatory tech |
Engineers in both cities work with similar tools and languages, but their focus often reflects local industry needs. While some Bay Area engineers work on large-scale data systems, others build consumer apps. New York engineers might work on financial software, but many create media platforms or design tools instead.
Market Size
CBRE’s 2024 tech-talent survey counts roughly 407,000 tech workers in the broader Bay Area, marking a 23% increase from 2017. This accounts for 11.6% of the Bay Area's total employment, more than double the 50-market average of 5.6%. New York also remains one of the top five tech talent markets in the U.S., alongside the San Francisco Bay Area.
Base vs Bonus
Pay Element | Bay Area Mid-Level Engineer | NYC Mid-Level Engineer |
|---|---|---|
Base salary (Q1 2025 median) | ~$170,000 | ~$158,000 |
Equity annualized | ~$22,000 | ~$14,000 |
Cash bonus | ~$5,000 | ~$12,000 |
Total typical package | ~$203,000 | ~$181,000 |
These figures are approximations based on available data and industry trends.
Why the gap? Bay Area giants bid up base pay and award large option sets at Seed-Series C companies. Manhattan companies, often shaped by Wall Street norms, sweeten offers with measurable year-end cash bonuses.
Cost of Living and Pay Parity
According to data from apartments, the cost of living in San Francisco is 66.7% higher than the national average. A $170,000 salary stretches slightly farther in SoMa than in Midtown once housing and transport costs are tallied. Factor this into relocation packages, which makes it tough for skilled candidates to survive.
The solution? You should raise comp based on signals from these indexes. It not only shows respect for the candidate, but it's one of the fastest ways to build trust as well.
Benefits That Seal the Deal
San Francisco: early exercise on options, monthly learning stipends, Visa sponsorship pipelines, dog-friendly offices, Caltrain pass.
New York: subway or PATH credit, on-site CME group talks for fintech staff, all-hands in a rooftop space with skyline views.
Risk Tolerance and Decision Speed
SF teams experiment first and polish later. Engineers deploy to production on day one if tests pass. Meeting cadence tends to be weekly standups plus as-needed huddles. Engineers leaving FAANG for an early-stage build often say they’re drawn to the freedom to make their own decisions.
NYC teams ship fast yet plan heavier. Many engineers come from more traditional industries. They still love startups, but they want a clear risk plan before ripping out a queue or swapping a payment gateway.
Office vs Hybrid
Bay Area trend: 3-days-in, 2-days-remote or fully remote with quarterly onsite.
NYC trend: 4 days in or full-time in office for finance-adjacent roles.
Quick tip: Hybrid rules shift every quarter. Keep the policy crisp and public, and candidates will self-select rather than ghost.
Outside-Work Lifestyle
SF living costs encourage roommates to be outdoors plus go on weekend trail adventures. A reliable on-call rotation helps staff plan those escapes to maintain balance.
NYC packs social life into weeknights. After-work meetups at 6 p.m. sharp attract developers looking to swap ideas before a late dinner. A startup that sponsors pizza for the local AI Builder meetup may see resumes flood into their inbox the next morning.
Competition and Candidate Availability
Bay Area Supply Fluctuations
When Meta pauses hiring, early-stage founders feel relief for 3 months, then prices rebound. Many engineers hold multiple offers within 5 business days of a first coffee chat. A pipeline that lacks a same-day feedback loop and a slower interview process is dead on arrival.
💡 Solution: Fast-track interview process
Screen resume within 24 hours.
Schedule a technical round within 48 hours.
Issue a written offer before day eight.
Using a free ATS like Dover helps you hit those by surfacing top resumes with AI scoring and messages hit your Slack when an application lands.
New York City Tug-of-War
A quant desk might offer salaries that a Series A cap table simply can't match. However, that desk rarely grants product ownership or mission-driven work. Pitch that difference. Showcase metrics, your mission, and the new hire will be convinced. Prove stock grants are real by sharing funding press releases.
💡 Solution: Focus on the perks
Offer a sign-on tied to booked revenue goals.
Add a 5-figure education allowance.
Commit to off-site trips. NYC engineers relish a chance to code in sunlight after too many winters underground.
The in-between: Building a Split-Coast Strategy
Choose Roles by Location
Role | Where it often fills faster | Why |
|---|---|---|
Machine-learning researcher | San Francisco | Proximity to top AI labs and peer groups |
Quantitative backend dev | NYC | Daily pairing with product managers fluent in finance regs |
DevOps toolsmith | Remote or SF | SRE meetups and Google alumni circles |
Fractional Recruiters: Coast-Native Experts on Call
Traditional agencies in both cities ask for 20-30% of first-year salary. That fee hurts on a $200,000 hire. A smarter path is a fractional recruiter who bills hourly and opens their personal Rolodex any time you need to hire someone. Dover’s marketplace shows each recruiter’s fill rates and cost per hire, so you can pick the right fit without long contracts.
Read more about the typical costs of hiring one in our fractional recruiter pricing guide.
Let's read about startups that used Dover's recruiting marketplace to hire in SF and NYC.
Hiring engineers in SF: How Dover helped a Biotech firm hire engineers in 2 weeks
Need: Culture, a cloud bioreactor lab, wanted to hire senior full-stack engineers to build mission-critical software, with a heavy focus on candidates who align with their values.
Approach: Dover revamped its employer brand, optimized outreach, and used market data to refine its hiring strategy. Taking the Recruiting Partner's advice, Culture optimized their careers page and started to share their unique culture on more targeted talent sites, like keyvalues.com.
Outcome: 2 hires in 3 weeks.
Hiring engineers in NY: How Dover helped an E-learning platform hire 90 people
Need: Section, an E-learning SaaS platform, needed to scale from 20 to 100+ employees in a year, without an in-house recruiter.
Approach: Dover handled outbound, inbound, and referrals while integrating easily with tools like Slack and Lever. Recruiting Partners helped hiring managers move fast and stay aligned using real-time data and benchmarks.
Outcome: 90+ hires
“We hired 90+ people—it was simply not possible to hit our hiring goals without Dover.”
Greg Shove, CEO
The Seven-Step Playbook to Close Engineers Fast in NY or SF
1. Map Product Milestones to Real Job Titles
Vague “rockstar engineer” ads fail. Write “Senior Platform Engineer focusing on search ranking” or “Staff Data Engineer for real-time market feeds.”
Clarity brings the right resumes.
2. Run Salary Benchmarks Quarterly
Use Levels.fyi slices by location and level, city reports, and lookup LinkedIn salary in minutes. Budget a 5% buffer for sudden market spikes.
3. Craft a Two-Page Interview Brief
Send candidates the brief before a call. Include:
Tech stack snapshot
Team size and growth plan
Equity details in plain numbers, not “meaningful upside” jargon
Transparency moves your pipeline faster than any automation trick ever will.
4. Streamline Your ATS Workflow
Dover’s free ATS auto-tags resumes, ranks them, and pings the integrated Slack channel when a hot lead shows up. One-click LinkedIn outreach from the sourcing extension fills your calendar with intro calls.
5. Personalize Offers
For SF hires: show a vesting calculator that spells out option value at three exit points.
For NYC hires: share a cash-bonus formula plus equity refresh cadence.
6. Counter-Offer Safety Net
Ask for competing-offer timelines upfront. Plan your top-of-range bid to land before those deadlines. A speedy yes beats a slow response half the time because candidates respect decisiveness.
7. Retain With Growth Paths
Set quarterly growth chat blocks on the team calendar. Too many founders skip this step and watch top performers walk away after a year. Use lessons from every exit interview to improve next quarter’s strategy.
Common Missteps and How to Avoid Them
Long-Term Trends to Watch
Final Checklist Before You Post That Job
Ready to Hire Without the Headaches?
Table of contents
