Depends if you're looking at startups/scaleups or the big companies. Arm, Imagination Tech, etc. for a very long time did not pay anything like as well (even if you were doing software work for them). That's shifted a lot in the UK in recent years (can't speak for the rest of the world). Even so, I hear Intel and AMD still pay lower base salary than you might get at a rival startup.

As for startups/scaleups, I can testify from experience that you'll get the following kind of base salaries in the UK outside of hardware-for-finance companies (not including options/benefits/etc.). Note that my experience is around CPU, GPU, AI accelerators, etc. - novel stuff, not just incrementing the version number of a microcontroller design:

* Graduate modelling engineer (software): £50k - £55k * Graduate hardware design engineer: £45k - £55k

* Junior software engineer: £60k - £70k * Junior hardware engineer: £60k - £70k

* Senior/lead software engineer (generalist; 3+ yoe): £75k - £90k * Senior compiler engineer (3+ yoe): £100k - £120k * Senior/lead hardware design engineer: £90k - £110k * Senior/lead hardware verification engineer: £100k - £115k

* Staff engineering salaries (software, hardware, computer architecture): £100k - £130k and beyond * Principal, director, VP, etc. engeering salaries: £130k+ (and £200k to £250k not unreasonable expectation for people with 10+ years experience).

If you happen to be in physical design with experience on a cutting edge node: £250k - £350k (except at very early stage ventures)

Can you find software roles that pay more? Sure, of course you can. AI and Data Science roles can sometimes pay incredible salaries. But are there that many of those kinds of roles? I don't know - I think demand in hardware design outstrips availability in top-end AI roles, but maybe I'm wrong.

From personal experience, I've been paid double-digits percentage more being a computer architect in hardware startups than I have in senior software engineering roles in (complex) SaaS startups (across virtual conferencing, carbon accounting, and autonomous vehicle simulations). That's very much a personal journey and experience, so I appreciate it's not a reflection of the general market (unlike the figures I quoted above) so of course others will have found the opposite.

To get a sense of the UK markets for a wide range of roles across sectors and company sizes, I recommend looking at salary guides from the likes of: * IC Resources * SoCode * Microtech * Client-Server