San Francisco
The densest concentration of startup and early-growth hiring on HN. Dominated by AI/ML and infrastructure roles; commands the highest senior compensation of any city in the index.
Leads US volume and has held a consistent gap over the second-ranked city.
Annual totals for the last five years — every year shown is complete except 2026, hatched because it is still in progress.
Pays 5% under New York for senior eng — and 19% over Austin.
Median bands from the 1003 San Francisco postings that disclosed USD pay across 2023–Present.
14 points less remote-friendly than the US baseline.
Trailing-12-month split, plus the yearly remote / hybrid / onsite mix all the way back.
The AI-first hiring market — a title it has held since 2023 and reinforced since.
Keywords counted across 2042 San Francisco hiring posts. Posts frequently list multiple skills.
69% of jobs include at least one technical skill · share of postings mentioning the skill (12 months through May 2026)
Where else looks like San Francisco?
Cosine similarity across role mix, work-model split, and skill profile.
San Francisco postings are extracted from monthly HN Who's Hiring? threads using location string matching against a curated city dictionary. San Francisco postings cover the city proper. The broader Bay Area (Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose, Bellevue) is tracked separately.
- ·Trust annual totals over single months — monthly counts can be small, and partial years (hatched) cover only part of the calendar.
- ·Compensation bands use a trailing 3-year window; levels appear only when n ≥ 10.
- ·Comparisons against the US baseline use the same time window on both sides — trailing 12 months for work model, the past 3 years for role mix.