Senior Data Engineer Pay, US Fintech Series B-C, Remote: $185k Base Sits at the Middle of the Evidence

Verdict

Within range. $185k base is at the midpoint of the one source that prices a remote senior data engineer directly ($160K to $210K base, midpoint $185K). It also sits inside the $165K to $195K the same source gives for senior roles at Series A to B startups. Bonus and equity could not be benchmarked with hard public numbers, and that is the main gap.

Bottom line

For base pay, $185k is a market-rate offer, not a stretch and not a bargain. The evidence is thin: one recruiter guide, three public postings for adjacent or higher levels, and one crowd-sourced total-compensation figure that is not specific to fintech or seniority. Confidence is medium for base and low for bonus and equity. The main caveat is that no source isolates "Series B-C fintech, remote, senior" cleanly, so every range below is an adjacent segment, labelled as such.

Scope and assumptions

Item: annual US base salary in USD for a Senior Data Engineer, plus bonus and equity benchmarked separately. I read "$185k base" as annual, pre-tax, full-time, excluding bonus and equity.
Comparison set: US fintech, Series B to C funding stage, fully remote. Dimensions no source fully matched are noted per row.
Not done: no quotes requested, no one contacted, no individual's pay recorded. Postings are used as anonymised ranges by employer.
Stage caveat: two of the postings are from public companies (BILL, Coinbase), so they are size-adjacent, not Series B-C.

Data table

Source	Segment	Definition	Value or range	Sample	Date	Link
Recruiting from Scratch salary guide	Senior data engineer, remote, US	Base	$160K to $210K	Not stated (placement data plus levels.fyi)	Published 25 June 2026	Guide
Same guide	Senior data engineer, remote, US	Total comp	$175K to $240K	Not stated	25 June 2026	Guide
Same guide	Senior, Series A to B startups (not fintech-specific, not remote-specific)	Base	$165K to $195K	Not stated	25 June 2026	Guide
Same guide	Senior, NYC fintech specialist (not remote)	Base	$205K to $260K	Not stated	25 June 2026	Guide
Fora Financial (lender) posting	Staff Data Engineer, fully remote US	Base	$175,000 to $200,000	One posting	Posted 30 July 2026	Posting
BILL (public fintech) posting	Senior Staff Data Engineer, remote US, pay zone 3	Base	$166,400 to $208,100	One posting	Posted about 16 days before 5 October 2026	Posting
BILL posting	Same role, zone 1 (SF Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, LA County)	Base	$195,800 to $244,800	One posting	Same	Posting
Coinbase (public crypto) posting	Senior Market Data Engineer, remote US	Base, excluding equity and bonus	$191,250 to $225,000	One posting	Posted about one month before 5 October 2026	Posting
Kikoff (consumer fintech, Series B per Built In) posting	Senior Data Engineer, San Francisco, hybrid; Built In tags it "Junior" and asks for 2+ years	Base	$226,000 to $254,000	One posting, since removed	Removed 30 July 2026	Posting
Levels.fyi	All US data engineers, all levels and industries	Total comp (base + annualised stock + bonus)	Median $157,450; 25th to 75th percentile $115,500 to $223,750	1,289 submissions	Updated 5 October 2026	Page
BLS OEWS	Software developers (SOC 15-1252; no data-engineer code), all industries	Wage, 2022 data	Median $127,260; 75th percentile $161,480	Not stated	May 2022 data, page modified 25 April 2023	Page

Range

Base, remote senior (inference from the table). I treated the remote senior row as the anchor because it is the only one that matches seniority and remote status. Low $160K, high $210K, midpoint $185K. The midpoint is my arithmetic on the source's stated range, not a reported median.

Cross-check. The Series A to B senior band ($165K to $195K) and the three remote or remote-eligible postings overlap it. Fora's midpoint is $187.5K, BILL's zone 3 midpoint is about $187.3K, and Coinbase's midpoint is about $208.1K (all my arithmetic on posted ranges). These postings are for staff-level or public-company roles, so they probably overstate a Series B-C senior band. That makes $185K look slightly better, not worse.

Bonus. No fetched source gave a bonus percentage for senior data engineers in this segment. Coinbase's posting says total compensation may include equity and bonus eligibility without a figure. I will not estimate one.

Equity. The recruiter guide reports that 73% of its senior data engineering offers included equity, with a median startup equity package of $80K to $120K a year at target value, and that senior and staff grants at Series A to B startups run 0.05% to 0.2%. This is one vendor's placement data, not a survey, and "target value" is not defined.

Definitional differences

Base versus total. Levels.fyi's total compensation is base plus annualised stock plus bonus, so its $157,450 median is not comparable with a base-only figure.
"Senior". Built In tagged Kikoff's role as junior while its title says senior. BILL's "Senior Staff" and Fora's "Staff" sit above senior. Title inflation widens the spread.
Location tiers. BILL pays by zone, so one remote role spans $166,400 to $244,800 depending on where the hire lives. "Remote" does not mean one national rate. The recruiter guide says most startups pay a local-market or national-median rate for remote hires, while FAANG-type firms pay SF rates.
BLS. It has no data-engineer code, so software developers are a proxy, and the data is from 2022.

Trends

The sources do not support a trend line. The only dated comparison is that BLS software-developer wages are from May 2022 and sit well below the 2026 figures above, but they cover a different occupation and all industries, so I draw no growth rate from it. The recruiter guide says ML/AI data pipeline work carries a 15% to 25% premium in its intro text, and +18 to 25% in its own table, an internal inconsistency, and that AI/ML data engineering search volume is up 40% year over year in its pipeline. Both are vendor claims.

Levers and suggested band

Lever	Direction	Evidence
Location tier of hire	Raises or lowers base by tens of thousands	BILL zones
Specialisation (ML/AI, streaming)	Premium, per recruiter	ML/AI +18 to 25%, real-time/streaming +12 to 18%
Fintech domain	Premium stated for NYC only	+12 to 18% (NYC) in the specialisation table; +15% in the NYC salary table
Scope (staff-level platform ownership)	Higher posted ranges	Fora, BILL
Equity share of package	Lower base is common at early stage	Series A to B senior base $165K to $195K

Evidence-based band (inference, not advice): base of about $175K to $200K covers the overlap of the remote senior range, the Series A to B band and the Fora and BILL zone 3 postings. $185K is inside it. A candidate with streaming or ML-platform scope, or a hire based in a high-cost zone, has evidence for pushing toward $200K to $210K.

Comparability caveats

Thin and mostly one-source. The remote senior range comes from a single recruiter guide that does not state its sample size and has a commercial interest in hiring.
Postings are not offers. Posted ranges are employer intent, and three of the four are for staff-level or non-Series-B-C companies.
Stage not confirmed. Only Kikoff's Series B status appears in a fetched source. Fora's funding stage was not stated.
Levels.fyi is self-reported and broad, with no fintech, seniority or remote filter applied to the figure used.
Staleness. BLS data is about four years old. Postings from July to September 2026 are current.
Not found: Glassdoor, Payscale, Radford or other survey data with bonus percentages. These were not retrieved, so bonus is a gap, not an estimate.