How Align Technology Pays

Professional ladder — A1 through A7

Leadership ladder — A8 through A11

Executive and board — A12 through Board

Disclosed executive layer

Track divergence

Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures

• Align states that pay rates are benchmarked and set to be market-competitive in the country where the job is performed, which supports a location-priced model rather than one global salary table, but it never publishes the table itself.
• Levels.fyi labels such as L3, L4 and L7 are platform mappings for the roles that were submitted. They are not evidence of an Align grade system and they cover software engineering only.
• The taxonomy is most reliable for software, research and development and corporate functions. Manufacturing, treatment planning, clinical and quota-carrying commercial roles can sit at very different pay for the same nominal seniority.
• Align has acquired businesses including exocad, but no reviewed source discloses a legacy grade structure or a band-harmonisation programme, so no acquired-company crosswalk is claimed here.
• The independent director row is a governance package rather than an employment band and is excluded from the range chart, as are the two executive rows.

Peer-level mapping

Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus Tempe

Align does not publish city-level headcount. The Form 10-K names Tempe, San Jose and Raleigh in the United States, Belen and Heredia and Cartago in Costa Rica, Wroclaw in Poland, Petah Tikva in Israel, Rotkreuz in Switzerland, Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, Singapore, and Ziyang in China as significant facilities, and separately identifies Mexico, Costa Rica and China as the three largest country populations. Petah Tikva supersedes the older Or Yehuda reference for Israel.

Tempe anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell

• The Tempe column is the anchor. It is derived from the bundles' United States national reference model at a 0.93 Tempe factor, so San Jose sits about 24 percent above it and Raleigh about 5 percent below it at junior bands.
• A7 and A8 are the best-evidenced non-executive rows because Align itself posts base ranges for them: $210,100 to $288,900 for a San Jose Staff Research and Development Engineer and $196,000 to $299,300 across two San Jose director postings.
• Hyderabad is the India hub rather than Bangalore, and it is the site of the announced 18 billion rupee manufacturing investment. Observed India pay runs from a 600,000 rupee intern through a 1.0 to 3.0 million rupee software engineer range to an Align-posted 3.6 to 5.0 million rupee senior engineer range.
• Ciudad Juarez carries the single strongest non-executive datapoint in the whole disclosure set: the proxy's 2025 median employee is a Supervisor, Tool Crib there at $31,454 of SEC total compensation.
• The A12 and A13 rows are proxy disclosures for global corporate roles. They are converted for comparison only and are not a local executive payroll range in any selected city.

Executive incentive targets — percent of salary

Named-executive outcomes

• Simple 2005 Plan utilisation was about 91.7 percent at 30 June 2026, calculated as 34,668,895 authorised less 2,888,952 available. That is a capacity measure under plan accounting and is not the same as outstanding dilution or vested shares.
• Unamortised restricted stock unit compensation was about $257.8 million at 30 June 2026 with a weighted-average recognition period of 2.9 years.
• The 1.532 million unvested restricted stock units at 30 June 2026 carried a $214.93 weighted grant-date fair value and an aggregate intrinsic value of about $258.3 million.
• The 91.7 percent reserve utilisation is the clearest signal in the filings that a new share request or plan amendment is likely to reach shareholders before the pool is exhausted.

Equity plan capacity and grant activity

Vesting — common reported employee schedule

Restricted stock units generally vest over four years and named-executive awards vest 25 percent on each anniversary. Market stock units pay nothing in years one and two and settle in a single instalment at the end of the three-year performance period at anywhere between 0 and 250 percent of target. Employee stock purchase plan shares are bought at the end of each six-month purchase period inside the 24-month offering. Independent director awards generally vest at the earlier of one year or the next annual meeting.

Eligibility by hierarchy level

• The single most important gap in Align's equity disclosure is the minimum eligible level. The 2005 Plan permits employee awards and the Form 10-K says equity participation programmes vary by country, role and contribution, but no threshold, no grant table and no participation rate is published.
• Market stock units are explicitly a senior-management instrument. Reading them as the start of all equity would be wrong, but so would assuming that restricted stock units reach every band; neither claim has public support.
• The A5 equity switch used in this model is a modelling convention taken from the research bundles. It is not an Align policy statement and should not be quoted as one.
• Estimated annualised grant values run roughly $0 to $3,000 at A2, $0 to $8,000 at A3, $5,000 to $30,000 at A5, $30,000 to $100,000 at A7, $75,000 to $225,000 at A8, $300,000 to $900,000 at A10 and $600,000 to $2.0 million at A11. All of these are analyst estimates rather than observations.
• The employee stock purchase plan is the one equity channel with published mechanics that any eligible employee can size for themselves, and 147,000 shares were actually issued under it in 2025.

Indicative annual grant value by band — Tempe

Annualized planning value (±25%), not the face value of every new-hire grant. Share equivalents use the $159.64 reference price at 24 August 2026 close and ignore plan valuation rules and PSU performance. Highlighted rows are disclosed grant-date stock awards.

Named executive target equity

Two of the four 2025 named executives had left or were leaving by the middle of 2026, which is why a static executive list should be checked against the current leadership page before it is relied on. Align discloses stock-ownership guidelines of six times base salary for the chief executive and three times for other covered executives, and its compensation committee reviews executive base pay, annual incentive and long-term incentive at least annually. That governance cadence applies to executives only and says nothing about the timing of ordinary employee pay reviews.

Board compensation framework

Eight of the ten directors received exactly $299,983 of stock in 2025, so the cash retainers are what separate them. No stock options were granted to directors.

Not publicly disclosed

Modeled promotion planning timeline

Executive progression is the only part of the system with real visibility. The Compensation and Human Capital Committee reviews executive base salary, annual incentive and long-term incentive against market data, performance and business objectives at least annually, and the February grant date is a fixed annual cycle for named executives. That governance cadence covers executives only and should not be generalised to the global employee appraisal system.

Dataset summary

City-level H-1B wage history

All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.

Selected title / worksite records

Evidence classification

Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index

Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell

1. 1The two bundles report different equity plan balances because they read different filings. The Form 10-K shows 4,608,476 2005 Plan shares and 1,728,664 employee stock purchase plan shares available at 31 December 2025, while the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q shows 2,888,952 and 1,626,275 available at 30 June 2026. This report uses the later 30 June 2026 figures and states both dates.
2. 2The bundles use different reference share prices, $159.64 for the 24 August 2026 close and $159.50 as a 25 August 2026 reference. This report standardises on $159.64 and notes that all spot values are illustrations, not grant-date fair values.
3. 3The foreign-exchange snapshots differ slightly, for example 95.4125 against 95.4166 rupees to the dollar and 3.68758 against 3.6932 zloty. This report standardises on the 24 to 25 August 2026 set that covers every currency used here.
4. 4The bundles date the FY2025 Form 10-K differently, at 20 February 2026 and 27 February 2026. This report uses 20 February 2026 for the news timeline; the difference does not affect any figure.
5. 5The two bundles use incompatible level taxonomies, A1 through A13 in one and N0 to N4 with M1 to M4, X1, X2 and B in the other. This report uses the A-series because it is the only one with a complete band-by-band compensation model attached.
6. 6Restructuring cost is given as about $40.2 million in the Q2 2026 filing and as a roughly $41 million programme in the other bundle's workforce table. Both are rounded descriptions of the same programme.
7. 7The bundles price the ladder against a United States national reference model rather than a named anchor city. This report re-anchors on Tempe at the bundles' own 0.93 Tempe factor, which is why San Jose sits at about 1.24 and not at 1.15.
8. 8Geographic compression is modelled differently. The bundles apply a flat city multiplier through A9 and then switch to a broader leadership-market rule at A10 and above. This report interpolates the same two endpoints smoothly across the ladder, which fits the observed India evidence better at mid bands but overstates the discount applied to the disclosed executive rows in a non-anchor city.
9. 9Madrid is not in either bundle's location table. Its factor is derived from the Levels.fyi Spain software median of 69,800 euros against the equivalent United States median of $173,000, rescaled onto Tempe. Spain is named in the proxy's pay-ratio population, so omitting it would understate the footprint.
10. 10Cartago is named in the Form 10-K significant properties list but has no separate salary evidence, so it carries the Costa Rica factor derived from Belen and Heredia observations.
11. 11The A3 band model sits well below the Levels.fyi software observation for the same nominal seniority, because A3 spans analysts, clinical specialists and technicians as well as software engineers. Neither figure is wrong; they measure different populations.
12. 12India evidence is unusually wide. Levels.fyi reports a 1.37 million rupee software median, Indeed reports 2.16 million from three observations, Glassdoor Hyderabad spans 1.0 to 3.0 million and 6figr reports a senior-skewed 1.87 to 7.42 million range. The city factor is anchored on the bundles' own 0.14 multiplier rather than any one of them.
13. 13Employee counts for 2023 and 2024 are inferred from the disclosed 3.1 percent and 6.1 percent declines rather than restated in the reviewed filings, so only the 20,290 figure for 2025 and the 20,435 figure for 30 June 2026 are direct disclosures.
14. 14H-1B record counts and medians differ across Ellis, H1BData, H1BGrader and MyVisaJobs because each applies different filters and definitions. Worksite record counts for Morrisville and Tempe are floors taken from visible individual records rather than filing totals.
15. 15No companywide 2026 salary hike percentage, pay freeze, salary cut or off-cycle correction was located in any source, and no global attrition rate is disclosed for any year in the reviewed filings.
16. 16Align discloses no geographic revenue split in either bundle, so this report shows no regional revenue panel rather than constructing one.

FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-25

Single-date conversion layer for comparability; it ignores payroll-date FX, tax, purchasing power, benefits valuation and hedging. Compensation intelligence, not legal, tax, investment, immigration or employment advice.

Source register — 15 sources

Two consecutive restructuring programmes have taken headcount down about 6 percent from 2023, and Align publishes no attrition rate at all, so the change in headcount is the only workforce signal in the filings. It does not distinguish involuntary reductions from voluntary departures, and the company does not disclose city-level counts, which is why this report models markets rather than ranking offices by size.