How Epic Games Pays
Epic Games' EG0 to EG8 research ladder priced across 21 markets in 12 countries, employee stock options whose grant sizes, strike prices and pool are all unpublished, no CEO pay and no pay ratio because a private filer files no proxy, and a $194,100 FY2026 H-1B median base wage.
Band Hierarchy
Epic publishes no numbered global grade architecture, no salary schedule and no promotion rules. EG0 through EG8 are a normalized research taxonomy built from the current careers portal, employer-posted salary ranges and public salary observations, and they must never be quoted as Epic grades. The C-suite and founder tiers sit above EG8 and are carried in the executive panel rather than in the ladder, because every figure for them is not publicly disclosed.
Early and professional bands — EG0 through EG2
Senior, lead and principal bands — EG3 through EG5
Leadership bands — EG6 through EG8
Disclosed executive layer
Track divergence
Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures
- EG0 through EG8 are analytical research bands. Epic has never published a grade number, a band minimum, a midpoint or a maximum for any role in any country.
- The mapping is most reliable for engineering and technical art, where employer postings and salary observations are densest, and least reliable for publishing, legal, marketing and regional business roles, where a single title can sit two bands apart.
- Levels.fyi L1 through L5 labels are a platform mapping applied by that platform, not an Epic ladder, and the samples at L4 and L5 are small enough that a handful of submissions move the median.
- No evidence was found of a formal grade harmonisation programme following Epic's acquisitions. Acquired studios may retain their own title conventions, and a global harmonisation matrix is not publicly disclosed.
- The C-suite and founder tiers are deliberately absent from the band table. Including them with a zero or an invented figure would distort every location cell in the model, so they are carried only in the executive panel.
Peer-level mapping
| Band | Archetype | Peer mapping | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| EG0 | Intern / University | Intern and university-graduate tier at any large games or platform employer | Epic's posted New York machine-learning intern range annualizes above its own reported entry-level engineering base, so intern pay is not a floor for the ladder.Midpoint of the annualized $139,029 to $166,834 New York intern posting blended with lower-paid non-engineering internship families. |
| EG1 | Early Professional / Associate | Levels.fyi L1 for engineering roles; associate producer and QA tiers in the rest of the business | Role family dominates pay far more than tenure here: Cary production assistants report $42,000 to $63,000 while engineering L1 packages report $118,500.Blend of Cary crowdsourced Production Assistant, QA Analyst and Associate Producer ranges across 32 submissions. |
| EG2 | Professional | Levels.fyi L2, roughly overlapping the generic professional software rung | Levels labels are platform mappings rather than Epic grades, and its L2 sample reports $128,400 base against only $7,600 of bonus.Cary Glassdoor Programmer and Producer ranges reconciled against the Levels.fyi L2 base of $128,400. |
| EG3 | Senior Professional | Levels.fyi L3; the senior rung most current Epic United States postings are written for | The posted $151,585 to $252,641 senior technical artist range covers this scope but binds only that role and that salary zone.Cary Senior Technical Artist and Software Engineer observations bracketed by the employer-posted senior United States range. |
| EG4 | Lead / Staff | Levels.fyi L4; staff engineer and first-line development manager elsewhere | The individual contributor and management tracks diverge materially at this point, and this model prices both against one band.Levels.fyi L4 base of $251,700 discounted from a national sample back toward the Cary market, cross-checked against Indeed Vancouver development-manager averages. |
| EG5 | Principal / Senior Lead | Levels.fyi L5; principal engineer and senior engineering manager elsewhere | Epic's posted California principal programmer range of $235,498 to $345,397 is a California salary zone that sits about 1.25 times the Cary anchor used here.The posted California principal programmer range restated to the Cary zone; Levels.fyi L5 separately reports $283,800 base and $155,800 bonus on a small sample. |
| EG6 | Senior Principal / Architect | Senior principal individual contributor or second-line engineering manager | No employer-posted range covers this band; the anchor is extrapolated above the principal posting and manager samples.Extrapolated above the posted principal range. A Levels.fyi software-engineering manager sample shows bonus running near 50 percent of base at this scope. |
| EG7 | Distinguished / Director | Director of engineering, design or product at a large games or platform employer | The only director anchor Epic publishes is Canadian: CA$269,967 to CA$395,952 in Vancouver, restated here through the 0.85 Vancouver factor.Vancouver director posting restated to the Cary anchor and cross-checked against the careers-portal director title catalogue. |
| EG8 | Senior Director / Vice President | Senior director and vice president tier | No public salary, grant schedule or posting covers this band anywhere in Epic's disclosure, so it is modelled progression alone.Modelled progression above the director anchor. No employer posting, filing or third-party observation supports this row directly. |
Critical evidence warning
Epic Games is private and publishes no salary schedule, no band structure, no bonus target and no equity grant matrix. The only company-issued pay figures in this entire report are the salary ranges on United States and Canadian job postings, which pay-transparency law requires, and the severance and option terms in two layoff communications. Everything else is a third-party observation or a model built on one, and should be used for orientation rather than quoted as an Epic pay band.
Compensation by Band — Cary
Low / median / high annual values at 1.00× base and 1.00× total-compensation factors versus Cary. Total equals base plus bonus plus annualized equity.
| Band | Title | Base | Variable | Total TC | Equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EG0 | Intern / University 0–1 years · modeled | $89K – $121K | — | $105K $89K – $121K | — |
| EG1 | Early Professional / Associate 0–3 years · reported | $66K – $90K | 5% | $82K $70K – $94K | — |
| EG2 | Professional 2–6 years · reported | $109K – $147K | 8% | $138K $118K – $159K | — |
| EG3 | Senior Professional 5–9 years · reported | $162K – $219K | 15% | $219K $186K – $251K | — |
| EG4 | Lead / Staff 7–12 years · modeled | $187K – $253K | 25% | $275K $234K – $316K | — |
| EG5 | Principal / Senior Lead 9–15 years · modeled | $214K – $290K | 35% | $340K $289K – $391K | — |
| EG6 | Senior Principal / Architect 11–17 years · modeled | $255K – $345K | 45% | $435K $370K – $500K | — |
| EG7 | Distinguished / Director 13–20 years · modeled | $281K – $380K | 50% | $495K $421K – $569K | — |
| EG8 | Senior Director / Vice President 15–23 years · modeled | $332K – $449K | 65% | $644K $547K – $740K | — |
Total Compensation Range by Band
Total compensation in Cary across the employee bands. Ranges are planning envelopes around the median, not offer bands.
Global Footprint & Pay Arbitrage
Epic runs a studio network rather than an onshore and offshore delivery model: most hubs combine engine, game, publishing or regional business work, and no location in this report is a client-site delivery centre. Cary is the pay anchor and every other market is a flat multiple of it, because Epic publishes nothing that would make senior packages converge across borders.
Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus Cary
| Location | Likely office profile | Presence | Base | TC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Cary United States · USD | Headquarters, core engine, game development and corporate leadership | Official About page and careers portal | 1.00× | 1.00× |
Raleigh United States · USD | Adjacent Triangle labour market rather than a separate Epic campus | Regional market; visible only through H-1B worksite records | 0.98× | 0.98× |
Bellevue / Seattle United States · USD | Engineering and platform teams | Public office list, current openings and H-1B worksite records | 1.15× | 1.15× |
San Francisco / Larkspur United States · USD | Technology, publishing and studio operations | Public office list and California salary-zone postings | 1.25× | 1.25× |
Los Angeles United States · USD | Studio, creative and publishing | Public office list and H-1B worksite records | 1.10× | 1.10× |
New York United States · USD | Corporate and technical hiring market; office scale not disclosed | Current postings carrying New York pay-transparency ranges | 1.14× | 1.14× |
Montreal Canada · CAD | Major engineering and game-development hub with active hiring | Public office list with sparse crowdsourced role ranges | 0.78× | 0.78× |
Vancouver Canada · CAD | Product, design and engineering | Public office list plus a posted director base range of CA$269,967 to CA$395,952 | 0.85× | 0.85× |
London United Kingdom · GBP | Engineering and business roles with current openings | Public office list with employee-reported level data for L2 to L4 | 0.72× | 0.72× |
Guildford United Kingdom · GBP | Studio and engineering | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.68× | 0.68× |
Berlin Germany · EUR | Regional business and technology | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.58× | 0.58× |
Cologne Germany · EUR | Regional studio and technology | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.56× | 0.56× |
Stockholm Sweden · SEK | Studio and technology | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.57× | 0.57× |
Helsinki Finland · EUR | Studio and technology | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.54× | 0.54× |
Strasbourg France · EUR | Regional technology and studio | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.55× | 0.55× |
Novi Sad Serbia · EUR | Studio and technology; the lowest-cost verified European site | Public office list; the source bundle prices this market in euro, not dinar | 0.36× | 0.36× |
Seoul South Korea · KRW | Regional business and technology | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.55× | 0.55× |
Yokohama Japan · JPY | Regional business and technology | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.55× | 0.55× |
Shanghai China · CNY | Regional technology and publishing | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.47× | 0.47× |
Suzhou China · CNY | Regional studio and technology | Public office list; no current openings observed | 0.42× | 0.42× |
Porto Alegre Brazil · BRL | Major active engineering and art hub with current openings | Public office list and current careers-portal openings | 0.32× | 0.32× |
Epic does not disclose office-level headcount anywhere, so this catalogue cannot rank sites by size. Current hiring is the only visible activity signal: Cary, Bellevue and Seattle, San Francisco and Larkspur, Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, Vancouver, London and Porto Alegre showed live openings at the report date, while the remaining European and Asian sites appear on the public office list without current postings.
Cary anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell
| Band | Base | Stock | Bonus | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EG1 | $78K | $0 | $4K | $82K |
| EG2 | $128K | $0 | $10K | $138K |
| EG3 | $190K | $0 | $29K | $219K |
- Cary is the anchor because it is Epic's verified headquarters and the only city with both employer-posted United States ranges and a meaningful volume of crowdsourced role observations across seven job families.
- The Cary anchor is deliberately not the Levels.fyi United States median of $254,000. That figure is a national sample skewed towards high-cost engineering markets, and using it as the Cary anchor would double-count geography once the city factors were applied.
- The Vancouver factor of 0.85 is the only non-United States factor with a direct employer-posted anchor behind it, the CA$269,967 to CA$395,952 director range.
- London carries employee-reported level data for its L2 to L4 equivalents, which is the strongest non-North American observation set in the bundle.
- Seven markets named in the original research brief, Boston, Warsaw, Zurich, Madrid, Barcelona, Melbourne and Bangalore, carry no factor and appear nowhere in the location table. No current material Epic office and no clean Epic-specific pay dataset were verified for any of them, and a nearby-market estimate would have been an invention.
Model rules
- Every modelled cell is the Cary median multiplied by one flat city factor and then by the 26 August 2026 foreign-exchange snapshot. The factor does not vary by band, because no evidence supports level-dependent compression at Epic.
- Base and total factors are identical in every market. The source bundle prices no equity into any city total, so there is no equity-driven divergence to model and no reason for offshore totals to drift toward the anchor at senior levels.
- The source bundle's planning total added an 8 to 12 percent employer benefit load on top of base and variable pay. That is employer cost rather than pay, and it has been stripped: every total here is base plus target variable pay only.
- Stock options are excluded from every total in this report. They exist, but with no grant size, no strike price and no company-approved valuation, any dollar figure attached to them would be fabricated.
- Novi Sad is priced in euro rather than Serbian dinar because the source bundle calibrates it that way; treat the local column there as a euro-equivalent rather than a payroll currency.
Variable Pay & Annual Cash Incentive
Epic publishes no target bonus percentage, no payout formula, no plan document and no attainment history for any year. Its job postings say only that employees may participate in discretionary incentive programmes. The targets below are modelled from the shape of employee-reported bonus components, and the observed column is the only measured evidence that exists.
| Band | Target | Mechanism | Recent payout |
|---|---|---|---|
EG0 Intern / University | 0% of base | Stipend or annualized base only. No discretionary incentive is established for interns in any source. | Not publicly disclosed |
EG1 Early Professional / Associate | 5% of base | Discretionary incentive signal with no published rule. Anonymous employee discussion describes quarterly payouts. | Not publicly disclosed |
EG2 Professional | 8% of base | Role and performance dependent; no formal target is published. | Levels.fyi L2 bonus runs about 5.9 percent of base |
EG3 Senior Professional | 15% of base | Role and performance dependent; no formal target is published. | Levels.fyi L3 bonus runs about 16.0 percent of base |
EG4 Lead / Staff | 25% of base | Higher discretionary incentive exposure for leads and development managers. | Levels.fyi L4 bonus runs about 24.4 percent of base |
EG5 Principal / Senior Lead | 35% of base | Senior individual contributor and manager incentive exposure. | Levels.fyi L5 bonus runs about 54.9 percent of base on a small sample, well above the modelled target |
EG6 Senior Principal / Architect | 45% of base | Senior leadership and expert incentive exposure. | A Levels.fyi software-engineering manager sample shows bonus near 50 percent of base |
EG7 Distinguished / Director | 50% of base | Director incentive model. No official target exists in any source. | Not publicly disclosed |
EG8 Senior Director / Vice President | 65% of base | Vice president incentive model. No official target exists in any source. | Not publicly disclosed |
Employee payout timing and history
Company-wide payout attainment for 2024, 2025 and 2026 is not publicly disclosed. Anonymous employee discussion describes quarterly discretionary bonuses and frequent review cycles; because it is anonymous and dated, this report treats it as an observation rather than promoting it to company fact. The one measurable pattern is that the bonus share of a package climbs steeply with level, from roughly 4 to 6 percent of base at the two most junior mapped rungs to about 55 percent at the fifth, and that is exactly the range where the sample sizes get thinnest.
Sales and special incentives
No sales commission plan, quota structure, accelerator schedule or revenue-share arrangement was found in any source. Epic's public role catalogue is dominated by engineering, art, design, production and publishing rather than by quota-carrying sales roles, and the Epic Games Store and Unreal Engine revenue-share terms are commercial terms for developers, not employee compensation.
Equity — RSUs, PSUs, Options & ESPP
Epic is private, so employee equity means stock options in a company with no listed share price, no employee stock purchase plan and no routine liquidity. The instrument is confirmed by Epic's own words, because both the 2023 and the 2026 layoff communications changed option vesting and exercise terms. Almost everything that determines what an option is worth, the grant size, the strike price, the pool, the eligibility threshold and the route to sell, is not publicly disclosed.
- There is no equity-plan reserve table anywhere in the public record, because a private company files no Form 10-K, no proxy statement and no Form S-8. Pool size, grants outstanding, forfeitures and utilisation are all unavailable.
- The last publicly announced company valuation was $31.5 billion post-money in April 2022. The February 2024 Disney investment of $1.5 billion announced no new valuation, so the most recent published mark is more than four years old at the report date.
- A private-market marketplace estimate can be shown only as a dated, non-executable reference. It is not a public quote, it does not establish an employee strike price, and it must not be used to calculate grant value without the share count, strike price, class, dilution, transfer restrictions and company-approved liquidity terms.
- Both separation programmes materially improved option economics for departing employees, which is unusual and worth reading as a signal about how Epic treats the instrument. It also means an employee's option value depends on employment status in a way a listed company's restricted stock units generally do not.
Valuation marks, capital events and option treatment
Vesting — common reported employee schedule
This schedule is reported by Levels.fyi from employee submissions and Epic has published no plan document confirming that it is universal, so treat it as an observation rather than a rule. Vesting is also only the first of several gates: an option still has to be exercised at a strike price, held through whatever transfer restrictions apply, and eventually sold through a company-approved route that Epic has opened publicly exactly once.
Eligibility by hierarchy level
- Interns are not established as eligible, and the employee-reported signal is that options generally begin only after a year of service.
- Some employee option participation is evidenced company-wide by the two layoff communications, but the minimum eligible band is not public at any level from EG1 upward.
- No grant-size matrix, refresh cadence or band-level value schedule exists in any source, so this report shows a zero equity component on every band rather than an estimate.
- At EG6 and above, discretionary long-term value is likely to be a much larger share of the package than the modelled cash suggests, but the instrument economics remain entirely private.
- Tim Sweeney controls Epic through common stock. Founder ownership is a capital structure, not an award schedule, and it says nothing about what any employee receives.
Executive Compensation
Epic Games, Inc. is private and files nothing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, so no Summary Compensation Table exists. Chief executive salary, bonus, option awards, perquisites and total compensation, every other officer package, the board fee schedule and the CEO-to-median-employee ratio are all not publicly disclosed. This report leaves the executive pay panel empty rather than estimating any of them.
These three rows exist to show the disclosure format Epic does not produce, not to imply a comparison. Electronic Arts, Roblox and Unity are listed issuers whose grant-date accounting values and pay-ratio populations are set by regulation; the spread between a 62:1 ratio at Roblox and a 305:1 ratio at Electronic Arts comes almost entirely from the median employee, at $394,900 and $126,600 respectively, rather than from the chief executive. None of it can be used to infer Tim Sweeney's salary, distributions, option awards or ownership economics, and a peer chart with an invented Epic bar would be worse than an explicit absence.
Named Executive Officers & Board
Epic's public leadership record is a list of names and nothing else. The company page identifies the founder and chief executive, and public professional profiles and leadership directories identify the president and the functional C-suite, but no compensation figure attaches to any of them.
Publicly identified senior leadership includes Tim Sweeney as founder and Chief Executive Officer, Adam Sussman as President, Kim Libreri as Chief Technology Officer and Randy Gelber as Chief Financial Officer. Compensation for every one of these roles is not publicly disclosed. Sweeney was described as the controlling shareholder in Epic's own 2020 and 2021 funding releases, which is a governance fact rather than a pay fact. No chief human resources officer, general counsel or regional head has a published package either, and Epic has never issued anything resembling a remuneration report.
Board compensation framework
| Element | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Board composition | Not publicly disclosed | Epic publishes no board list. Investors including Sony, KIRKBI, Disney and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan have taken equity stakes since 2020, but no director roster or appointment right has been published. |
| Annual cash retainer | Not publicly disclosed | A private company files no proxy statement, so no director fee schedule exists in the public record. |
| Committee and meeting fees | Not publicly disclosed | No audit, compensation or nominating committee structure has been published. |
| Director equity | Not publicly disclosed | No director stock or option award has ever been disclosed. Founder control through a single class of common stock is the only publicly described governance economic. |
Every line of the board panel is empty for the same structural reason: director compensation becomes public through a proxy statement, and Epic does not file one. Nothing here should be read as evidence that directors are unpaid, only that the figure is unavailable.
Regional heads and other officers
There is no named-executive table, no Section 16 population and no equivalent of a directors' report, so there is no layer at which officer pay becomes visible. Regional and studio leadership appear in the careers portal and in the 2023 and 2026 layoff communications by title only. The single quantified fact about senior pay in the entire public record is that a Vancouver Director of Product Management posting carries a CA$269,967 to CA$395,952 base range, and that is a job advertisement rather than an officer disclosure.
Insider Trades — SEC Forms 3/4/5
Epic is not listed on any United States exchange, nor on the BSE, NSE or ASX. There is therefore no SEC Form 3, 4 or 5 stream, no SEBI reporting, no promoter-trade ledger and no public option-exercise feed. An insider-trade table for Epic would be fabricated, so this one is empty and the publicly disclosed capital and liquidity events appear underneath instead.
Reading guide
Benefits & Perks
United States benefit evidence is genuinely strong because Epic states it on its own job postings, and it is unusually generous on health cover. Everywhere else the picture thins quickly: outside the United States this report can mostly show the statutory floor that applies in a market, not what Epic actually provides, and a statutory floor is not a claim that Epic provides only the minimum.
United States
- Medical — 100 percent of employee and dependent premiums paid by Epic. Current job postings state that Epic pays the full premium for medical, dental and vision health reimbursement arrangement coverage for the employee and dependents. That is a materially better headline than the partial-premium norm at listed technology peers. [official]
- Protection — Long-term disability and life insurance. Both are listed on current United States postings. Cover multiples and elective buy-up terms are not stated. [official]
- Retirement — 401(k) plan. A 401(k) is listed on current postings but the match formula is not stated on any official page. The 2023 layoff communication separately vested unearned United States 401(k) profit sharing for affected employees, which indicates a profit-sharing component exists. [official]
- Time away — Unlimited paid time off and sick time. Both are stated on current postings. Employees are recognised at seven years of service with a paid sabbatical, which is a rarer benefit than the unlimited-leave headline and a real retention lever. [official]
- Separation — March 2026 severance terms. Affected employees received at least four months of base pay with more by tenure, six months of United States healthcare, option vesting accelerated through January 2027 and up to two years to exercise. The September 2023 programme paid six months of base with acceleration through the end of 2024 and two extra years to exercise. [official]
Global programs
- Wellbeing — Employee assistance programme and broad wellbeing support. Listed by employee-reported benefit sources. The vendor and country-by-country availability are not published, so coverage outside the United States cannot be confirmed. [reported]
- Work model — Role and location dependent. Remote and hybrid flexibility appear to vary by role and site in the careers portal, and no universal global work-model policy was found in any source. [reported]
- Learning — Not publicly disclosed. No verified global tuition, certification or professional development reimbursement schedule exists. [npd]
- Equity — Stock options with private terms. The instrument is officially evidenced but grant eligibility, values, vesting documents and liquidity timing are all private, so equity cannot be treated as a quantified benefit in any market. [npd]
Benefit fields not publicly quantified
Outside the United States, most of this panel is a statutory floor rather than an Epic policy. That is a disclosure gap, not a judgement: Epic publishes no country benefit guides at all, and its United States postings are generous enough on health cover that assuming the minimum elsewhere would probably understate the package. Anyone benchmarking a non-United States offer should ask for the country benefit summary directly, because it is not obtainable from public sources.
Performance Review & Pay Progression
Epic publishes no performance framework of any kind. There is no rating scale, no review calendar, no rating-to-increase matrix and no promotion rule in the public record, and the only measurable signals are employee sentiment scores and the shape of the bonus curve by level.
Not publicly disclosed
Modeled promotion planning timeline
| Band | Years to next scope | Promotion hike | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| EG0 | Conversion offer at the end of the programme; option eligibility is reported to begin only after a year of service | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| EG1 | 2–3 years to EG2 in the model; Epic publishes no promotion rule | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| EG2 | 2–4 years to EG3 in the model | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| EG3 | 3–5 years to EG4 in the model | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| EG4 | 3–5 years to EG5 in the model | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| EG5 | 3–5 years to EG6 in the model | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| EG6 | 4–6 years to EG7 in the model | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| EG7 | Variable; Epic publishes no promotion timing or promotion increase | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| EG8 | Not publicly disclosed | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
The sentiment data are the closest thing to a progression signal that exists. Blind's current review page shows 4.1 out of 5 overall, 4.3 for compensation and benefits, 3.9 for work-life balance and 3.3 for management across 101 reviews, and Comparably reports that 63 percent of respondents believe they are paid fairly. Compensation is the highest-rated dimension and management the lowest, which is a pattern worth noting when the pay structure itself is discretionary and unpublished: employees rate the money well and the process poorly.
Pay progression evidence
Modelled progression, not Epic policy, and the underlying promotion timings are unevidenced: EG1 to EG2 typically 2 to 3 years, EG2 to EG3 2 to 4 years, EG3 to EG4 3 to 5 years, EG4 to EG5 3 to 5 years, EG5 to EG6 3 to 5 years and EG6 to EG7 4 to 6 years, with nothing published above that. The more useful number is the change in mix rather than the change in base: the modelled variable target triples between EG2 and EG4 and doubles again by EG8, so a promotion at Epic moves a much larger share of the package into discretionary cash than the base movement alone suggests, and none of that discretionary cash has a published payout history.
H-1B / LCA Visa Footprint — United States
United States labour condition applications are the only government-derived wage series available for a private company like Epic, which makes them disproportionately useful here. They are also base salary only, they exclude bonus and options entirely, and the five aggregators covering Epic disagree because they refresh on different fiscal years and count different immigration processes.
Dataset summary
| Dataset | Result | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| H1BGrader FY2026 salary view | $194,100 median and $289,000 ninetieth percentile | The highest median of any source, drawn from a source-specific FY2026 labour condition application sample. |
| MyVisaJobs employer profile | 18 FY2026 applications and 61 FY2025 applications at a $173,699 FY2025 average | Keeps labour condition applications, prevailing wage determinations and I-129 petitions as separate counts, which is why its volumes look smaller than others. |
| H1BVisaJobs multi-year wage levels | 141 certified records at $118,000, $156,000 and $200,000 | The longest time window and therefore the lowest percentiles, because older filings carry older wage levels. |
| Ellis current view | $135,000 median and $153,970 average | The lowest figures of any source, on a different period and employer-name filter. |
| h1bdata.info record listing | City and title level wage observations for FY2025 | The only source that exposes individual worksite medians, though it does not consistently expose the sample size behind each city. |
City-level H-1B wage history
| City | P25 | Median | P75 | Records |
|---|---|---|---|---|
All United States worksites The only view where all three percentiles and a record count are published together, drawn from certified records across a multi-year window rather than a single fiscal year. | $118K | $156,000 | $200K | 141 |
All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.
Selected title / worksite records
| Title | Worksite | Proffered wage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 city median | Cary, North Carolina | $135,000 | The headquarters median sits below the national multi-year median, which is consistent with Cary being the lowest-cost of Epic's major United States sites. |
| FY2025 city median | Raleigh, North Carolina | $145,000 | Slightly above Cary in the visa records even though the model places Raleigh at 0.98 of Cary, a reminder that a handful of filings can move a city median. |
| FY2025 city median | Bellevue, Washington | $210,000 | About 1.56 times the Cary median, well above the 1.15 base factor used in the model, because the visa population skews to senior engineering. |
| FY2025 city median | San Diego, California | $229,800 | San Diego does not appear on Epic's public office list or in the location model at all, so this is visa-record evidence of a worksite the office directory does not surface. |
| FY2025 city median | Larkspur, California | $300,000 | The highest city median in the record set and almost certainly a very small sample, so it should be read as an individual filing rather than a market rate. |
| FY2025 city median | Los Angeles, California | $129,700 | Below Cary despite a 1.10 base factor, which suggests the Los Angeles visa population sits at a more junior or more creative role mix than the engineering-heavy Washington filings. |
Reading the data correctly
- Labour condition application wages are the proffered guaranteed base salary. They exclude cash bonus and stock options entirely and must never be compared with a total compensation figure.
- Only the multi-year national view publishes all three percentiles and a record count together. The six city rows expose a median alone, so they appear as individual observations rather than as a percentile table.
- Counts are not interchangeable across sources. Labour condition applications, I-129 petitions, approvals, prevailing wage determination requests and permanent labour certifications are five different processes measured on different clocks.
- A record count is not a headcount. Filings include extensions and amendments for existing employees, so the same person can appear more than once.
- City medians are unstable at Epic's filing volume. With 141 certified records spread across at least six worksites over several years, a single senior filing visibly moves a city figure.
Key Nuances & Insights
Epic's posted New York machine-learning internship annualizes at $139,029 to $166,834, while Cary production assistants report $42,000 to $63,000 and QA analysts $67,000 to $107,000. The EG0 anchor therefore sits above the EG1 anchor, and that is a real feature of the data rather than a modelling error: a technical internship at Epic is priced against the engineering market, and the early professional band is dominated by production, QA and support families that are not.
At a listed peer the equity share of a package climbs with level and the bonus target moves modestly. At Epic the opposite is visible: reported bonus runs at roughly 4 to 6 percent of base at the two most junior mapped rungs and about 55 percent at the fifth, while the reported stock column is frequently zero because a private option has no price to enter. Anyone modelling an Epic offer against a public-company ladder will systematically misread where the money sits.
Epic's own separation communications changed option vesting and exercise windows twice, which is only possible for a live instrument. Grant size, strike price, pool, refresh cadence, the ordinary-course exercise window and the eligibility band are all unpublished. Every band in this report therefore shows a zero equity component, which is a disclosure statement rather than a claim that no options are granted.
More is known about what happens to an Epic option when someone is made redundant than about what happens to it in the ordinary course. The 2023 programme accelerated vesting through the end of 2024 and added two years to exercise; the 2026 programme accelerated through January 2027 with up to two years to exercise. Both are unusually favourable, and both are the only official statements Epic has made about option mechanics at all.
The August 2020 financing included secondary purchases from employee equity holders. That proves a company-approved route can exist; it does not prove any employee can sell on demand, and no further employee liquidity window has been publicly announced in the six years since. A vested option in a private company is an asset with no evidenced exit schedule.
The employee-reported schedule vests 20 percent a year over five years with eligibility beginning after a year of service. Against the four-year standard at listed technology peers that is a materially longer path to full vesting, and combined with the absence of a routine liquidity window it pushes realisable value further out than the headline schedule suggests.
Both absences are structural rather than stylistic: an employee stock purchase plan needs a listed share and a public purchase price. For someone moving from Electronic Arts, Roblox or Unity, the predictable self-sized part of a technology package disappears entirely, and the whole long-term component depends on an option that cannot be valued from public information.
The $31.5 billion post-money valuation dates from April 2022. The $1.5 billion Disney investment announced in February 2024 disclosed no new valuation, so nothing published since the Sony and KIRKBI round prices Epic's equity. Any private-market marketplace estimate circulating in 2026 is a marketplace indication, not a company-approved valuation, and it cannot establish an employee strike price.
Pay-transparency law, not disclosure policy, produces the ranges on Epic's postings, and each one binds only the exact role and salary zone shown. The same principal programmer band is posted at $235,498 to $345,397 in California and priced by this model at roughly 0.8 of that in Cary. Quoting a California zone in a North Carolina negotiation is the single most common mistake available with this data.
Current United States postings state that Epic pays 100 percent of employee and dependent premiums for medical, dental and vision coverage. Full dependent premium cover is well above the partial-premium norm at large technology employers, and for an employee with a family it can be worth more annually than the difference between two adjacent bands in the cash model.
A paid sabbatical at seven years of service appears on current postings alongside the unlimited paid time off language. Unlimited leave is a widely copied policy whose real value is contested; a service-milestone sabbatical is a concrete, dateable benefit and it is the only tenure-linked reward Epic publishes anywhere.
No current material Bangalore office and no clean Epic-specific Indian pay dataset were verified, and the Australian signal is a historical branch rather than a current pay basis. Both markets are deliberately absent from the location table. Any Indian salary search for Epic must exclude Epic Systems, the United States healthcare software company, whose Indian results would otherwise contaminate every figure.
The model places Bellevue at 1.15 and Los Angeles at 1.10 of Cary, but FY2025 visa medians show Bellevue at $210,000 against Cary's $135,000, about 1.56 times, and Los Angeles at $129,700, below Cary. That is a role-mix effect rather than a pay effect: the sponsored population differs sharply by city at Epic's small filing volume, and it is a good reminder not to treat a city median from 141 records as a market rate.
Research control
Epic cannot be positioned against its peers the way a listed company can, because only one side of the comparison has numbers. On the employee side the Cary ladder tracks the wider games and platform market closely at senior technical levels, with a posted California principal range of $235,498 to $345,397 that would not look out of place at Electronic Arts or Roblox, while the reported United States median package of $254,000 sits comfortably in large-cap technology territory. The genuine difference is structural rather than numerical: peers deliver a large, priceable, routinely liquid equity component and Epic delivers an option whose value cannot be calculated from public information. On the executive side no comparison is possible at all, and the peer chief executive rows are shown only to display the disclosure format Epic does not produce.
Evidence classification
| Label | Meaning | Examples and permitted use |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | An Epic communication, an official job posting carrying a statutory salary range, an investor release or a government rule. | Treat as fact for the exact role, location, date and population stated, and no further. |
| Reported | Employee-submitted pay from Levels.fyi, Glassdoor or Indeed, a labour condition application wage record, or a sentiment score. | Directionally useful, sample-biased, and never internal policy. Sample sizes at senior levels are small enough that a handful of submissions move a median. |
| Modeled | A Cary anchor observation multiplied by one flat city factor and the 26 August 2026 foreign-exchange snapshot. | A planning envelope for orientation, not an Epic offer, an Epic salary schedule or a legal entitlement. |
| Not publicly disclosed | A field that exists for listed issuers and simply does not exist for Epic, or a figure Epic has chosen not to publish. | Left empty. Filling one of these with a peer figure or a market estimate would be the most damaging error available in this report. |
Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index
Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell
- 1The ladder stops at EG8. The source bundle carries EG9 for the C-suite and EG10 for the founder and board, but both are entirely not publicly disclosed, and adding them with a zero or an estimate would have distorted every location cell in the model. They are carried in the executive and career-level panels instead.
- 2The employee-reported L1 to L5 software-engineering ladder is deliberately not shown as a second band table. Those figures are national United States medians skewed toward high-cost markets, so applying Cary city factors to them would double-count geography. They appear as observed signals inside the band notes and the variable-pay panel instead.
- 3The source bundle's planning total added an 8 to 12 percent employer benefit load on top of base and variable pay. That is employer cost rather than employee pay and it has been stripped from every total here, so figures in this report run roughly 6 to 12 percent below the bundle's own appendix totals at the same band.
- 4Base and total factors are identical in every market and no top-of-ladder factors are used, because the bundle prices no equity into any city and therefore evidences no level-dependent compression. Any apparent convergence at senior levels in other sources is a global equity figure being pasted into every country, not geography.
- 5Seven markets named in the original research brief carry no pay data at all: Boston, Warsaw, Zurich, Madrid, Barcelona, Melbourne and Bangalore. No current material Epic office and no clean Epic-specific pay dataset were verified for any of them, and nearby-market substitutes were rejected.
- 6Epic's founding year, fiscal year end, revenue and exact headcount are all absent from this report because no source in the bundle establishes them. The roughly 4,000 post-cut headcount estimate is a widely reported figure rather than a company disclosure.
- 7The H-1B sources disagree materially, from a $135,000 Ellis median to a $194,100 H1BGrader median, because they refresh on different fiscal years and count different immigration processes. All five views are shown rather than reconciled into one number.
- 8Novi Sad is priced in euro rather than Serbian dinar, following the source bundle's own calibration. The local column for that market should be read as a euro equivalent rather than a payroll currency.
FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-26
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 — 37 sources
| S01 | About Epic Games · Epic Games · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Company status, founder and chief executive, Cary headquarters and the worldwide office statement. |
| S02 | Epic Games careers and current jobs · Epic Games · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Title catalogue, office locations, 201 open positions and the 84-role engineering share. |
| S03 | Today's layoffs · Epic Games · 24 March 2026. More than 1,000 role eliminations, severance terms, option vesting acceleration through January 2027 and the extended exercise window. |
| S04 | Layoffs at Epic · Epic Games · 28 September 2023. 830 layoffs, divestitures, six months of base pay, option acceleration, healthcare and 401(k) profit-sharing treatment. |
| S05 | Epic Games announces $1.78 billion funding round · Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan · 6 August 2020. Primary capital plus secondary purchases from employee equity holders at a $17.3 billion post-money valuation. |
| S06 | $1 billion funding round · Epic Games · 13 April 2021. $28.7 billion equity valuation, single class of common stock and founder control. |
| S07 | Sony and KIRKBI invest in Epic Games · Epic Games · 11 April 2022. $2 billion investment at a $31.5 billion post-money valuation, the latest published mark. |
| S08 | Disney and Epic Games collaboration and equity investment · The Walt Disney Company · 7 February 2024. $1.5 billion equity investment announced with no new valuation disclosed. |
| S09 | Epic Games company profile and office list · LinkedIn company page · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Public list of more than 40 offices used to establish which markets exist. |
| S10 | Senior Technical Artist job posting · Epic Games careers · Retrieved 27 August 2026. United States base range of $151,585 to $252,641 and the 100 percent premium benefit language. |
| S11 | Senior Technical Artist, World and Content Creation posting · Epic Games careers · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Unlimited paid time off, sick time and the seven-year paid sabbatical. |
| S12 | Director, Product Management (Discovery) posting · Epic Games careers · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Vancouver director base range of CA$269,967 to CA$395,952, the only non-United States posted anchor. |
| S13 | Principal Software Programmer, Media Services posting · Epic Games careers · Retrieved 27 August 2026. California principal base range of $235,498 to $345,397 used to anchor EG5. |
| S14 | Engine Programmer posting · Epic Games careers · Retrieved 27 August 2026. California engine programmer base range of $147,311 to $216,057. |
| S15 | Machine Learning Intern posting · Epic Games careers · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Annualized New York intern base range of $139,029 to $166,834 used to anchor EG0. |
| S16 | Epic Games salaries and benefits · Levels.fyi · Updated 26 August 2026. Role medians, the $254,000 United States median package, the reported option type and the five-year vesting signal. |
| S17 | Epic Games software engineer salaries, L1 to L5 · Levels.fyi · Updated 26 August 2026. Base, bonus and total components by level and the bonus-to-base ratios used for the variable-pay curve. |
| S19 | Epic Games salaries in Cary · Glassdoor · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Seven Cary role ranges and their submission counts, the densest anchor-city evidence available. |
| S20 | Epic Games salaries in Montreal · Glassdoor · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Montreal role ranges on sparse samples and Canadian benefit language. |
| S21 | Epic Games software engineer salaries, Greater London · Levels.fyi · Updated 26 August 2026. London L2 to L4 observations and median total compensation supporting the 0.72 factor. |
| S22 | Epic Games Vancouver salaries · Indeed · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Designer and development-manager posting-derived averages used as an EG4 cross-check. |
| S24 | Epic Games company reviews · Blind · Retrieved 27 August 2026. 4.1 overall, 4.3 compensation, 3.9 work-life and 3.3 management across 101 reviews. |
| S25 | Epic Games compensation reviews · Comparably · Retrieved 27 August 2026. 63 percent of respondents reporting that they believe they are paid fairly. |
| S26 | Epic Games H-1B employer overview · MyVisaJobs · Updated 18 August 2026. FY2026 application, prevailing wage and petition counts, and the FY2025 average base wage. |
| S27 | Epic Games H-1B salaries FY2026 · H1BGrader · Retrieved 27 August 2026. FY2026 median of $194,100 and ninetieth percentile of $289,000. |
| S28 | Epic Games H-1B salary records · h1bdata.info · Retrieved 27 August 2026. The six FY2025 city medians from Cary, Raleigh, Bellevue, San Diego, Larkspur and Los Angeles. |
| S29 | Epic Games H-1B salary overview · Ellis · Retrieved 27 August 2026. Cross-source median of $135,000 and average of $153,970 on a different period filter. |
| S30 | Epic Games H-1B wage levels · H1BVisaJobs · Retrieved 27 August 2026. 141 certified records at $118,000, $156,000 and $200,000 across a multi-year window. |
| S31 | Super guarantee rates and thresholds · Australian Taxation Office · Current 2026. The 12 percent statutory superannuation guarantee in force from 1 July 2025. |
| S32 | Annual leave, sick and carer's leave, parental leave entitlements · Fair Work Ombudsman · Current 2026. Australian statutory leave floors shown in place of an unavailable Epic Australia benefit guide. |
| S35 | Employees' Provident Fund scheme · Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, India · Current 2026. The 12 percent employee and employer contribution framework shown as a statutory floor. |
| S36 | Workplace pension contributions and holiday entitlement guidance · GOV.UK · Current 2026. United Kingdom auto-enrolment minimums and the 5.6-week statutory holiday floor. |
| S38 | Euro foreign exchange reference rates · European Central Bank · 26 August 2026. The single foreign-exchange snapshot used for every local-currency conversion in this report. |
| S39 | Roblox 2026 proxy statement · Roblox Corporation via SEC EDGAR · 2026. Peer chief executive total of $24.57 million and a 62.2:1 ratio against a $394,900 median employee. |
| S40 | Unity 2026 proxy statement · Unity Software via SEC EDGAR · 2026. Peer chief executive total of $10.57 million and its salary, stock and incentive split. |
| S41 | Electronic Arts FY2026 Form 10-K/A · Electronic Arts via SEC EDGAR · 2026. Peer chief executive total of $38.65 million and a 305:1 ratio against a $126,600 median employee. |
| S42 | Epic Games private-market estimate · Public.com · July 2026. Cited only to state that a marketplace indication exists and must not be used to value an employee option. |
Recent News & Workforce Trend
Epic's compensation news is made of layoffs and funding rounds rather than pay actions. No companywide salary increase, merit budget or bonus payout has ever been announced, and the two events that most changed employee pay economics were both separation programmes.
Epic has never published a headcount, an attrition rate or a quarterly net addition figure, so the only workforce numbers in the public record are the two layoff counts it announced itself. Neither memo gave a resulting total. Office-level headcount is not disclosed anywhere either, which is why the location table in this report ranks markets by pay factor and hiring activity rather than by size.
191 regular and 10 intern positions were live on the snapshot date. Engineering was the largest department, and the geographic spread of live openings covers Cary, the West Coast United States sites, New York, Montreal, Vancouver, London and Porto Alegre.
Levels.fyi records run from $118,500 at its L1 mapping to $439,700 at L5, with the bonus share of base rising from about 3.9 percent to about 54.9 percent across that span and the reported stock column frequently at zero.
MyVisaJobs recorded 18 labour condition applications, 12 prevailing wage determination requests and eight I-129 petitions with no denials, against 61 applications and a $173,699 average base in FY2025.
Epic linked the reduction to a 2025 Fortnite engagement downturn and identified more than $500 million of additional savings. Affected employees received at least four months of base pay with more by tenure, six months of United States healthcare, accelerated option vesting through January 2027 and up to two years to exercise.
Announced alongside a multi-year entertainment project. No new company valuation was disclosed, so the April 2022 mark remained the latest published figure.
About 16 percent of jobs were eliminated, Bandcamp was divested and most of SuperAwesome was spun out. Affected employees received six months of base pay, option vesting accelerated through the end of 2024, two additional years to exercise, healthcare continuation in the United States, Canada and Brazil, and vesting of unearned United States 401(k) profit sharing.
Each investor contributed $1 billion. This is the most recent publicly announced valuation for Epic and therefore the most recent reference point of any kind for employee option value.
The release described a single class of common stock with Tim Sweeney remaining the controlling shareholder, which is the capital structure underneath every employee option.
At a $17.3 billion post-money valuation, the round combined primary capital with purchases from employee equity holders. It is the only publicly evidenced employee liquidity event in Epic's history.