Meta has made significant efforts at recruitment in 2025, with very attractive packages to retain its engineers and AI employees. According to Business Insider data, the base salaries offered to more than 5,800 visas by Meta range from $450,000 for software engineers to as much as the highest salaries offered in the tech world of Silicon Valley.
The H-1B visa details indicate a base salary ranging between $450,000 per year for a software engineer and $400,000 for research engineers. For product managers, this amount was up to $348,000 annually. This includes stock options and bonuses. The Vice President of AI has been offered a base salary of $650,000.
The filing shows that most new employees earned between $150,000 and $250,000, but those in senior technical and AI-focused roles received much higher salaries. Some examples are:
- AI Research Scientist: $163,800 to $328,000
- Machine Learning Engineer: $165,000 to $250,602
- Research Engineer: $124,000 to $400,000
- Software Engineer: $124,000 to $450,000
- UX Researcher: $163,000 to $292,160
- Data Scientist: $122,760 to $295,703
- Product Designer: $132,991 to $279,594
These figures reflect base salaries only; they do not include stock options and bonuses, which can double or even triple total salaries. According to the report, Meta offered top researchers total packages exceeding $100 million.
According to the data, nearly half of Meta's 2025 visa hires were software engineers. This figure shows how much the company relies on international talent. However, the filing also shows that the number of filings in the last quarter of 2025 was halved compared to the previous year, due to changes made by the Trump administration to the H-1B visa program. Meanwhile, Meta continued its restructuring and aggressively expanded its AI workforce. By the end of the year, Meta reported 78,865 employees in its 10-K filing.