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Key Takeaways Meta’s 2025 work-visa data shows most workers earn between $150,000 and $250,000 in salary.
Software engineers can make up to $450,000, while research engineers earn up to $400,000.
The highest pay in the data went to a vice president of AI, who received a salary of $650,000.
Meta paid some of the highest salaries in tech last year, especially for software engineers and AI-focused roles. A recent Business Insider review of Meta’s more than 5,000 work-visa salary records found that most employees earned between $150,000 and $250,000 in base pay.
These work-visa filings span Meta and its subsidiaries, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, offering a rare window into pay practices across the company. The data focuses on base salary only and excludes stock grants, cash bonuses and benefits, which can dramatically increase total compensation.
Meta showed a willingness to pay at the very top of the market for critical technical positions last year. One software engineer earned a base salary of $450,000 per year, the highest figure reported for that role at the company. In comparison, Microsoft paid software engineers $82,971 to $284,000 in salary while Google paid the same role anywhere from $109,180 to $340,000.
Meanwhile, a research engineer at Meta received a base salary of $400,000, and a product manager’s compensation reached $348,000. At the highest end of the salary spectrum, a vice president of AI took home a salary of $650,000, underscoring how strategically important AI leadership has become to Meta.
The federal filings result from Meta hiring employees on H-1B visas, or visas for foreign workers with specialized skills. In September, the Trump administration imposed a $100,000 fee for every new H-1B visa application filed in the U.S. In response, Meta’s H-1B application volume nearly halved in the last quarter of 2025 compared to the same quarter a year earlier.
Here’s how much Meta paid foreign visa workers, according to filings from the 2025 fiscal year:
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