- Companies are required to publicly disclose how much they pay workers when hiring those workers from overseas on H-1B visas.
- Business Insider obtained this public data to see the actual salaries controversial data analytics company Palantir says it pays workers in areas like engineering, product design and other roles.
For a secretive company, Palantir regularly makes a lot of noise between controversies over its work with government agencies like ICE and assertive statements from its CEO Alex Karp.
For instance, in its recently filed paperwork to become a public company, Karp threw this zinger at Silicon Valley: "The engineering elite of Silicon Valley may know more than most about building software. But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires."
The data analytics company, cofounded in 2004 by billionaire Peter Thiel, Karp and a handful of others, is famously tight-lipped about much of its work and some of its customers which include spy agencies worldwide, the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Palantir's leadership describes its work as "patriotic," while others have lobbed criticisms, including its own personnel. And others have said, despite any public drama, working at Palantir is ordinary verging on dull.
All of this has had little impact on the the company's ability to grow its headcount. It employees about 2,400 people as of the end of June, it said,
So how much can you make working for Palantir? We can glean insight from how much it pays the workers it hires from overseas. Corporations have to disclose to the federal government how much they pay workers through the H-1B visa program, an important part of how tech companies recruit. The Office of Foreign Labor Certification makes that information public annually.
Business Insider went through data released in 2020, which included jobs hired for up to the last six year, to discover how much Palantir pays engineers, product designers, and others. These hires were for positions in New York, California and Washington, D.C.
This is annual salary data only and does not include other compensation such as stock or bonuses. When there were multiple entries of hires for the same title, we included the range of salaries paid. Although not a complete picture of how much the data unicorn pays its workers, the information still provides rare insight into a private company.
Check out how much Palantir is willing to pay its workers below.
Customer-facing roles: Palantir hired a forward deployed engineer for $207,900
The most common roles Palantir recruited for were jobs helping customers implement and troubleshoot their product.
Palantir hired 23 "forward deployed engineers," more than any other position. Forward deployed engineers adapt Palantir's products to a client's needs and prototype new features, the company explained in its job listings.
One such engineer, hired at $207,900 a year, was the highest-paid person on this list.
The company also hired six "deployment strategists," who troubleshoot the company's products for clients, and a sales engineer with the lofty title of "business cultivation engineer."
A deployment strategist hired for $85,000 a year was the lowest-paid person of the positions Business Insider viewed for Palantir.
Forward deployed engineers: $207,900 - $110,000
Business cultivation engineer: $187,500
Deployment strategist: $120,773 - $85,000
Product development: Palantir hired a product designer for $145,000
Palantir's wealth of data tools have many features and uses, and the company was looking for people to help it add more. The company hired six people in roles relating to internal product development.
Product designer: $145,000 - $120,000
DevOps engineer: $140,000
Bioinformatics: $100,000
Other roles: Palantir hired a software engineer for $205,000
Palantir, like many tech companies filling positions with overseas applicants, was also looking for software engineers, and hired 10, the second most common job title on this list.
Software engineer: $205,000 - $115,000
Data engineer: $138,000
Operations analyst: $140,000
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o8HSoqWeq6Oeu7S1w56pZ5ufonyxrcuapa2homLAorjAq6Ceq12nsrexwKWcnWWWpL9usc2goKedlafAbrzRqJuum6Risaa%2FyKClnqqjYn9xfo9mcA%3D%3D