European Executive Salary Survey 2026
Salary, bonus, and equity compensation benchmarks for Europe's top tech executives
Explore data from 1,000+ European tech executives – and see how your executive compensation packages compare to the top quartile of talent across function, revenue, and region.
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Executive pay varies significantly by function – a CMO and CTO at the same company can have a £62k gap
At $50-250M ARR, a CEO earns £331k at P75, a CRO £274k, and a CMO just £199k – a £132k spread across the same leadership team.
Function drives as much variance in executive pay as company size – which means benchmarking one exec role in isolation gives you an incomplete picture of whether your overall leadership team is competitively paid.
CEO base salary more than doubles between early and late stage
CEO P75 base increases 106% between <$10M and $250M–$1B ARR (£200k → £411k). CMO follows at 80%, CRO and CFO close behind at 74% and 72%.
CTO increases just 44% across the same range – the revenue-to-scope relationship is much stronger for commercial and financial roles than for engineering leadership.
Early-stage execs get stock options, late-stage get RSUs, and PE-backed is a different world entirely
At early stage, tax-advantaged options dominate (41%) – the most accessible way to offer meaningful upside when cash is constrained. By late stage, non-tax-advantaged options become most common (43%) and RSUs rise to 24% as companies approach liquidity.
PE-backed companies are structurally different again – growth and hurdle shares (26%) and co-investment (6%) are far more prevalent than in VC-backed companies, reflecting a fundamentally different model for executive upside.
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