ABOUT THIS DATA

CoS Comp is a free salary resource built specifically for Chiefs of Staff. Whether you are a candidate evaluating an offer, an employer building a compensation package, or simply curious about market rates, this is the reference document.

We publish salary ranges by city, company stage, and seniority level, along with guides on equity, negotiation, and compensation trends.

coverage: nationwide  |  roles: chief_of_staff  |  cost: $0

We built this because the salary data for Chiefs of Staff was terrible. Like, embarrassingly bad. Generic salary databases lump Chiefs of Staff in with executive assistants or operations managers. Which is like lumping a CFO in with "people who use Excel."

The Chief of Staff role is growing rapidly across startups and established companies alike. Yet compensation data for the role remains fragmented and hard to find. Role-specific data is scarce. We fixed that.

Public comp data. No registration. No agenda.

motivation: transparency  |  frustration_level: HIGH  |  regrets: none

Our salary data is sourced from real, publicly available compensation surveys and databases. We actually read these sources — every number on this site traces back to one of them. Where city-level or stage-level data is unavailable from public sources, we say so explicitly ("estimated" or "limited public data").

Data aggregated from Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, LinkedIn Salary, PayScale, and other publicly available compensation sources. Updated Q1 2026.

Where city-level or stage-level data is unavailable from public sources, we say so explicitly. PayScale's averages skew lower because they capture a broader definition of "Chief of Staff" including non-tech roles. We cross-reference multiple sources and flag where data is thin.