Hiring a founding engineer or first GTM hire in New York

The market in numbers

• Startups in New York State raised $27.9 billion in 2025 and have produced 298 unicorns to date, counting companies that reached a $1 billion valuation or exit, according to Dealroom.
• New York City closed 463 venture deals worth $12.6 billion in the last quarter of 2025 alone, in the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor.
• Crunchbase puts New York's share of US seed dollars at about 17% in 2025.

Sources:^[5][2][6]

Pay

The median software developer in the New York area earned $166,830 in 2025, with the 90th percentile at $224,590. In the first half of 2024, Carta found New York to be the only metro area where average startup pay can equal the Bay Area's.^[3][7]

Tech is a smaller share of jobs here than in San Francisco: computer and mathematical work is 3.5% of employment in the metro area, paying a mean of $67.04 an hour. Look at engineers in the city's finance and media companies as well as at other startups.^[8]

Two pay transparency laws

Since 1 November 2022, the New York City Human Rights Law requires employers to include a good-faith pay range in ads for jobs performed in the city. New York State's law covers employers with four or more employees and asks for compensation ranges in job postings across the state.^[9][10]

Hiring your first GTM person here

If you sell to finance or media companies, look for a first account executive who has sold to them before, and check it with a reference from a customer.

If you are hiring a founding engineer or a first GTM hire, tell us about the role and we will say plainly whether we can fill it.