I don't think I was ever offered a good salary for a Principal Engineer, but the highest end of the range I was given by recruiters that reached out to me was 1

I don't think I was ever offered a good salary for a Principal Engineer, but the highest end of the range I was given by recruiters that reached out to me was 150k total comp, which is actually lower than what I ended up accepting for a non-Principal Engineer position...so I suspect what I was told is not really "good" for Chicago right now. Levels.fyi claims 155k base and 217k total comp as the median for a Solutions Architect in Chicago, about the closest analog I can find on their site. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Solution-Architect/Greater-Chicago-Area/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Solution-Architect/Greater-C...