It's not uncommon to have budget be expressed in headcount rather than dollars, though. So you can hire one "senior software engineer" and your HR department ha

It's not uncommon to have budget be expressed in headcount rather than dollars, though. So you can hire one "senior software engineer" and your HR department has a model that tells them at what percentile of "senior software engineer" pay any given amount is - then you need to go into an exception process if you (as hiring manager) want to pay over 90th or 100th percentile or whatever.