India Tech Salaries 2026: What FAANG Actually Pays vs TCS/Infosys (Real Data)

If you're a software engineer in India, your salary is determined by one
factor more than any other — not your skills, not your city, not your
years of experience.

It's your company type.

Here's what the data actually shows.

The FAANG vs IT Services gap is larger than most people admit

A Senior Software Engineer at TCS or Infosys earns ₹18–28L. The same
title at Google or Amazon India earns ₹80–110L.

That's a 3–5× difference. At the same experience level. In the same city.

The mid-level gap is just as stark:

TCS/Infosys SDE-2: ₹12–18L
Indian unicorn (Swiggy, CRED, Razorpay): ₹30–50L
FAANG India: ₹45–70L

(Source: Pathvio India Tech Salary Report 2026
— covers 15 roles, 6 cities, 4 company types)

The skill premium that's actually moving salaries in 2026

ML engineers with LLM fine-tuning experience earn ₹12–15L more than
those without at the same experience level. That's the single largest
skill-based premium Pathvio's data has measured.

For context: a mid-level ML engineer without LLM skills earns ~₹22–28L.
Add production LLM experience and you're at ₹35–42L.

Automation QA is the other big story. Manual QA at 4 YoE: ₹8–12L.
Automation QA (Playwright, k6) at the same experience: ₹14–20L.
A 40–70% premium for the same title, just different tools.

What Bangalore's salary premium actually looks like after rent

Everyone knows Bangalore pays more. But the real number after rent is
smaller than the CTC suggests.

Software Engineer, mid-level:

Bangalore: ₹26L median CTC → ~₹1.44L/month take-home after 1BHK rent (₹28K)
Pune: ₹20L median CTC → ~₹1.18L/month take-home after 1BHK rent (₹14K)

The CTC gap looks like 30%. The effective take-home gap is closer to 22%.

Bangalore's real advantage isn't the salary bump — it's the access to
Staff+ roles and equity-bearing positions that simply don't exist at
scale in other cities.

The service-to-product switch numbers

Engineers who move from TCS/Infosys/Wipro to a product company see
2–3× salary within 2 years on average. Not over a career. Within 2 years.

The jump happens in two stages: the initial offer (usually 1.5–2× the
service company CTC) and the first promotion cycle at the product company
(where bands are much wider).

One thing most offer letters hide

At ₹50L+ CTC, roughly 35% of the package is non-cash — ESOP vesting,
variable payout, PF, gratuity. Engineers who compare CTCs without
accounting for this routinely overestimate their actual monthly take-home
by ₹30,000–₹60,000.

If you want to understand how to decode your own offer letter — what's
real cash vs what's a 4-year vesting cliff — Pathvio has a
free guide on reading Indian offer letters.