Salary transparency is more than a trend—it’s a foundation for trust, fairness, and employee engagement. Transparent compensation practices have been shown to improve retention, reduce pay gaps, and strengthen employer branding. However, implementing transparency requires more than just publishing salary ranges; it requires reliable data, a clear framework, and consistent communication.
TalentUp helps organizations achieve transparency by providing market-aligned benchmarks and structured compensation models. Here’s how to use it step-by-step.
Step 1: Set a Salary Framework
The first step toward salary transparency is building a clear and consistent salary framework. TalentUp gives you the data you need to define structured compensation plans that are fair, scalable, and easy to communicate.
Use TalentUp to:
Create salary bands by role and level For example, you can define a range for Junior Software Engineer in Berlin and a separate one for Senior Marketing Manager in Madrid. Each role should have its own structured range based on TalentUp’s market data.
Design consistent compensation progression Use percentile benchmarks (P25, P50, P75, P90) to illustrate how pay evolves with performance, experience, or tenure. For example, junior employees may start at P50, with top performers advancing to P75 over time.
Define policies for bonuses, benefits, and equity Go beyond base salary by using TalentUp insights to establish standard practices for variable pay and perks. This includes things like remote work allowances, commissions, or stock option eligibility based on role or level.
With a clear structure in place, your salary decisions become easier to explain and defend—internally and externally.
Step 2: Back Salary Decisions with Data
One of the most powerful benefits of TalentUp is that it allows you to justify salary decisions with real market evidence. This brings objectivity into conversations that are often emotionally charged.
Use TalentUp data to:
Justify hiring offers Show candidates how their offer aligns with the market—e.g., “We’re offering you P75 for your role in this location.” This builds confidence and reduces negotiation friction.
Support promotion-based raises When an employee is promoted, TalentUp data can help determine what raise is appropriate for the new level, ensuring consistency across departments.
Defend internal equity decisions If employees question their pay relative to others, percentile-based benchmarks from TalentUp offer a clear explanation: “You are paid at the market median (P50) for your level and experience.”
These data-backed justifications reduce ambiguity, promote fairness, and increase trust in the organization’s compensation practices.
Step 3: Communicate Clearly
Transparency is not just about publishing numbers—it’s about effective communication. TalentUp gives HR teams the structure and data they need to confidently engage with employees around compensation.
Here’s how:
Share salary ranges, not exact figures Providing bands based on market data (e.g., €50,000–€60,000 for a Mid-Level Product Manager) promotes openness without exposing sensitive individual data.
Educate managers on how salaries are set Equip your managers with context from TalentUp so they can explain to their teams why someone is in a particular range or percentile.
Use percentile language to reinforce fairness Phrases like “You’re currently at the P75 for your position in Madrid” help employees understand their placement and performance relative to the market.
Clear, consistent messaging increases employee understanding and decreases salary-related dissatisfaction or confusion.
Step 4: Train Managers
Managers play a key role in delivering compensation messages. TalentUp allows you to give them the tools they need to explain pay decisions with confidence and consistency.
Here’s how to make the most of this:
Use TalentUp data in performance and compensation calibrations During review cycles, equip managers with real-time benchmarks to ensure raises and bonuses are market-aligned and equitable.
Provide managers access or tailored reports Give managers direct access to TalentUp or share custom salary benchmarking reports for their teams. This empowers them to guide meaningful conversations with their direct reports.
Training managers to use compensation data correctly helps prevent miscommunication and keeps salary discussions grounded in facts, not assumptions.
Step 5: Enable Auditing and Compliance
Transparency also means accountability. TalentUp’s reporting and benchmarking features make it easier to conduct internal audits and demonstrate compliance with fair pay practices.
Use TalentUp to:
Export reports for auditing Download structured compensation data by role, location, or department to identify inconsistencies or gaps.
Detect and address pay disparities Regularly review salary distributions by gender, region, or role to uncover potential inequalities and take action proactively.
Support DEI and ESG reporting Compensation transparency plays a critical role in your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics. TalentUp helps quantify and communicate your progress.
With these tools, you don’t just build trust—you build a culture of fairness that can stand up to external scrutiny and internal expectations.
Conducting effective salary benchmarking is essential for building fair, competitive, and data-driven compensation strategies. With TalentUp, HR teams can access real-time salary intelligence to evaluate their current pay structures, align with market expectations, and make informed decisions that drive both retention and attraction.
This step-by-step guide will walk HR professionals through the entire benchmarking process using TalentUp’s platform—making it easy to go from strategy to action.
Step 1: Define the Purpose of the Benchmark
Before diving into the platform, it’s important to clarify why you’re conducting the benchmark. This will shape the type of data you search for, how you filter it, and how you apply the results.
Here are some common use cases:
Annual compensation reviews: Benchmark multiple roles to ensure your internal salaries are aligned with current market conditions.
Geographic expansion: Explore localized salary trends to establish compensation packages in new cities or countries.
Department-specific analysis: Focus your benchmarking on a particular team (e.g., engineering, sales, operations) to identify gaps or inconsistencies.
By defining your objective upfront, you avoid wasting time on irrelevant data and ensure your benchmarking efforts directly support your company’s HR strategy.
Step 2: Identify the Roles and Locations
With your purpose defined, the next step is to prepare a list of the specific roles and markets you want to analyze. TalentUp works best when the search is focused and contextualized.
Prepare a list including:
Job titles: Be precise—use clear role names like “Senior Backend Engineer” or “Product Marketing Manager.”
Cities or regions: Choose the relevant locations where you hire or operate. TalentUp offers data for over 200 global cities.
Seniority levels: Decide whether you need data for entry-level, mid-level, senior, or director-level positions. TalentUp’s percentile breakdown by experience helps map salary progression across levels.
Having this list ready will streamline your work and ensure you extract the most relevant salary data.
Step 3: Use the Salary Finder
Once you’re prepared, log into the TalentUp platform and head to the Salary Finder—your central tool for exploring market compensation data.
Follow these steps:
Log in to your TalentUp account.
Go to “Salary Finder” from the main dashboard.
Enter a job title (e.g., “UX Designer”) and select a city (e.g., “Berlin”).
Use available filters to refine your search:
Industry (e.g., SaaS, Healthcare, E-commerce)
Company size (e.g., 11–50 employees, 200–500 employees)
Seniority level (e.g., Junior, Mid, Senior, Lead)
Once filtered, TalentUp provides a comprehensive compensation breakdown including:
Base salary ranges
Bonus potential (annual or quarterly)
Common benefits (e.g., remote work, relocation, health insurance)
Stock options and equity offerings
Salary percentiles TalentUp presents salary data across key percentiles — P25, P50, P75, and P90 — to provide a comprehensive view of the market range.
P25: Represents the lower end of the market, often aligned with entry-level or budget-conscious offers.
P50 (Median): Reflects the midpoint—where 50% of professionals earn less and 50% earn more—and is widely used as a reference for standard market pay.
P75: Indicates above-average compensation, typically used to attract experienced or in-demand talent.
P90: Marks the top 10% of salaries, often offered in highly competitive or scarce talent markets.
Every company should decide which percentile(s) best align with its compensation philosophy. Whether your goal is to lead the market, stay competitive, or manage costs, defining your positioning helps ensure you offer fair and attractive salaries — without overpaying or falling behind market expectations.
Step 4: Compare Internally
Benchmarking isn’t complete without comparing your internal compensation against external standards. TalentUp makes this easy through the “Manage Employees” feature.
Here’s how to use it:
Navigate to “Manage Employees” in the platform.
Download the Excel template provided.
Fill in your current employee data:
Job title
Location
Salary
Seniority level
Upload the completed file back into the platform.
Once uploaded, TalentUp will automatically:
Map each internal role to its market equivalent.
Flag misalignments, such as below-market or over-market pay.
Provide actionable recommendations on how to adjust salaries by role, region, or department.
This helps HR teams identify pay disparities, build fair salary bands, and strengthen retention strategies by ensuring top talent is not underpaid.
Step 5: Export and Report
After gathering and analyzing your data, you may need to share it with other stakeholders. TalentUp supports easy export options for clear communication and documentation.
You can:
Export your results to Excel or PDF format
Customize which data fields to include (salary ranges, bonuses, benefits, filters applied)
Use the output in:
Compensation committee discussions
Board-level presentations
Salary policy revisions
Internal budget planning
This ensures transparency and alignment across departments, making it easier to secure buy-in for changes or new salary structures.
Step 6: Monitor Regularly
Salary benchmarking isn’t a one-time task—it’s an ongoing process. The job market changes fast, and so should your data.
TalentUp updates its benchmarks every 1–2 months, allowing you to:
Repeat benchmarking quarterly to stay aligned with evolving trends
Adjust salary bands proactively in response to inflation, industry shifts, or growth
Refine internal equity over time as your workforce changes
By using TalentUp regularly, you move from reactive compensation management to a proactive, strategic model that builds a competitive edge.
With TalentUp’s Salary Benchmarking Platform, HR professionals can turn complex market data into clear, actionable insights. By following these six steps—from setting goals to regular monitoring—you ensure that your compensation strategies are not just market-aligned but also equitable, scalable, and future-proof.
In any growing organization, having a standardized job level framework is essential for consistent decisions around compensation, promotions, workforce planning, and talent development. TalentUp’s Level Code Framework—combined with functional level definitions—provides HR professionals with a structured model to categorize roles based on scope, autonomy, and responsibility.
This guide explains how the framework works and expands on role progression across individual contributors, managers, leads, directors, heads, and executives, helping HR teams apply it effectively in job evaluation, salary benchmarking, and organizational design.
Part 1: TalentUp Grading Level Codes Explained
TalentUp classifies job levels into five major groups. Each group contains specific levels based on the complexity of responsibilities and degree of autonomy.
Support Roles (S1–S3)
These roles focus on operational and administrative support across the business.
S1 – Entry-Level Support: Performs routine tasks under close supervision. Follows procedures with little room for discretion.
S2 – Intermediate Support: Handles a wider range of tasks with moderate independence. Makes decisions within clear guidelines.
S3 – Advanced Support: Has specialized knowledge. Solves complex issues with minimal supervision.
Professional Roles (P1–P5)
Includes most individual contributor roles across areas like engineering, marketing, finance, HR, etc.
P1 – Entry-Level Professional: Requires close guidance from senior colleagues. Works on well-defined tasks.
P2 – Intermediate Professional: Handles moderately complex assignments. Applies known concepts with some autonomy.
P3 – Advanced Professional: Leads complex projects. Provides expert input and may mentor others.
P4 – Functional Leader: Leads initiatives within a business area. High autonomy and strategic responsibility.
P5 – Top-Tier Expert: Recognized authority within the company. Influences cross-departmental or global strategy.
Manager Roles (M1–M4)
Managerial levels reflect growing scope of leadership, from team management to organization-wide oversight.
M1 – Manager: Leads a small team or department. Accountable for team performance and resource management.
M2 – Senior Manager: Oversees departments or large teams. Manages operations and strategic alignment.
M3 – Director-Level Manager: Responsible for multiple departments. Sets direction for large functions.
M4 – Senior Director: Strategic oversight at the company level. Aligns cross-functional goals and business priorities.
Executive Roles (E1–E3)
Reserved for senior company leaders with full decision-making authority.
E1 – Senior Executive (e.g., CFO, COO): Oversees major functions. Makes high-impact decisions.
E2 – Group Executive (e.g., Group COO, President): Influences entire regions or business groups.
E3 – Chief Executive Officer: Leads the entire company. Sets vision and strategic direction.
Part 2: TalentUp Blended Grading Role Levels
Alongside the TalentUp code system, HR professionals benefit from a more detailed understanding of how job levels operate within specific paths. This section provides a breakdown by role type and seniority level.
Individual Contributor Path
Junior: Works on scoped, routine tasks. Requires oversight and mentoring. Eager to learn and grow.
Senior: Leads full projects. Brings broad knowledge and works with minimal oversight. Often mentors junior staff.
Lead: Expert in a specific field and recognized internally as a key resource. Solves complex business problems.
Principal: Provides strategic guidance across multiple teams. Recognized externally as a subject matter expert.
Manager Path
Mid-Level Manager: Leads a team through projects and deadlines. Delegates and ensures performance outcomes.
Senior Manager: Leads multiple teams or functions. Aligns departmental initiatives with company goals.
Lead Manager: Oversees a department’s execution of strategy. Mentors mid and senior managers. Represents the function at senior leadership levels.
Lead (Functional Expertise)
Mid: Strong professional capable of executing complex tasks independently. Recognized for reliability and problem-solving.
Senior: Drives project success and mentors others. Highly independent and accountable.
Director Path
Mid-Level Director: Leads a business unit. Influences organizational decisions with domain expertise.
Senior Director: Oversees several departments. Translates strategic vision into actionable plans. Plays a central role in organizational success.
Head-Level Roles
Mid-Level Head: Leads a business function with strategic and operational responsibilities. Guides team development and ensures department success. Reports to Directors.
Senior Head: Sets functional strategy and leads cross-functional coordination. Ensures alignment with company-wide objectives.
Suite-Level Executive Roles
Mid-Level Suite: Serves as a key leader responsible for company-wide outcomes. Works with the board, external stakeholders, and senior leadership to shape corporate strategy and long-term vision.
How HR Teams Can Use This Framework
TalentUp’s level system and functional definitions can be used in many areas of HR:
Job Mapping: Standardize job levels across departments, countries, or business units.
Compensation Benchmarking: Align job levels with TalentUp’s salary data for accurate benchmarking.
Career Framework Design: Provide employees with clear progression paths and development goals.
Performance Calibration: Evaluate performance expectations consistently across levels.
Internal Equity Audits: Identify pay disparities and misalignments.
Succession Planning: Build leadership pipelines using consistent criteria for advancement.
In a highly competitive hiring environment, staying ahead requires more than just attractive job descriptions. Compensation is one of the most critical factors candidates consider — and TalentUp’s Analyze Competitors feature helps HR professionals ensure their compensation strategy is aligned with market expectations.
This feature equips HR leaders, recruiters, and compensation analysts with data-driven insights into how top companies are structuring pay, enabling more informed decisions to attract and retain top talent.
What Is the Analyze Competitors Feature?
The Analyze Competitors feature provides access to detailed compensation data from other employers — including your direct competitors. It helps you evaluate how companies across industries and regions are compensating talent by role, level, and location.
Use this feature to answer key strategic questions such as:
What are competitors paying for critical roles?
Are we aligned with market pay at different seniority levels?
Which roles may be under-compensated in our organization?
Where can we improve to remain competitive in attracting talent?
Key Capabilities
1. Search by Company Name
Select one or multiple companies for targeted benchmarking. TalentUp gives you access to a broad database of compensation data, covering diverse industries, company sizes, and regions.
2. View Compensation by Role and Seniority
Drill down into compensation specifics, including:
Average salary by role
Pay data segmented by seniority (e.g., junior, mid, senior, lead)
Compa-ratios relative to market medians
Insights into bonuses, equity, and other variable compensation elements
3. Compare Employers Side-by-Side
Run direct comparisons between your company and selected competitors, identifying differences in:
Base salary and total compensation
Role-specific hiring demand
Market positioning by seniority or function
This comparison allows you to spot gaps or strengths in your current compensation structure and adjust where needed.
Strategic Benefits for HR Teams
Attract Talent More Effectively
Ensure your compensation packages meet or exceed what other companies are offering for similar roles, giving you a competitive edge in hiring.
Retain High-Performing Employees
Use data to identify roles at risk of being underpaid. Adjust compensation before retention becomes a challenge.
Promote Pay Transparency and Consistency
Leverage objective, market-based data to support internal compensation conversations and policies.
Strengthen Employer Value Proposition
Align your compensation approach with external benchmarks to position your organization as a market leader and desirable workplace.
When to Use This Feature
During annual or biannual compensation reviews
While preparing offers for high-priority or competitive roles
When entering a new geographic region or industry
To assess market competitiveness during company restructuring or growth
For executive presentations and strategic planning
TalentUp’s Compare Salaries feature is designed to help HR professionals evaluate how salaries for a specific role vary across different markets and under different company conditions. Whether you’re planning to expand into a new country, benchmarking global compensation, or preparing for relocation offers, this feature offers the context and insights you need.
What Is the Compare Salaries Feature?
This tool allows you to:
Compare salaries for a single role across multiple locations
Use a reference city or country to measure % differences
Apply filters like company size, funding, and sector
Understand cost-of-living and job market differences by location
How to Perform a Salary Comparison Search
Select up to 10 Positions Use the dropdown menu to search and select the role(s) you want to compare. TalentUp provides a vast list of predefined job titles grouped by department (e.g., Engineering, Sales, HR, IT).
Select up to 10 Locations Choose the cities or countries you’d like to compare. This enables a side-by-side view of salaries across different markets.
Set a Reference Location Select one location (e.g., Barcelona) as your benchmark. All other salaries will be shown as a percentage increase or decrease relative to this location.
(Optional) Apply Smart Filters To fine-tune your comparison, you can filter by:
Company Size (based on number of employees)
Company Funding (relevant for startups and tech)
Company Sector (e.g., Fintech, Education, Healthcare)
Then click Search to generate the comparison table. [IMG1]https://talentup.io/apidocumentation/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Compare-Salaries-1.png[IMG2]
Understanding the Results
1. Salaries Table
This section shows the average gross salary for the selected role in each location, including:
Reference Location Salary The actual salary in your selected base location.
Salary in Other Locations Displayed both as a number and as a % difference from the reference.
Example For a Data Analyst with Barcelona as the reference:
Barcelona: €41,000
Amsterdam: €53,200 (+29.8%)
Berlin: €56,300 (+37.3%)
UK (country): €54,900 (+33.9%)
This helps you understand where talent is more expensive or more affordable.
2. Location Info: Detailed Explanation of Key Metrics
The Location Info section appears just below the salary comparison table and provides essential background data to help interpret salary differences across cities or countries. Here’s what each metric means and how it can guide HR decisions:
This is a relative index that reflects how expensive it is to live in a particular city or country. It considers the average cost of essentials such as:
Housing
Food and groceries
Transportation
Utilities
Healthcare
How to use it: A higher salary doesn’t always mean a better quality of life. If the cost of living is very high, employees may actually retain less disposable income. This metric helps assess real purchasing power across markets.
Salary / Cost of Living Ratio
This ratio compares the average salary offered in that location with the local cost of living. It’s categorized with qualitative labels like:
Excellent
Good
Average
Low
How to use it: An “Excellent” ratio indicates that the average salary allows for a comfortable lifestyle in that city. This is useful when evaluating relocation offers, setting remote worker compensation, or choosing expansion markets.
Offer
This is the number of active job postings for the selected role in that location. It reflects the hiring activity and market demand for the role.
How to use it: A high number of offers suggests strong competition for talent. This can influence recruitment difficulty, time to hire, and expected compensation ranges.
Demand
Represents the estimated number of available professionals in the market who match the selected role.
How to use it: This metric shows talent availability. Comparing it with the number of offers helps you understand whether the market is saturated with talent or if you’re entering a competitive hiring environment.
Offer / Demand Ratio
This is the ratio between job offers and available professionals:
A ratio below 1 indicates that supply exceeds demand, meaning more professionals are available than jobs.
A ratio above 1 indicates high demand, with more job offers than qualified professionals.
How to use it: This ratio helps you measure recruitment difficulty. A low ratio means it may be easier to hire, while a high ratio suggests a talent shortage and higher salary pressure.
Inflation – Country (%)
Shows the annual inflation rate in the country. It reflects how quickly prices are increasing for goods and services.
How to use it: This is important for salary adjustment planning, especially for long-term compensation policies or multi-year contracts. High inflation may erode the real value of compensation.
Population
Indicates the total population of the city or country. It provides general context about market size and labor force availability.
How to use it: Useful when evaluating market saturation, expansion potential, and talent pool size. A larger population doesn’t always mean more talent—it depends on education levels, skill development, and industry presence.
Unemployment – Country (%)
The percentage of the working-age population that is actively looking for jobs but is currently unemployed.
How to use it: This helps assess overall labor market health. Higher unemployment can mean a wider available talent pool, while lower unemployment suggests stronger competition and tighter markets.
Why This Data Matters
Salary comparisons alone don’t tell the full story. The Location Info section provides critical context for:
Determining real compensation value
Setting location-adjusted salary bands
Assessing hiring risk and timelines
Identifying cities with competitive advantages for recruitment
Whether you’re expanding, relocating, or benchmarking remote roles, these indicators help you move from raw numbers to actionable insights.
TalentUp’s Manage Employees feature is designed to help HR teams gain full visibility over their workforce compensation in relation to the external market. It offers a structured, data-driven way to monitor salaries, identify pay gaps, and make fair, competitive decisions at scale.
Whether you’re preparing for annual reviews, auditing internal equity, or building a compensation strategy, this tool makes it easy to analyze salaries in context—by role, location, seniority, and more.
What Can You Do in the “Manage Employees” Section?
This feature allows you to:
Upload and track employee compensation data
Filter your team by key attributes (role, location, department, etc.)
See how each employee’s salary compares to the market average
Flag potential issues like underpaid staff, retention risk, or internal inequality
Once filters are applied, the system displays all matching employees in a structured table, including:
Column
Description
Position
The employee’s job title
Department
The department they belong to
Seniority
Their experience level (junior, mid, senior, etc.)
Salary
Their current gross annual salary and currency
Compa Ratio
Ratio between their salary and the market benchmark
Benchmark Position
Whether the salary is Below, At, or Above market average
Location
City and country where the employee is based
Label
Tags to help track status or performance (e.g., Active, Risk loss, Unequal)
What Is the Compa Ratio?
The Compa Ratio compares an employee’s salary to the current market median for the same role and location.
1.00 = Market average
< 1.00 = Below market
> 1.00 = Above market
Why it matters: This helps ensure pay equity across regions, roles, and levels. It can also guide promotion and raise decisions, helping prevent talent loss due to under-compensation.
Use Case Examples
Retention Risk Identification Spot employees with below-market salaries who might be at risk of leaving.
Equity Audits Ensure employees with similar roles and performance are paid fairly.
Compensation Planning Prepare data-backed salary proposals during review cycles.
Headcount Strategy Understand how your internal salary structure aligns with the market to optimize budgets.
TalentUp’s platform is built on a rigorous, transparent, and scalable methodology that ensures the salary intelligence it delivers is accurate, consistent, and actionable. The combination of high-volume data collection, intelligent normalization, machine learning models, and human validation results in one of the most robust compensation benchmarking systems available.
Where Does the Data Come From?
TalentUp collects compensation data from a diverse mix of reliable sources, ensuring a comprehensive and representative view of the job market:
72% Job Boards The majority of TalentUp’s data comes from public job portals such as LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, InfoJobs, Adzuna, and hundreds of others. These listings are scraped daily to capture job descriptions, salary offers, location, benefits, and company metadata—creating a rich pool of real-time market information.
17% Employee-Submitted Profiles on TalentUp.io Employees can submit their compensation details through the TalentUp platform. These submissions are carefully validated by comparing them against similar job roles, companies, and locations, ensuring the data is accurate and relevant.
11% HR Datasets from Client Companies TalentUp clients can upload anonymized internal compensation data via Excel templates or integrations with HR platforms like Personio and BambooHR. This data undergoes thorough review and is only included if it was updated in the current year, enhancing both accuracy and freshness.
4-Step Data Process
To ensure data integrity and usability, TalentUp follows a four-step methodology: Collection, Normalization, Deduplication, and Validation.
1. Collection
TalentUp collects over 20,000 new salaries per day from 300+ sources across 70+ countries and 600+ job roles. This large-scale intake provides the foundation for both volume and geographic diversity. In addition to salaries, other data points include bonuses, job descriptions, responsibilities, company information, and benefits.
2. Normalization
Once collected, all data is standardized to allow meaningful comparison across different geographies and company types. This includes:
Currency Conversion: Salaries from international sources are automatically converted based on daily exchange rates to ensure consistency.
Job Title Translation: TalentUp’s taxonomy includes over 32,000 mapped roles in multiple languages, ensuring job titles are interpreted uniformly.
Benefit Standardization: Common benefits (e.g., health insurance, remote work, stock options) are interpreted and normalized, even when described differently across sources.
This process ensures that a “Software Engineer” in São Paulo can be fairly compared with the same role in Berlin or Toronto, regardless of how the data was originally submitted.
3. Deduplication
To maintain the integrity of the dataset, duplicate listings and repeated job offers are filtered out using natural language processing (NLP) algorithms. These algorithms detect semantic duplicates and similarities in job descriptions and employer metadata. This step ensures every data point is unique, reducing noise and inflating values.
4. Validation
TalentUp applies both automated and manual validation processes to guarantee reliability:
Benchmark Comparison: If there are sudden changes in benchmark values (e.g., a 20% salary increase in a city-role combo), the system flags the anomaly for further review.
Sample Size Threshold: A minimum of 30 samples per position and location is required to build a benchmark. This ensures statistical reliability in the data.
Manual Cross-Check: If the data significantly deviates from historical benchmarks or industry standards, TalentUp’s team performs a manual review and cross-verification with partner sources.
All benchmarks are refreshed every 1–2 months, keeping the platform current and dependable.
Predictive Modeling
When data is sparse for a specific role, city, or level of seniority, TalentUp uses predictive analytics to fill the gaps—ensuring continuity in insights without compromising reliability.
Linear Regression Models TalentUp applies linear regression models to estimate salary trends based on seniority and experience. These models are fine-tuned to reflect realistic compensation growth over time, ensuring that predicted values align with expected career progression.
Correlation Across Similar Markets If direct data is unavailable for a given city, TalentUp predicts salary benchmarks by leveraging correlations with similar locations, industries, or company sizes. This allows for salary forecasting even in less saturated data regions.
Data Completion Predictive modeling allows TalentUp to offer comprehensive salary ranges—from base pay to bonuses—even when only partial data is available. This enhances the usability of the platform and ensures a consistent experience across all roles and locations.
SummaryTalentUp’s methodology balances big data scale with data science precision and human validation. Every data point is vetted through a transparent and structured process, making TalentUp a trusted source for HR and compensation professionals worldwide. Whether you’re benchmarking current employees, analyzing the market, or planning for the future, you can count on the platform’s methodology to deliver insights you can act on with confidence.
The Search Salaries feature is the starting point for exploring real-time, market-aligned compensation insights on TalentUp. Designed for HR professionals, recruiters, and compensation analysts, this tool enables you to quickly access and compare salary data for any role in any location—across industries and company types. Whether you’re preparing an offer, running an internal salary audit, or benchmarking compensation strategy, this feature provides you with access to TalentUp’s extensive market intelligence—based on millions of validated data points.
What You Can Do with the “Search Salaries” Feature
Search by job title or job description
Analyze gross, net, company cost, or contractor salary
Filter results by company size, funding, sector, and type
View market salary distribution by seniority
Explore variable compensation, supply and demand, gender gap, and benefits
How to Perform a Salary Search
1. Select a Position (Required)
Use the search bar or browse through TalentUp’s predefined library of roles grouped by function (e.g., Sales, Marketing, IT, Finance, Engineering, etc.). You can either:
Start typing the job title (e.g., “Data Analyst”)
Browse through categorized lists
Or use the “Search through job description” if you prefer keyword-based matching instead of titles
The platform will automatically link the job to the correct internal taxonomy used for benchmarking.
Choose the city or country where the position is based. The system will use this to fetch the most relevant and localized salary data, adjusted for cost of living, labor laws, and talent availability.
You can:
Type and select the desired location (e.g., “Paris” or “France”)
Compare results between cities (available in other features like “Compare Salaries”)
To refine your search, you can apply Smart Filters:
Company Size (Employees): Select the size of the organization to see how salaries vary in small, medium, or large companies.
Company Funding (€): Particularly useful for startups and tech companies. Filter by total investment raised to compare against similar growth-stage businesses.
Company Sector: Choose from predefined sectors (e.g., Fintech, Health Care, Manufacturing, Education) to benchmark within your industry.
Company Type: Options like Startup, Tech Hub, International Company, or Consultancy help narrow results to organizational models similar to your own.
Peer Group (Premium feature): Premium users can define custom peer groups to benchmark against a tailored set of comparable companies.
Below is a detailed explanation of each section you’ll encounter on the results page:
4. Salary Overview Section
At the top of the search results, the TalentUp platform displays a comprehensive summary of the base salary for the selected role and location. The summary serves as a quick reference point for understanding market compensation.
Here’s what you’ll typically see:
Median Base Salary (50th percentile): This threshold is the most common salary for the position, based on verified data. It represents the middle point of the market.
Example: 62,900 € Median Base Salary (50th percentile)
Number of Observations: Indicates how many data points were used to calculate the figure. The higher the number, the more robust and reliable the data.
Example: 442 observations
Last Update: Shows when the data was last refreshed, ensuring you’re working with current market information.
Example: (Updated: 14 Jan 2025)
Confidence Level: Reflects the platform’s assessment of data accuracy, based on sample size, consistency, and validation. Levels include: Excellent, Good, Moderate, or Low.
When available, TalentUp also includes additional compensation components:
Average Bonus per Year: Reflects common variable pay amounts added to the base salary (e.g., performance or annual bonuses).
Example: 13 € average bonus per year
Average Stock Options: If applicable to the role and market, this shows the average annual value of equity compensation.
Example: 16 € in stock options
These figures are especially relevant for roles in sectors like tech, sales, or executive-level positions, where variable and equity-based compensation are more common.
5. Salary Type Toggle Menu
By default, the TalentUp Salary Platform displays Gross Salary—the total pre-tax annual compensation typically listed in job offers. This is the most common benchmark used across industries and countries.
However, if you need a different perspective on compensation, you can adjust the view using the dropdown menu attached to the “Gross Salary” button. You can choose how to present the salary data by clicking on this button, which reveals additional options.
Net Salary Displays the estimated take-home pay after taxes and employee social contributions. The information is helpful for understanding what employees actually receive, especially in cross-border comparisons or employee communication.
Company Costs Shows the total cost to the employer, including gross salary plus mandatory employer contributions (e.g., social security, insurance, payroll taxes). This is essential for budget planning and understanding the real cost of headcount.
Contractor Salary Provides the average freelancer or contractor rate for the role. This is useful for companies that work with independent professionals or are evaluating cost differences between hiring models.
By switching between these options, HR professionals can conduct multi-angle benchmarking based on the employment model, local legislation, or internal budgeting needs. This flexibility makes it easy to compare full-time and freelance roles, assess gross vs. net differences, or calculate total compensation costs accurately across regions.
This section displays a clear summary of all the filters applied to your current search. It allows you to quickly review and, if needed, adjust the criteria used to generate the salary insights shown on the page.
These filters directly shape the data presented in the Salary Overview, Talent Supply, Gender Gap, Benefits, and more. Understanding them is key to ensuring you are comparing salaries within the right context.
Here’s what you’ll typically find:
Position The specific job title selected for analysis (e.g., Backend Developer)
Location The city or country where the role is based (e.g., Berlin)
Company Sector The industry or economic sector of the company (e.g., Fintech, Healthcare, Consumer Goods)
Company Size Based on number of employees (e.g., 51–100, 501–1000, +10,000)
Company Funding The funding range of the company, particularly relevant for startups and tech companies (e.g., €5M–€10M, +€100M)
Company Type Indicates the company’s business model or structure (e.g., Startup, International Company, Research Institution, IT Consultancy)
Peer Group(Premium feature) Available only to Premium users, this advanced filter lets you compare your company to a customized set of peers based on criteria like sector, size, and growth stage. It’s designed to support high-precision benchmarking and strategic compensation decisions.
You can directly adjust all of these filters from this section without initiating a new search. This flexibility helps HR professionals fine-tune their analysis in real time, ensuring that every benchmark reflects the most relevant market conditions for their organization.
In addition to base salary, the TalentUp Salary Platform provides insight into variable compensation, such as bonuses and stock options, which are essential for calculating total compensation.
This section highlights:
How many companies offer bonuses or stock options for the role
Estimated bonus and stock option values by experience level
How those values compare to base salary as a percentage
For example, you might see that:
13% of companies offer bonuses, and 3% offer stock options for this role.
These figures are based on aggregated market data and change depending on the role, experience level, and the filters you’ve selected, such as company size, funding, or industry.
A table is also provided, typically structured like this:
Level
Min Bonus (€)
Avg Bonus (€)
Max Bonus (€)
Bonus as % of Salary
Junior
8,400
11,200
19,300
27%
Mid
10,300
13,700
23,700
28%
Senior
12,200
16,200
28,000
26%
Lead
14,200
19,000
32,800
26%
Total Compensation = Base Salary + Bonus + Stock Options This allows HR professionals to accurately assess competitiveness, especially in industries where variable pay is a key factor (e.g., tech, finance, sales).
The platform also provides a gender distribution overview for the selected role and location. It shows the percentage of male and female professionals based on current market data.
Example:
Unbalanced Market Male: 63% Female: 37%
This data supports diversity and inclusion goals, internal pay equity analysis, and helps anticipate candidate expectations during the recruitment process.
Together, these sections provide a complete market context, helping HR professionals not only benchmark compensation but also understand the competitive landscape, gender dynamics, and the financial components shaping total rewards.
10. Benefits
The Benefits section on the TalentUp platform provides a well-rounded view of the total rewards associated with a role beyond base salary. These benefits are segmented into three categories—statutory, common, and additional perks—and will vary depending on the position, location, and selected filters such as company size or sector.
This allows HR professionals to understand not only what the law requires but also what the market commonly offers to remain competitive and attractive to talent.
Statutory Benefits
These are mandatory benefits established by national or local legislation. They typically include items such as:
Employer and employee payroll contributions (as a percentage of salary)
This section highlights the benefits most frequently offered by companies for the selected role and location. These are typically quantifiable or financial advantages such as:
Professional development budgets
Private health insurance coverage
Access to modern technologies or tools
Example (for a Data Scientist in Berlin):
Professional Development: €500 per year
Cutting Edge Technology: €1,500 per year
Health Insurance: €1,200 per year
These benefits represent standard expectations in the market and help define competitive packages.
These are non-financial or cultural benefits that contribute to employee satisfaction, work-life balance, and long-term retention. They are especially important in competitive talent markets and for employer branding. Examples include:
Flexible working hours
Remote work or hybrid models
Flat hierarchies
Casual dress code
Work-life balance initiatives
These perks vary widely by company and market but are increasingly critical in attracting top talent, especially in tech and knowledge-based industries.
By combining statutory obligations with common and additional benefits, the TalentUp platform provides HR professionals with a complete view of the total rewards environment—helping them design packages that are both compliant and compelling.
Getting Started To begin using TalentUp, simply head over toTalentUp.io. If you’re a new user, you’ll need to sign up with your email and create a password. If you already have an account, just log in with your existing credentials.
Once inside, you can choose the plan that best suits your needs—monthly subscriptions are available for full flexibility. Alternatively, you can start with a free search to explore the platform’s capabilities before committing to a paid plan.
How to Perform a Salary Search TalentUp’s Salary Finder is the core tool for exploring salary benchmarks. Follow these steps to conduct a search:
Navigate to the “Salary Finder” section from the main dashboard.
In the search bar, enter a job title, such as “UX Designer”. Then, select a city or location, like “Barcelona”.
Alternatively, you can also search by job description—just copy and paste the full job description into the search bar, and TalentUp will analyze the content and return the most relevant benchmark results based on the role’s responsibilities, skills, and level. This is especially useful when you’re working with unique or hybrid roles that don’t fit standard job titles.
Use optional filters to narrow your results by industry, company size, or funding stage, depending on your search goals.
If you’re on a Premium plan, you’ll also have access to the Peer Group feature. This functionality allows you to create a custom comparison group by selecting at least 5 companies of your choice. This minimum is required to preserve data anonymity and confidentiality. Once your peer group is set, the platform will generate a salary benchmark based exclusively on data from those selected companies.
Review the results, which include:
Percentile distribution: See how salaries vary across percentiles (P25, P50, P75, P90) to understand the full market range.
A percentile represents the position of a specific salary value relative to the rest of the data in the market. For example:
– P25 (25th percentile): The lower end of the market. 25% of companies pay below this amount, while 75% pay above it.
– P50 (50th percentile): The median of the market. This is the most commonly used benchmark, where half the companies pay more and half pay less.
– P75 (75th percentile): Represents the upper range. Only 25% of companies pay more than this value.
– P90 or P99: These percentiles reflect the top of the market, where compensation is significantly higher—often due to seniority, company size, or high competition for talent.
Using these percentiles helps HR teams understand not just the average, but the full distribution and competitiveness of salaries for each role and location. It also supports more nuanced decisions—such as offering at P50 for general market alignment or P75+ for critical roles or top talent.
Experience-based ranges: Check how salaries evolve with seniority.
Bonuses and benefits (available in Advanced+ plans): Gain insight into extras like annual bonuses, stock options, or remote work perks.
This allows you to make well-informed decisions when planning compensation packages, reviewing market competitiveness, or preparing job offers.
Exporting a Salary Report Once you’ve completed your salary analysis, you can export your findings in a presentable format to share with other teams or leadership.
Click the “Export” button at the top-right of the results screen.
Choose your preferred file format: PDF (ideal for presentations) or Excel (great for further analysis).
Click Download and save the file locally. You can now share it internally, use it in board meetings, or attach it to hiring plans.
Uploading Employee Data TalentUp also allows you to benchmark your internal team by uploading your organization’s compensation data.
Go to the “Manage Employees” section in the sidebar.
Download the Excel template provided by the platform.
Fill in the template with employee details:
Name
Job title
Location
Current salary
Seniority level
Re-upload the completed file to the platform.
TalentUp will process the data and provide real-time benchmarking results, allowing you to:
Detect pay gaps or outliers
Compare internal salaries to market standards
Segment teams by department or location
Begin creating structured salary bands
This feature is especially useful for pay audits, salary reviews, and internal equity checks.
TalentUp is a comprehensive compensation intelligence platform designed to help organizations of all sizes—from startups to multinational corporations—understand, design, and manage fair, competitive, and globally scalable salary strategies. With access to real-time salary data across 650+ job roles in over 200 locations, TalentUp empowers HR teams to make informed, data-driven decisions on compensation benchmarking, market positioning, internal alignment, and talent acquisition.
Thanks to predictive models, global coverage, and automated tools, TalentUp goes beyond traditional benchmarking—offering actionable insights that are easy to interpret, integrate, and adapt into existing HR structures. Whether you’re creating salary bands, negotiating offers, or conducting internal equity reviews, TalentUp becomes an indispensable part of any modern compensation strategy.
Key Objectives of TalentUp
Promote salary transparency TalentUp aims to demystify pay by giving organizations access to detailed, real-world compensation data. With full visibility into market trends and salary ranges, companies can foster transparency in hiring and internal discussions—building a workplace culture rooted in fairness and trust.
Attract and retain top talent By providing data-backed insights into what competitors are offering, TalentUp enables organizations to remain attractive to top-tier candidates. It helps HR teams align offers with candidate expectations and ensures current employees are compensated competitively, reducing turnover and enhancing employer brand.
Enhance equity and fairness in pay TalentUp plays a critical role in identifying internal disparities and gender pay gaps. With validated, normalized market benchmarks, companies can ensure their compensation structures are equitable—both internally and compared to the wider industry.
Support global hiring strategies For companies expanding across borders or hiring remotely, TalentUp offers localized salary data for hundreds of cities and regions worldwide. This ensures compensation remains aligned with local standards, cost of living, and job market realities—supporting compliance and fair pay practices globally.
Who Uses TalentUp?
HR Managers and Recruiters TalentUp helps HR professionals design attractive and market-aligned compensation packages that support hiring efforts and strengthen employer positioning.
Compensation and Benefits Specialists These users rely on TalentUp to conduct salary reviews, design compensation frameworks, evaluate internal equity, and align pay across departments and geographies.
Executive Leadership Business leaders use TalentUp to guide strategic decisions around workforce planning, budgeting, and organizational growth, ensuring that compensation decisions are both competitive and sustainable.
Compensation Consultants External advisors and consultants leverage TalentUp to provide data-driven recommendations to their clients, streamline benchmarking processes, and back up proposals with verified market intelligence.
What Makes TalentUp Unique?
A constantly updated database with 20,000+ new salaries per day TalentUp gathers over 20,000 new salaries daily from a diverse mix of job portals, employees, and companies. This ensures the data stays current and relevant in a fast-changing labor market, giving users access to the freshest compensation trends.
Normalized and validated data from over 300 sources To ensure reliability, TalentUp cleans, deduplicates, and normalizes all collected data from more than 300 trusted sources. It validates job titles, salary structures, and job responsibilities, delivering accurate, standardized benchmarks for meaningful comparisons.
Predictive salary models that enable future planning Using advanced algorithms and regression models, TalentUp can forecast salaries even when data is missing. This predictive functionality is essential for planning salaries in new markets, building future budgets, or modeling long-term growth scenarios.
Benchmarking by role, geography, seniority, and company size Users can slice and filter compensation data based on position, level, location, and company size. This layered benchmarking allows for precision when comparing roles and tailoring pay strategies to specific organizational needs.
Advanced tools for internal salary analysis and competitor review TalentUp includes features for uploading internal salary data and comparing it against the market, helping organizations spot gaps, address inequalities, and fine-tune internal compensation strategies. It also enables users to monitor competitors’ compensation trends in key roles and regions.
Support for multiple job grading systems The platform is compatible with seven different job grading frameworks—including KornFerry, Mercer, WTW, and Radford—making it highly adaptable for companies with existing structures. TalentUp helps map positions across frameworks, ensuring consistency and clarity.
Smart city-level prediction when data is insufficient Even when market data is limited for a niche location or role, TalentUp leverages data from similar cities or industries to produce accurate salary estimates. This ensures that users can maintain confidence in their benchmarks, even in less-populated regions.
Flexible access through a monthly subscription TalentUp is designed to be accessible. With a monthly subscription model, organizations can use the platform on their own terms—whether for continuous salary management or temporary benchmarking needs. There’s no long-term commitment, making it ideal for businesses of all sizes and budgets.
