Been asked this a lot lately so posting a somewhat structured brain dump.
I've been at staff (L6 equivalent) for two years now, and I went through the senior-to-staff leveling exercise at two different companies before landing where I am. Here's what the comp and leveling picture looks like from where I'm sitting in mid-2026.
The comp gap is real but lumpy. At mid-tier tech (profitable Series C or public company outside the top-10) the jump from senior to staff is often $30-50k in base, plus a meaningful RSU step-up. My offer into staff was $195k base vs. the $155k I was making as a senior at my previous shop. The RSU grant was 2x what I'd seen as a senior grant. Total comp was roughly $290k TC at vest.
At FAANG/big-N, senior-to-staff is L5-to-L6 (Google), E5-to-E6 (Meta), or SDE2-SDE3 (Amazon, though their bands shift). That jump at those companies currently sits around: senior ~$280-350k TC, staff ~$400-550k TC in SF/NYC. Remote discounts still exist but are smaller than 2022.
The promotion path is slower than most people expect. Median time at senior before staff promotion at most large companies is 3-5 years. You can compress it by switching companies -- external hires often get leveled into staff faster than internal promotions, because committees are slower than market pressure.
What actually gets you there isn't what the leveling rubric says. The rubric will say "technical scope" and "cross-team impact." What it means in practice: you have to be the person who wrote the design doc that changed how two or three teams work. One project. That's usually the unlock. Not grinding leetcode, not mentoring, not doing code reviews. One high-leverage bet that paid off and was visible to people above your skip-level.
If you're angling for staff from senior right now and want to talk specifics about a domain or company, drop it below.