The median salary for DefTech specialists in June 2026 is $2,500, the same as six months ago. For comparison, the median in IT in general is $2,700, meaning DefTech pays $200 less on average.
The median salary for DefTech specialists in June 2026 is $2,500, the same as six months ago. For comparison, the median in IT in general is $2,700, meaning DefTech pays $200 less on average.
This is data from a new DOU salary survey, which is based on 542 questionnaires from industry professionals.
The highest median salaries in DefTech this summer are for DevOps engineers ($5,000), Hardware engineers ($4,000), and Product managers ($3,700). The lowest are among narrow-profile DefTech positions: the median for a UAV engineer is only $1,500, while a design engineer earns $2,550.
The second most common category of specialists, HR & Recruiting, is also at the bottom of the scale — the median is $1,590, which is $223 less than HR in IT overall.
Interestingly, in several categories, DefTech, on the contrary, pays more than IT: DevOps & SRE — $1,400 higher, DS/AI/ML/Data Engineering — $1,225 higher, Product Management — $450 higher, QA — $150 higher. And in project management, salaries do not differ at all — the median is $2,500 in both areas.
The distribution by titles shows a clear pattern: the higher the level, the more profitable it is to go to regular IT. Lead+ specialists in IT earn $5200 versus $4500 in DefTech, and Senior developers in IT receive a median of $4500 versus $4100 in DefTech. It is worth noting that this gap is narrowing — six months ago, seniors in DefTech had only $3800.
But at the junior levels, everything is the opposite: Middle developers in June 2026 equaled salaries in both areas ($2,500), and Junior and Intern/Trainee in DefTech earn even more than in regular IT — $1,150 versus $900.
Among all DefTech specialists working with programming languages, Python is the most common — used by 17%. And it is Python specialists who earn the highest median compared to IT: $3,600 in DefTech versus $3,200 in IT in general.
Among developers themselves, the picture is different: here the most popular language is C++ (24%), followed by Python (17%), and TypeScript (13%). But the highest salaries among DefTech developers are still for Python specialists — a median of $4,500 (versus $3,500 for Python developers in IT in general). But C++ developers in DefTech earn less than their colleagues in regular IT: $3,000 versus $3,700.
The most common specializations among developers in DefTech are Back-end and Embedded (26% each), with another 11–12% each being Full Stack, Desktop, and Front-end. The highest median among developer specializations is Full Stack ($3,700), while Embedded and Desktop are at $3,000.
