Chief of Staff Salary Guide: What the Role Pays and What Drives It
Takeaway: Most U.S. Chief of Staff base salaries sit between roughly $120,000 and $200,000, and where you land inside that band depends far more on company stage, scope, and location than on the title itself.
If you have searched for Chief of Staff pay, you have probably seen numbers that do not agree. One source says $155,000, another says $218,000, a third says $101,000. None of them are lying. They are measuring different people, in different ways, and once you understand that, the figures start to make sense.
This guide walks through what the credible sources actually report, why they diverge, and the four factors that move the range most.
Why the published numbers disagree
The Chief of Staff role has no standard government wage series. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track it as a distinct occupation; the nearest categories are Top Executives and General and Operations Managers, which lump the role in with thousands of unrelated jobs. So the useful data comes from role-specific surveys and salary aggregators, and each has a bias worth naming.
- Community salary surveys (the Chief of Staff Network, the Chief of Staff Collective) draw from people already in the role, often at startups and in tech, and usually report base salary.
- Aggregator sites (Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, Salary.com) pull from user submissions and job postings and often report total pay, which folds in bonus, equity, and big-technology outliers that pull the average up.
- PayScale captures a broader population, including nonprofit, government, and more junior roles, which pulls its numbers down.
Read every figure with one question in mind: base or total, and which population.
What the role pays in 2025
Community surveys: base salary in the $150k to $170k range
The Chief of Staff Network's 2025 Salary Report puts the mean base salary at $167,954, up from $154,673 in 2024 and $131,229 in 2023. That is a real upward trend, roughly 8.5% year over year. The same report found that 23.8% of respondents now earn above $200,000, compared with about 17% two years earlier.
The 2025 Chief of Staff compensation report from Ask a Chief of Staff, based on 512 self-reported current Chiefs of Staff, gives a more useful stage-by-stage view. Most respondents were in North America, but the public report doesn't disclose a sample size for every stage cut.
Aggregators: total pay in the $190k to $220k range
Levels.fyi reports a median total compensation near $191,500. Glassdoor shows an estimated total pay around $218,000, with a typical range from roughly $164,000 at the 25th percentile to $304,000 at the 75th, and top earners reported near $400,000. Those higher numbers reflect bonus and equity plus a heavy tech-company sample, not a different base salary.
PayScale: a lower, broader read
PayScale reports early-career total pay closer to $80,000 to $101,000, because it captures many smaller organizations, nonprofits, and roles that carry the title without the executive scope. If your target is a startup or corporate Chief of Staff role, PayScale will understate what you should expect.
The honest read across all of it: a genuine executive-operations Chief of Staff in the United States most commonly earns a base between about $120,000 and $200,000, with total compensation reaching well beyond $250,000 at late-stage startups and large technology firms.
The four factors that actually move your number
1. Company stage
Stage is one of the clearest published pay cuts. The 2025 Ask a Chief of Staff survey reports these observed median base salaries: $117,500 at bootstrapped companies; $140,000 at seed; $160,000 at Series A; $170,000 at Series B; $196,000 at Series C; $197,500 at Series D; $190,000 at late-stage private companies; and $200,000 at public companies. These are descriptive medians from a self-selected survey, not guaranteed bands. They also show why "later stage" shouldn't be reduced to one number.
2. Scope and seniority
A Chief of Staff to a CEO of a 2,000-person company is doing different work than a Chief of Staff to a VP at a 40-person startup, even though both hold the title. The 2025 Ask a Chief of Staff report found median base of $150,000 for less than one year of CoS experience, $191,200 at five to seven years, and $200,000 at seven to ten years. Scope shows up in who you report to, how many functions you touch, and whether you own budget and headcount decisions. Don't multiply a tenure adjustment into a stage figure: those factors overlap.
3. Location
Geography can be associated with cash pay, but the available sources don't support one universal city or remote multiplier. City figures from aggregators can mix base and total pay and draw from different employer populations. A remote employer may pay nationally, by employee residence, or by headquarters. Use a clearly labeled local comparator when one exists, and keep it separate from the stage median rather than multiplying the two together.
4. Equity and bonus
Cash is only part of the package. Two components matter:
- Bonus. In the small, UK-heavy Chief of Staff Collective 2025 survey (n=63), 56% received a bonus and recipients reported an average bonus of 19% of base. That's useful context, not a universal CoS target.
- Equity. The same survey found that 54% held equity. Private-company equity is speculative and can't be evaluated from a grant percentage alone. You need the fully diluted ownership percentage or share count and fully diluted shares, strike price, current 409A common-share value and date, preferred-round price and valuation, vesting and cliff, exercise window, dilution risk, and liquidity or change-of-control terms.
How to use these numbers for yourself
Build your own comparison instead of quoting one figure. Start with the observed stage median, then place a validated local or premium-market comparison beside it when one exists. Use scope and tenure as context, not independent multipliers. Finally, keep base, target bonus, guaranteed first-year cash, and speculative equity as separate line items. That structure keeps the conversation grounded in comparable data rather than a synthetic number no source actually published.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Chief of Staff paid more than an Executive Assistant? Generally yes, when the role is a true executive-operations position rather than a re-titled admin role. The Chief of Staff role carries strategic and cross-functional scope, which is why the survey medians sit well into six figures.
Do Chiefs of Staff at startups make less than at big companies? Usually less cash, with the possibility of more speculative equity. The 2025 Ask a Chief of Staff medians are $140,000 at seed, $190,000 at late-stage private companies, and $200,000 at public companies. Big-technology total-comp figures can run higher because they include stock and bonus.
Why does PayScale show so much less than Glassdoor? They measure different populations. PayScale includes many smaller, nonprofit, and junior roles and reports something closer to base; Glassdoor skews toward larger companies and reports estimated total pay including bonus and equity.
How much can I expect in bonus? In the Chief of Staff Collective's small 2025 survey (n=63), 56% received a bonus and recipients averaged roughly 19% of base. Because the sample is UK-heavy and senior/later-stage-skewed, use that as context rather than a universal entitlement.
Is Chief of Staff pay still rising? The community survey data points that way, with reported mean base moving from about $131,000 in 2023 to $168,000 in 2025. Treat that as a self-selected sample rather than a market-wide guarantee.
If you want the full picture before your next conversation, our free Chief of Staff Salary and Leveling Guide breaks pay down by stage and scope with a worksheet for building your own range. Join the email list to download it and get new exec-ops guides as they publish.
