Generate a market-benchmarked, publishable salary band for any tech role in Ireland or the UK, then check internal equity by entering your current employee salaries. Identifies who sits below floor, above ceiling, or compressed around midpoint. Covers 50+ roles with EU Pay Transparency Directive compliance and employer cost at midpoint.
EU Directive ready
Bands meet disclosure requirements
Live benchmarks
Based on 2026 market salary data
Employer cost included
PRSI, NI, and pension at midpoint
Internal equity check
See who is below floor or compressed
Country
Role
Seniority Level
Bands are benchmarked from published market data for Ireland. Mid-level bands use market P25–P75. Other seniority levels use ±15% from an experience-adjusted midpoint.
Select a role to generate your pay band
Choose country, role, and seniority level to see a market-benchmarked, publishable salary band.
What every hiring manager needs to know
Anchor to the market
A defensible salary band is anchored to an objective benchmark, not what you paid the last person or what you think you can get away with. The midpoint of the band should track the market P50 for the role, seniority, and location. This generator uses published benchmark data so your starting point is grounded in the market.
Set the right width
Band width determines how much flexibility you have to differentiate on experience and performance. A 25–30% spread (roughly P25–P75) is the most common approach in Irish and UK tech hiring. Bands narrower than 15% leave no room for negotiation; bands wider than 40% suggest the role is not well-defined. The EU Pay Transparency Directive does not prescribe a specific width, but regulators will scrutinise bands that are purely nominal.
Plan for the employer cost
Most hiring budgets are planned around gross salary, which underestimates the true cost of employment by 10–15%. In Ireland, Employer PRSI (11.05%) and auto-enrolment pension (1.5% from 2026) alone add over 12% on top of salary before statutory sick pay, equipment, and recruitment fees. Build this into headcount planning from the first offer, not at contract stage.
Check your existing team
Once you have a band, paste your current employee salaries into the internal equity checker to see who sits below floor, above ceiling, or compressed too tightly around the midpoint. The checker calculates a compa-ratio for each person and flags the three most common pay equity risks: floor breaches (directive liability), ceiling breaches (stale band anchor), and salary compression (retention risk for high performers).
Ireland Employer Cost Calculator
Calculate the true annual cost of hiring in Ireland: PRSI, auto-enrolment pension, SSP, and team budget builder.
Open EmployerContractor vs Permanent Hiring Cost
Compare total employer cost between a contractor and a permanent hire across 3, 6, 9, and 12-month engagements.
Open EmployerUK Startup Team Budget Calculator
Model the true annual cost of an engineering team in the UK, including Employer NI and pension.
Open Ireland GuidePay Transparency in Ireland: What Has Changed
EU directive transposition, mandatory job advert salary disclosure, employee pay comparison rights, and audit obligations.
Open Ireland GuideHow to Set Tech Salary Bands in Ireland
Step-by-step guide to building salary bands using market data, grading structures, and pay equity principles.
Open Career ToolPermanent vs Contract Calculator
Compare net take-home from a permanent salary against a contract day rate after all Irish or UK taxes.
OpenSalary benchmarks by market
A salary band defines the minimum and maximum pay for a role, with a midpoint anchored to market benchmarks. Under the EU Pay Transparency Directive, Irish employers must disclose a salary range in job adverts from 2026. Publishing a defensible band shows candidates and regulators that pay decisions are structured and equitable rather than arbitrary.
A band width of 25–30% around the midpoint (roughly P25 to P75) is considered industry best practice and aligns with EU directive guidance. Narrower bands (under 15%) leave little room for performance differentiation; bands wider than 40% are difficult to defend in pay audits. The generator uses market P25/P75 for mid-level roles and ±15% from an experience-adjusted midpoint for junior and senior levels.
The directive, due for transposition into Irish law by June 2026, requires employers to: publish a salary range or starting salary in job adverts, not ask candidates about prior salary history, give employees the right to request pay comparison data, and conduct pay audits (for employers with 100+ staff). The salary band generator helps you build a range that satisfies the job advert disclosure requirement.
After generating a salary band, the internal equity checker lets you paste current employee salaries to see how your existing team maps against the new band. Each salary is classified into one of five zones: below floor, lower quarter, compressed around midpoint, upper quarter, or above ceiling. The tool calculates a compa-ratio (actual salary divided by band midpoint) for each person and flags three risk conditions: employees below the floor (equal-pay and directive risk), employees above the ceiling (band anchor may be set too low), and salary compression (too many employees clustered within 5% of the midpoint). No names are needed and no data is sent to a server.
For the legal context behind the floor breach risk, see the pay transparency Ireland guide and how to set tech salary bands in Ireland.
A compa-ratio compares an employee's actual salary to the midpoint of their salary band, expressed as a decimal. A ratio of 1.00 means the person is paid exactly at market midpoint. Ratios below 0.95 indicate the employee is in the lower part of the band; ratios above 1.05 put them in the upper part. Ratios below 0.80 (below band floor) or above 1.20 (above band ceiling) signal that the person's pay is outside the structured range entirely. In a healthy pay structure, compa-ratios are spread across the band rather than clustered tightly around 1.00.
The band midpoint in this tool is anchored to the market median for the selected role. See the full benchmark data on the Ireland tech salary pages or UK tech salary pages.
Salary compression happens when employees at different experience and performance levels are paid too similarly, typically because annual increases have not kept pace with market movements or because new hires are brought in at salaries close to what longer-serving staff earn. The equity checker flags compression when more than 40% of entered salaries sit within 5% of the band midpoint. Compressed pay structures are a leading predictor of attrition among high performers, who often discover the gap only when benchmarking against market data or a colleague's offer letter.
The skill-based pay guide for Ireland covers how structured pay differentiation within a band reduces compression over time.
An employee paid below a published salary floor creates direct risk under the EU Pay Transparency Directive: employees have the right to request pay comparison data, and a floor breach is hard to defend in an audit. The recommended response is to create a remediation plan targeting the next salary review cycle rather than making immediate off-cycle adjustments, unless the gap is severe. For employers with 100 or more staff, the directive requires a pay audit every three years, and below-floor employees will appear as outliers in that audit.
Read more: Pay Transparency in Ireland: what changed in 2026 and how to set tech salary bands in Ireland.
Salaries above a band ceiling usually indicate one of three things: the band midpoint is anchored below current market rates and needs to be rebased; the employee has been promoted in responsibility without a formal regrade; or legacy retention increases have accumulated beyond the structured range. The recommended fix is to review the band anchor against current market benchmarks first. If the market has moved and the band is genuinely stale, rebasing the whole band is preferable to treating above-ceiling employees as exceptions.
Check whether the market has shifted using the Ireland tech salary benchmarks or UK tech salary benchmarks, then follow the band-setting guide to rebase.
For Ireland, the employer cost adds Employer PRSI (11.05%) and MyFutureFund auto-enrolment pension (1.5% from 2026) to the midpoint salary. For the UK, it adds Employer National Insurance (15% on income above the £5,000 secondary threshold). Both figures exclude statutory sick pay, health insurance, equipment, and recruitment fees.
For a full breakdown including sick pay, equipment, and recruitment fees, use the Ireland employer cost calculator or the UK startup team budget calculator.
The generator is benchmarked from published tech market salary data for software, data, cloud, security, product, and design roles. Salary ranges for non-tech functions (operations, finance, legal) follow different market dynamics and are not covered by this tool.
The midpoint of the generated band is derived from the market median for the selected role and seniority level. For mid-level roles, it closely tracks the P50 benchmark. For other seniority levels, a multiplier is applied to the median to approximate the market rate at that experience level. The floor and ceiling are then set at the market P25 and P75 (for mid) or at ±15% from the adjusted midpoint (for other levels).
The full P10, P25, P50, P75, and P90 benchmark data by role is available on the Ireland salary benchmarks and UK salary benchmarks pages, with seniority band data on each individual role page.