Gulf salary data by role and city
Bands by experience, the skills that carry a real premium, and the employers hiring for each role. Compiled from published salary sources and broken down by experience band, last reviewed 10 September 2026.
How these bands were built
Most salary pages on the internet are one number with a national average attached to it. That number is close to useless to a graduate, because it hides the two things that decide an offer: which experience band the employer is hiring into, and which specific skills move a candidate from the bottom of that band to the top of it. These pages are built the other way around. Each role and city combination is broken into five experience bands, from fresh graduate to lead, and each band carries a floor, a ceiling and a median rather than a single figure.
The figures are a compiled estimate read across the sources listed below, and those sources disagree with each other. Read on 18 September 2026, Indeed and Glassdoor differed by 59% to 72% on the same role in the same city, in the same direction every time: Indeed derives its figures from job adverts and skews junior, Glassdoor's are self-reported and skew senior, and Payscale does not break out cities at all. We are telling you this rather than presenting a band as a settled fact, because the honest description of these numbers is a reading across sources that disagree. On top of the bands, each page names the skills that carry a premium in that city. It names them and says why, and it does not attach a figure to any of them, because nobody publishes a per-skill pay premium for a role in a Gulf city and we are not going to be the first to make one up. Skills that appear on every job description are marked as baseline, which is more useful than pretending everything on a requirements list is a lever.
Every figure is monthly, because that is how Gulf offers are quoted. Saudi offers state a basic salary with housing and transport added on top, while UAE offers are normally a single all inclusive monthly figure. The pages keep those two conventions separate and say which one applies, so a Riyadh number and a Dubai number are never silently compared as though they measured the same thing.
The UK, where the data is better
These pages cover the Gulf, and everything on them is pay rather than volume, because no Saudi or UAE body publishes a count of what is advertised. The UK is different: the Office for National Statistics publishes a monthly count of newly advertised jobs by occupation and region, openly licensed. We republish the graduate relevant part of it, with the source, the method and the limits stated, at UK job adverts by occupation. Saying plainly why there is no Riyadh equivalent is on that page too.
What is covered, and what is deliberately missing
The cluster currently covers Data Analyst and Software Engineer roles across Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, plus country level comparison pages for Saudi Arabia and the UAE. That is 6 city pages and 4 country comparisons, no more. A page is published only where a checkable published figure with a stated sample size exists and at least three real employers can be named, which is a lower bar than the sources agreeing with each other, because they do not.
Everything below that bar is absent on purpose. It would be trivial to generate a page for every job title in every Gulf city and fill the gaps with a national average and a plausible looking range, and that is exactly what makes most salary pages unusable: the reader cannot tell which numbers came from somewhere and which were interpolated. Here, if a combination is missing, it is missing because the evidence was too thin to publish. The same rule applies to the employer tables: an employer is named only where it genuinely hires for that role in that city.
Read a band as a position, not as a promise. It tells you roughly where an offer for your level should land and which specific gap is holding you at the bottom of it. Once you know the gap, CV and Job Match shows how your CV reads against a real posting for that role, and Course Path turns the skills listed on each page into courses with a cost and a length attached. That is the whole arc: CV, to target job, to skill gap, to course.
City pages
- Data Analyst in RiyadhMid level median SAR 14,000 a month
- Data Analyst in JeddahMid level median SAR 12,500 a month
- Data Analyst in DubaiMid level median AED 13,800 a month
- Software Engineer in RiyadhMid level median SAR 19,000 a month
- Software Engineer in JeddahMid level median SAR 17,500 a month
- Software Engineer in DubaiMid level median AED 17,500 a month
Country comparisons
Common questions
Are these figures monthly or annual?
Monthly. Gulf offers are quoted per month, so every figure on every page in this cluster is a monthly figure, and the bands are quoted the same way across cities so they can be compared directly.
Do the numbers include housing and transport allowances?
It depends on the country, and the pages say so individually. Saudi offers quote a basic salary first, with housing and transport added on top, so the figure in the hand is meaningfully higher than the basic. UAE offers are normally quoted as one all inclusive monthly figure with housing and transport already folded in. Never compare a UAE all inclusive number directly against a Saudi basic.
Where does the data come from?
Figures are a compiled estimate read across published salary compilations, principally Indeed, Glassdoor, Payscale. Those compilations do not agree with each other. Read on 18 September 2026, Indeed and Glassdoor differed by 59% to 72% on the same role in the same city, in the same direction every time, because Indeed derives its figures from job adverts and skews junior while Glassdoor's are self-reported and skew senior; Payscale does not break out cities at all. These bands are therefore our reading across sources that disagree rather than a point where they converged, and the senior and lead bands are the least supported part of the ladder. Treat them as an anchor for a conversation, not as a measurement.
Why is my city or my role not on this list?
Because we could not source it well enough to publish. The sourcing bar is a published, checkable figure with a stated sample size behind it, plus at least three real employers we can name for that role in that city. Most combinations fail on the first test, not the second: a city salary page that rests on eight reported salaries, or two, is a number with a decimal point and nothing behind it. Everything we could not source that well is deliberately absent, because a salary page built on a guess is worse than no page at all.
How often is this updated?
The bands were last reviewed on 10 September 2026, and that is the date carried in the page metadata. A refresh rebuilds every band from the sources again rather than nudging individual numbers, so the whole set always describes one moment rather than a mix of several.
How should I use a band when negotiating?
Anchor on the band for the level you are being hired at, not on your last salary. Quoting your previous pay hands the employer the number for free. Name the level your experience places you in, name the figure at the top of that band, and let them counter downwards. If a premium skill listed on the role page is missing from your CV, you are negotiating at the bottom of the band by default.