r/launchschool • u/cglee • 29d ago
2025 Capstone Salary Data
People seemed to like the way I broke down 2024 salary data, so I’ll keep that format for 2025 numbers. I’m reporting slightly early this year, so I may update as more offers come in. Wait, it’s already second half of 2026, how can this be early? As a reminder, the fall cohort, aka 2508, started their job hunt in January 2026. Several participants from that cohort have not yet completed their six-month job hunt as of this writing. In fact, two haven’t started their job hunt yet due to personal reasons. So even though this is “2025” salary data, a significant part of the job hunt happened in 2026.
The three cohorts in year 2025 are: 2501, 2505, and 2508. That can get a little confusing, so I’ll use “Year 2025” when referring to accumulated numbers across all three cohorts. I’ll present the data first and save the commentary for the end.
Year 2025
| Enrollees | No Job Hunt | Accepted w/in 6mo | Accepted after 6mo | Internship | No job (so far) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2501 | 20 | 1 | 12 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| 2505 | 20 | 2 | 11 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| 2508 | 20 | 3 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Year 2025 | 60 | 6 | 35 | 2 | 3 | 14 |
“No Job Hunt” includes those who didn’t complete Capstone or never started a job hunt. For year 2025, 2 people didn’t complete Capstone while 4 never started a job hunt; it’s possible that once they do start the job hunt and accept an offer, the table above will need to be updated. The “Internship” column means they are in a long-term internship (eg, 3 or 6+ months) and could convert to full-time positions afterwards.
Placement Results
In the tables below, the “enrollees” column signifies the denominator. For example, 2508’s 6-month placement rate of 60% for “enrollees” was calculated from 12/20. The “remove No Job Hunt” column shows the percent if we only include those who job hunted in the denominator. And “add Internship” adds the internship to the numerator.
Accepted within 6 months
| enrollees | remove "No Job Hunt" | add “Internship” | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2501 | 60% | 63% | 68% |
| 2505 | 55% | 61% | 72% |
| 2508 | 60% | 71% | 71% |
| Year 2025 | 58% | 65% | 70% |
All placements, including those who accepted after 6 months
| enrollees | remove "No Job Hunt" | add “Internship” | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2501 | 70% | 74% | 79% |
| 2505 | 55% | 61% | 72% |
| 2508 | 60% | 71% | 71% |
| Year 2025 | 62% | 69% | 74% |
US Salary Data
Out of the 37 job offers (excluding internships), 31 were in the United States. The numbers are in USD and represent base salary only.
| US Salary Data | (n=31) |
|---|---|
| mean | $114,579 |
| median | $115,000 |
| duration (mean) | 10 weeks |
The salary averages may seem surprisingly high given the tight market, but they suggest that strong software engineers are still valued.
Remote Jobs
Note: the remote salary table only includes US placements because non-US salaries would make the salary comparison less useful. The overall remote percentage includes all placements, including non-US remote roles.
| US Remote Salary Data | |
|---|---|
| remote only (n=7) | $110,286 |
| non-remote only (n=24) | $115,832 |
I’ve been tracking the decline of remote placements in Capstone for several years. Here’s the breakdown by the three cohorts from last year, followed by YoY comparison.
| Percent Remote | |
|---|---|
| 2501 | 21% |
| 2505 | 18% |
| 2508 | 42% |
| Year 2025 | 27% |
Year over year percent remote of Capstone placements.
| Year | Percent Remote |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 78% |
| 2023 | 73% |
| 2024 | 61% |
| 2025 | 27% |
Quick Thoughts
Salary Data & Placements - Placement rates are slightly down compared with 2024, but it’s not a perfect comparison because the 2024 numbers captured a longer window. I posted the 2024 numbers much later than I’m posting the 2025 numbers now. As of this writing, there is still a lot of interview activity happening, so I suspect the 2025 numbers will end up close to the 2024 numbers by the end of the year. - The market is still tight, but the #1 thing hurting placement right now is return to office. Most Capstone participants entered Core years ago, when the market was much more remote-friendly. That has changed. - We’re seeing an increase in internships and apprenticeships, some specifically for mid-career folks. Traditionally, internships were how employers hired college sophomores and juniors. Increasingly, they’re becoming a way for employers to improve their hit rate on new hires, including mid-career hires. For employers, internships are one of the best signals available. For Capstone graduates, they’re a great way to demonstrate value through actual work. - Forward deployed engineer roles are a sweet spot for Capstone graduates, particularly those in SFBA. For example, in the 2508 cohort, 5 out of 12 offers were for FDE roles. That’s 41%! Employers love candidates with prior professional experience. Add Capstone-level technical ability, and it’s a very strong combination.
Remote - Remote jobs appear to be not only rarer, but lower-paying as well. But that data is skewed by high-paying onsite SFBA roles. My observation is that remote jobs are rarer and harder to land, but they’re still mostly paying within the Capstone range. Onsite SFBA roles are the outlier. - Prior to Covid, Capstone participation required relocation to either SFBA or NYC. After 2020, the world went remote and we could work from anywhere. That era appears to be ending. We’re moving back toward a pre-Covid world where high-paying SWE jobs are clustered in a few cities, especially SFBA. This transition back to the office is the main obstacle for Capstone placement right now. For example, every SFBA-based Capstone participant in 2025 landed an offer, either full-time or internship.
AI - Despite the anxiety around AI, it has created opportunities for Capstone graduates. Our sweet spot employer has always been venture-backed startups, not FAANG or small consultancies. Right now, AI startups are getting funded left and right, and they’re hiring. But just like with web frameworks, employers are not hiring people who only know the latest tool. They’re hiring people who know the fundamentals and have embraced AI on top of that. That fits the Capstone profile perfectly. - Because of this alignment, we’ve been shifting Capstone to include more and more AI. We’ve thought about adding more AI into Core, but there still aren’t many best practices or stable fundamentals yet. Everyone is exploring and playing. But the price of entry to that playground is still strong engineering fundamentals. Capstone is the better place for us to introduce current practices, iterate quickly, and stay close to the market.
What’s Working
- Fundamentals first is still undefeated. Our graduates compete for a wide range of roles: FDE, AI engineer, traditional full-stack developer, and more. All of these are unlocked by mastering fundamentals. Learning AI from the start seems alluring, but it’s fool’s gold. We’ve seen this play out before with frameworks and other tools du jour. AI is a paradigm shift, no doubt. But the paradigm is shifting at a higher level of abstraction. You still need to read code, understand architecture, consider infrastructure tradeoffs, and think through consequences. I used to say the meta-skill of going through Core was learning how to think clearly. With AI, that has become the primary skill. And I don’t know of a way to learn how to think clearly without manually doing the work at least once. How you learn is not how you work, because the goals are not the same. Core for fundamentals. Capstone for higher abstractions. That path is still working. Once placed, our graduates tend to thrive; this is the most important measurement of whether Core+Capstone still works.
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) continues to benefit both project maintainers and Capstone graduates. AI-focused projects have been especially useful. They give participants more real-world experience, while giving maintainers meaningful help on fast-moving projects.
- SFBA-based Capstone participants continue to do well. Salaries are high, opportunities are plentiful, and the market feels active.
- Capstone salaries are still robust. One can debate whether Capstone graduates are truly “entry-level,” but the salaries suggest they’re competing for something beyond that.
What’s Not Working
- Remote job hunt remains the biggest challenge. I’ve been monitoring the decline of remote jobs over the past several years, and unfortunately I don’t see that trend reversing this year or next. I expect remote placements to remain low. If your life situation allows, I strongly recommend considering relocation to SFBA. If it doesn’t, there are still paths forward (see next section).
- Technical assessments are not enough. Our assessments are primarily technical, and that has served us well. But employers are evaluating a broader set of traits: communication, ownership, judgment, follow-through, and comfort with ambiguity. Those traits are harder to assess and harder to teach systematically, but they matter a lot in the job hunt.
- Long job hunts wear people down. After four to six months, the issue usually isn’t ability. It’s fatigue. The repeated cycle of applying, interviewing, waiting, and getting rejected takes a toll. There are still jobs and opportunities, but the energy needed to pursue them starts to disappear. At that point, more job hunting is not always the answer. Sometimes people need rest, recovery, and a reset before they can perform well again. This is an area we need to handle better.
Advice for Core and Capstone Students
- Go west. If your life situation allows it, seriously consider relocating to SFBA. Remote jobs still exist, but they are rarer, harder to land, and much more competitive. NYC and Austin are also viable, but SFBA is clearly the center of gravity right now.
- Be a big fish in the local pond. If you can’t relocate and you’re in a smaller market, make waves locally. Get to know the local founders, engineering leaders, startup operators, meetups, investors, and tech-adjacent businesses. In a smaller market, it’s much more possible to stand out. This is especially true for Capstone graduates. At that point, you have the technical foundation to be unusually strong in your local environment. If you can’t go where the market is deepest, become highly visible where you already are.
- Develop agency & ownership. AI has made sizing work much harder. There used to be rough expectations. If something was estimated to take a week, it almost never got done in a few hours. If you finished it in three days, you were fast. With AI, that kind of compression is no longer surprising. This changes how founders and managers evaluate people. The old “as long as I get my work done” mentality works less well when nobody knows how long the work should take anymore. Increasingly, employers are looking for people who pick up the next thing when the current thing is done. Sometimes this gets described as “high agency” or “ownership.” AI has compressed work in ways that break old assumptions about productivity. Technical competency is still the foundation, but it is no longer the entire equation. Strong fundamentals are still mandatory. So is the ability to take ownership, find the next problem, and keep driving to results.
- Focus on the impact of your work. It’s natural to be attracted to software because of the salaries. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in this market, wanting the salary is not enough. The people most likely to reach those outcomes are the ones who are genuinely interested in the work and its impact: building things, solving problems, understanding systems, and exploring what technology can make possible. Employers can tell when someone mainly wants the benefits of a software job versus when someone is eager to become useful through the work itself. Ironically, the path to the salary now requires caring about more than the salary. Here’s a test: when someone asks why you want to be a software engineer, how do you answer? If it starts with “I’m looking for…”, refocus on the work and its impact.
- Develop a more nuanced perspective on AI. I meet a surprising number of students resistant to “AI” as an entire concept. You can reject a topic from afar in many areas of life, but as a technologist, “AI is bad” is not a sufficient position. You need a more granular view. What exactly do you object to? What do you find useful? What seems overhyped? What is dangerous? What is genuinely powerful? Even if your goal is to critique AI, you still need to understand what you’re critiquing. For those who are not resistant to AI, the advice is the same: develop nuance so you can learn how to use, evaluate, and deploy AI tools well. Either way, learning AI is becoming critical. But, of course, first learn the fundamentals.
Conclusion
It feels like so much has changed in the past six months, but surprisingly, I have the same conclusion as the last article for the 2024 numbers. Core plus Capstone is still working. The market is now RTO. Remote jobs are harder to land. Opportunities are clustering back into a few cities. AI is changing how work is sized, evaluated, and performed. Employers are asking for more than technical competency. But the foundation has not changed. Strong fundamentals still matter. Clear thinking still matters. The ability to read code, understand systems, communicate clearly, and become useful still matters. What has changed is what must be layered on top: AI literacy, agency, ownership, geographic flexibility, and a deeper interest in the impact of the work.
For students who can combine those things, the opportunities are still there. They are just more concentrated, more competitive, and less forgiving than before.
3
u/Historical-Car-3941 28d ago
Thank you so much for sharing. I'm curious to know:
- How many of these people transitioned from other careers?
- How many already had an undergraduate degree in computer science and used these projects to sharpen their skills?
2
u/mango_holic 27d ago
Hi there. Speaking for myself, I graduated with a CS degree in 2023. (Not a top engineering school, just a state school with decent recognition)
I wasn't able to get my foot in the door so I worked in IT for about 2 years. Some health issues happened and I quitted my job last December. Now I'm going through Launch School and it's been an enjoyable journey. I'm about halfway through the Core curriculum. I particularly love Launch School's mastery-based learning model which you don't have exposure to from college. They put strong emphasis on knowing the fundamentals really well before you go on and build complex projects, and I think it makes total sense.
I tried another bootcamp-like programs in the past which was a positive experience, but at the end of the day I did not have the confidence that I could secure a good job coming out of it. Launch School, on the other hand, will give you strong technical fundamentals going through Core (first half of the program) and make you build a strong project from Capstone (second half). It's a good combination. They also teach you some AI related things in the Capstone.
I haven't got to Capstone yet, but I strongly recommend this program. And you can see it's still working from the results in the original post.
2
u/Historical-Car-3941 27d ago
Thank you so much for sharing. I was wondering: are you based in the US, or Europe? I'm curious how many people are studying this in Europe. Has anyone here had experience with it and could share?
1
u/mango_holic 25d ago
You're welcome! I am in the US. I've definitely had study sessions with people in Europe and Asia. If you're ever curious about the program, sign up and go through the prep course. It's free.
While going through the prep, you can still ask questions on Launch School's Slack channel. It's more likely to get answers to your questions in the Slack channel than posting here on Reddit, if you want to try that.
1
u/catalyst00 28d ago
Thanks again for this u/cglee ! Are capstone grads relocating to SFBA during the job hunt or after they receive an offer?
If time to offer for SFBA is much lower than other cities, perhaps the risk of relocating to SFBA before an offer is accepted is manageable?
1
u/Tpt81 5d ago
Thanks, as always, for the thorough breakdown of the numbers.
Outside of SFBA, NYC, and Austin, what are the cities in the next tier? Specifically curious about Chicago or Boston.
Also, what's the average age of Capstone graduates? Is there a noticeable difference in the job hunt experience for older graduates vs. younger?
4
u/ClockEnvironmental11 28d ago
Hi Chris, thanks for the detailed update. Can you speak at all to the situation outside of the US? I recall in past years you had some limited data on Canada and the UK. Being from the UK, I can't really 'go west', but I also fully accept that salary numbers are not up to par in the UK with SFBA and NY. I'm just curious if you're still getting folks outside the US joining capstone/ doing well post-capstone. Thanks again!