TechCrunch's Top 10 Highest Paying Startup Unicorns

It makes sense for unicorns, or startups valued at more than $1 billion, to use those means to attract top talent with more generous pay, but which of this magical herd pays employees the most?

We pulled together all 153 unicorns currently listed on the Crunchbase Unicorn Leaderboard and then matched them up with data provided by Glassdoor to give you, our readers, the top 20 highest paying startup unicorns.Uber would be a good guess for top dollar salaries. But, you might be surprised to find Cloudera, a software company providing Apache Hadoop-based software and support to businesses, pays best, with an employee median salary coming in at more than $142,000.

Despite its large coffers, Uber does not make it in the top 10 for best-paying unicorns. The ridesharing giant comes in at number 15 with a median salary of $101,600, right above Eventbrite.

*Note salaries listed are the annual median for all employees. Glassdoor works on a voluntary basis for salary info so you’d have to search through individual job titles to get a good sense of the salary for each type of job.

1. Cloudera – $142,240

As mentioned, this is a big data company built on the Hadoop platform. The startup offers a free open source version and a paid version for businesses. The company has more than a billion dollars in funding including $740 million last March from Intel Capital and they have a valuation in the $4 billion range.

2. Jawbone – $130,000

A wearable health and fitness company in the crowded armband activity tracker space. The Jawbone Up product tracks steps, sleep and other metrics for the body. The startup has more than $819 million in the bank and a valuation at $3 billion.

3. Medallia – $121,920

This is a customer service management platform providing Saas to hospitality, retail, and financial services businesses with $255 million in funding and a valuation of $1.25 billion.

4. Pinterest – $118,420

It’s a little bit of everything from discovering cool products and DIY projects to a new shopping portal for retailers to sell beauty and fashion items. SV Angel led the latest round in May, giving the startup a more than $11 billion valuation and putting the total funding at $1.32 billion to date.

5. Dropbox – $116,840

The cloud storage startup is rumored to be seeking an initial public offering soon, but it’s still a startup unicorn for now, with a valuation of $10.35 billion and $1.11 billion from Index, Blackrock Ventures and a number of other prominent investors (with half a billion of that investment in debt financing from JP Morgan).

6. Airbnb – $116,840

The worldwide vacation rental marketplace has caused much consternation among San Francisco voters, but it might be a nice place to collect a paycheck. The startup is valued at more than $25 billion, with $2.3 billion in funding to date.

7. Kabam – $116,840

This online game maker grew really fast over the past five years. A LinkedIn search puts the startup at a little more than 2,000 employees. Kabam has raised close to $245 million, with a $1.02 billion valuation.

8. App Dynamics – $114,218

An app performance analysis startup worth $1 billion at present, with $290 million in the bank.

9. Credit Karma

Offering free credit reports seems to be good business. This startup is a recent addition to the herd and was thought to be undervalued until a $175 million round this summer topped it at a $3.5 billion valuation (up 250% from previous value). We recently did a Cribs episode there for those curious about work life.

10. Okta – $110,000

Secure identity management startups are hot in this unprotected world of ours. Okta is one with a high value, too, at $1.2 billion on paper. The startup has raised a total of $230 million thus far.