Just got an email from a recruiter for a very low paying "Senior Cursor Engineer" contract role, is this really how far this industry has sunken?

Posted by skidmark_zuckerberg@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 62 comments

The kicker is the salary: $38/hr.... I had to double read the email after I saw the rate. Obviously going to ignore it, but I was so shocked to see it I had to share. It's a 2 year remote contract, and requires 7+ years of experience in Full Stack development, with a slew of technologies listed, including DevOps related responsibilities. I mean it reads entirely like a Senior Full Stack role, but emphasizes using Cursor.

This was a random email sent to me from Ampcus Inc., dunno how they even got my email. Upon further research, they seem like a "legit" recruiting agency. The role was "Senior Cursor Engineer". The requirements expect you to be an experienced software engineer, but the entire role is prompt engineering with Cursor.

I am completely shocked there would be such a role called this. From my experience, things like Cursor or Claude Code are simply tools.. how can they be job titles? It seems like a sneaky way to lower salary expectations. Your responsibilities will be the typical software engineering duties, and they expect you to be knowledgeable and experienced, but since you're using Cursor, you can be paid less. How does this make any sense?

As mentioned, the pay was listed at $38/hr, which comes out to \~$79k per year. Is this where our industry is headed? It seems that since we don't have to code as much, all of the other highly technical experience we have related to software is all of a sudden irrelevant?

This isn't my only data point for lower salaries as well, just has been the lowest I've seen. I have been interviewing for \~1.5 months, and the $160-$180k pay band is now coming in at $130-$150k, for the same Senior roles. My last role was $182k and it doesn't seem like I can even get close to that again in 2026. I have talked to recruiters who asked me my salary expectations, they mostly always go 'well the company is looking at a lower max salary, but we can see".

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metaphorm@reddit

just ignore it and move on. the industry has always had low paying grunt work, and the recruiter probably sent out 1000 emails for that based on a contact list they didn't bother to look at in any detail.

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nsxwolf@reddit

I had a recruiter talking to me about a quant dev role that pays $105k. He acted shocked when I suggested that was far below market.

Some recruiters and companies are unserious and should just be ignored.

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T0c2qDsd@reddit

The one time I told a recruiter they were way below market for someone of my experience and role, and they actually seemed to appreciate it, I took note.

Because it was that rare.

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epelle9@reddit

I definitely would have taken that quant job before I made FAANG.

It’s not great pay, but getting quant experience will help you land much much higher paying jobs.

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nsxwolf@reddit

My suspicion is that it wasn't really a quant dev job, it was some generic fintech job pretending to be one. The requirements list looked more ambitious than a Citadel post though.

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metaphorm@reddit

exactly. they're fishing for the desperate or the unqualified (because sometimes budgets dont align with requirements).

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-manabreak@reddit

Yeah, it was pretty common even ten years ago to get super low ball offers every now and then. Sad thing is, some people took the bait and ended up having 50% salary compared to their peers, and only finding out later on.

SnugglyCoderGuy@reddit

DevOps started as a philosophy of how to organize teams and conduct work, but now its just a sysadmin position

Yeah, turns out putting the devs in charge of the cloud bills and reliability might have been a mistake :P

PineappleLemur@reddit

For a remote job meaning I can live anywhere in the world.. this is not bad at all lol.

Many will jump at it as a side job.

fsk@reddit

There are people out there who have been unemployed for a year or longer, need the money, need to get back into the workforce, and would jump at the opportunity.

another_dudeman@reddit

There were recruiters looking for sr devs at that rate even before LLM slop programming

AmoebaDue6638@reddit

Give it a year and we will see "Principal Prompt Whisperer" roles paying 40k. The title inflation in this space is something else.

Unhappy-Ladder-4594@reddit

Must have 5-7 years experience in Claude Code.

coderstephen@reddit

3+ years in OpenClaw minimum!

IGrowRadishes@reddit

The "Cursor Engineer" title is the tell. Senior Full Stack lets you ask $180k, Senior Cursor lets them argue you down to $80k for identical work.

lokaaarrr@reddit

There have always been low paying jobs in the field. I've gotten some hilarious solicitations on LI for like 5% of what I was making at the time, asking for every conceivable technology of the past 20 years.

IME, not a new phenomenon, just with added "AI" sprinkled on top

Montaire@reddit

$38/hour is higher than the median wage for California.

Get some perspective, man.

This is sub about a specific profession that usually requires a 4 year college degree

About 1/3 of working adults in CA have a 4 year degree.

Ninjez07@reddit

Ah, see, the recruiter just messed up and sent you the European salary instead of the US one. Easy mistake to make.

obelix_dogmatix@reddit

Ummmm … this shit always existed. In 2013 I was getting messages about $19/hr for contract roles. Depends on the companies. Low paying jobs have always existed in our field. Why is this a shocker?!

Damn. Even in 2002 that would have been massive lowballing.

Sometimes it is lowballing. Most times in my experience these offers are appealing as a side gig, and the employers know that too.

Affectionate_Day8483@reddit

Wild someone contacted me for senior software engineer contract position at Microsoft. They were offering 40 an hour.

ProfessionalPost3104@reddit

Tbf 150k+ is insane amounts of money for something that's way more saturated and doable compared to lawyer, doctor, etc

gauntvariable@reddit

Doctors and lawyers have unions or else they'd be making $38/hour too.

CorrectPeanut5@reddit

Seems like something targeted for off shore of some sort.

I've contracted for almost two decades. For the most part all the really big firms are crap. They take half the bill rate for not much benefit. Work with smaller regional firms and you'll get 80+% of the bill rate.

FWIW, contracting is up. A lot of companies are hiring, but they are unsure so they are sticking to contract workers.

fried_green_baloney@reddit

Usually the really low rates come from agencies that specialize in placing people in the USA on non-resident work visas. Such people have I think 60 days to find a new job so they get pretty desperate.

mothzilla@reddit

Is "Prompt Engineer" still a thing? A year or two ago companies were trying to make it a thing.

skidmark_zuckerberg@reddit (OP)

I have not seen a role for prompt engineer out there, but I guess 'Cursor Engineer' is basically that. I have seen Software Engineer roles where the requirements mention being able to prompt and use AI tools, but it wasn't the focus of the job title.

ithkuil@reddit

It's a remote role, so you are competing with people where $79k is a lot of money.. Like every single competent experienced engineer in India that needs work and has used Cursor before.

And I know there is a lot of racism out there still, so some might not believe me, but there are millions of such engineers in India and lots of other countries with low pay rate and many strong engineers. That is a perfectly reasonable salary for most of them.

I should've added, this role required US citizenship and no sponsorship available. So it was localized to the US.

SolarNachoes@reddit

Are they paying the cursor bill?

I'd assume so, and is probably where the other half of the salary is lol.

sharjeelsidd@reddit

Unfortunately, some H1b/opt will pick it up

Neither H1Bs nor OPTs can work as contractors..

Who said that? Plenty of companies hire through contract-to-hire roles. Usually, a consulting company employs the person and then bills the end client for the resource.

That would be working as an employee for a consulting company that then contracts you out.

This is a direct contract job from the description, literally unavailable for immigrants.

Visas are only given for employees (or investors), not for contractors, no H1B nor OPT is taking this job.

No-Formal8349@reddit

That's more than enough for someone who works from Houston. Many people make less than that and are doing just fine.

eronth@reddit

It's only sunken that low if highly skilled people start taking those jobs.

latchkeylessons@reddit

If the interview overhead is low, I'd take the gig and turn around all kinds of the AI-generated bullshit they're looking for while continuing on with another job. I did this on another contract a while back and they were very pleased for six months with zero concerns. "Ask stupid questions...", etc.

ButWhatIfPotato@reddit

how can they be job titles?

It's the ultimate corporate wet dream because stakeholders can win with their fantasy scenario of having someone with 1 year of experience do the work of experienced 10 people but eventually they win with the reality scenario because once everything crash and burns they have enough golden parachutes to not be affected at all plus they get the opportutity to have autistic meltdowns on the poor junior for not clickety-clacking on the computerised mathematics apparatus hard enough to create facebook 2.0.

Idea-Aggressive@reddit

They're offering you work at a cost they can afford. I personally can't afford to hire anybody for $79k a year, I wish I could, I know a lot of developers who'd be glad to collaborate for that and I'm sure we could grow from there and pay ourselves a decent living. If you do think that's low, start your own business? Easier.

Reasonable_Working47@reddit

I think they're trying to hire someone where this is their second job.

Maybe third

rosalina_dreams@reddit

yeah so OP take the job ! go get another one.

rebelSun25@reddit

"Cursor Engineer"

I'd just respond with "I'm well versed with Linux cursors. I prefer dark theme, running KDE, no trails and at least at 800mhz polling rate"

Brutus5000@reddit

I wasn't aware that there is still room for improvement on cursors!

ryanheartswingovers@reddit

You’d be even more effective as a keyboard engineer

PixelPhoenixForce@reddit

I currently work for $19 and I have faang experience..

FatefulDonkey@reddit

How did you get this low? Might as well switch to McDonald's

kondorb@reddit

That’s pretty OK for a remote role as long as they aren’t trying to get someone from US. The rest of the world is perfectly fine with 79k USD for a mid-senior.

Possibly-Functional@reddit

How else will they afford when they are spending their entire budget on LLM token? /s

Ok_Body7659@reddit

Wild. I just saw a posting for an AI software engineer for 230k.

CubicleHermit@reddit

As mentioned, the pay was listed at $38/hr, which comes out to ~$79k per year.

If you're paid hourly and work 996, that's over $140k! :)

I really wish I were just making a joke (although this sounds like the sort of place that would expect you to bill 29 hours a week to avoid benefits kicking in and still work 996...)

CheetahChrome@reddit

They're fishing for those desperate in the market that will actually take that rate.

spez_eats_nazi_ass@reddit

Tell him “fuck you pay me”

drnullpointer@reddit

That's still 2-3x what McDonalds pays. Considering there are educated people working for McDonalds, this offer isn't *entirely* ridiculous, at least when observed from outside of IT industry.

Looking from inside it is obvious they won't hire anybody actually experienced, but it is possible whoever is doing the hiring might not have experience themselves.

Also, if they hire remote workers worldwide, there are definitely people from 3rd world countries that will gladly take the job and it could even be life changing money for them.