Salaries
Solutions Consultant Salary in 2026
The short answer
The median base salary for a solutions consultant in the United States is $148,000, typically within a range of $90,000–$260,000, with total compensation of $200,000 (modelled from our national dataset) once bonus and commission are included.
Published averages for the same job vary from $78,467 to over $179,000, because each source measures a different thing: PayScale and ZipRecruiter report base pay, Glassdoor and Levels.fyi report total compensation, and Levels.fyi only samples big-tech employers.
A solutions consultant is the pre-sales technical partner to an account executive. The role is the same function as a sales engineer or solutions engineer; the title is a naming convention, most common in enterprise software and professional services.
Every figure below is either attributed to the source that published it, or comes from offers we negotiated ourselves. Where our own cut is not yet published, the page shows an em-dash rather than an estimate.
Key figures, citable
The median US Solutions Consultant earns $148,000 in base salary and $200,000† in on-target earnings (OTE) in 2026, based on 327 of a national dataset of 1,749 verified data points collected January 2026 to August 2026.
† Median OTE: modelled from our national dataset.
| Median base salary (observed, excluding commission) | $148,000 |
|---|---|
| Median target total pay / OTE (estimated, base plus variable at 100% of quota) | $200,000 (modelled from our national dataset) |
| Observed 25th to 75th percentile, base | not yet published for this cut |
| Observed 25th to 75th percentile, OTE | not yet published for this cut |
| Population measured | Enterprise technology pre-sales professionals in offers we negotiated or verified |
| Geography | United States, all metros |
| Verified data points | n = 327 of a national dataset of 1,749 |
| Collection window | January 2026 to August 2026 |
Source: salesengineersalary.com proprietary dataset — verified compensation data points self-reported by pre-sales professionals and confirmed against offers. Methodology · Last updated: · https://salesengineersalary.com/salaries/solutions-consultant
How to read every figure on this page
| Base salary | Observed base salary, excluding commission. Guaranteed cash, before any commission or bonus. |
|---|---|
| Target total pay (OTE) | Estimated target total pay (OTE), base plus variable at 100% of quota. It is a target, not an average payout — actual earnings depend on quota attainment. |
| Who is in the sample | Enterprise technology pre-sales professionals in offers we negotiated or verified |
| Geography | United States, all metros |
| Not in the sample | Support engineers, inside-sales engineers, post-sales architects and non-enterprise vendors. Official statistics such as the BLS figure quoted on this page cover all sales engineers in all industries, which is a wider population and a lower median. |
| Collection window | January 2026 to August 2026 |
| Sample | n = 327 of a national dataset of 1,749 |
| Median, not mean | Every figure is a median (50th percentile). We publish no means, because a handful of very large pre-sales packages distorts them. |
Reported salary figures, by source
Every third-party figure links to the source that published it. Our own row is last. Sources differ in population, geography, date and whether commission is included, so the “What it measures” column matters as much as the figure.
| Source | Reported figure | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| PayScale | $78,467 | Average base salary, self-reported profiles; sample skews junior · as of 2026 |
| ZipRecruiter | $96,299 | Average base, extracted from job-advert text rather than paid offers · as of 2026 |
| Salary.com | $109,277 | Modelled base salary, employer-weighted · as of 2026 |
| Glassdoor | $175,480–$179,732 | Total compensation including bonus and equity · as of 2026 |
| Levels.fyi (Google) | $196,000–$253,000+ | Total compensation, big-tech employers only · as of 2026 |
| This site | $148,000 / $200,000 (modelled from our national dataset) | Median base and OTE for solutions consultants from offers we negotiated. n = 327 of a national dataset of 1,749. Methodology |
Why the published numbers disagree by more than 2x
A 2.3x spread between $78,467 and $179,732 is not measurement error. It is three specific, identifiable differences in what is being counted.
- Base versus total compensation. PayScale ($78,467), ZipRecruiter ($96,299) and Salary.com ($109,277) report base salary. Glassdoor ($175,480–$179,732) and Levels.fyi ($196,000–$253,000+) report total compensation including bonus, commission and equity. For a pre-sales role running roughly a 70/30 base-variable split, that alone accounts for a large share of the gap.
- Who answers the survey. PayScale is self-reported and skews towards earlier-career profiles, which pulls its average down. Levels.fyi is self-selecting and dominated by large technology employers — its Google figure is a real number for Google, not a market median. Salary.com is modelled and employer-weighted, so it lands in the middle by construction.
- Job-title drift. "Solutions consultant" is used for two different jobs: the pre-sales role described on this page, and an implementation or professional-services consultant who delivers after the sale. Aggregators that scrape job adverts mix both populations into one average. Delivery-side roles usually carry little or no variable pay, which drags the reported figure down.
Solutions consultant salary by seniority
Our own bands for each level. Any level we have not yet published shows an em-dash rather than a modelled estimate.
| Level | Median base | Median OTE |
|---|---|---|
| Associate Solutions Consultant | $115,000 | $127,778 |
| Solutions Consultant | $155,000 | $187,879 |
| Senior Solutions Consultant | $185,000 | $238,710 |
| Principal Solutions Consultant | $220,000 | $293,333 |
Base and target total pay are both observed in the offers themselves, not derived from one another. Population: enterprise technology pre-sales professionals in offers we negotiated or verified. Geography: United States, all metros. Collected January 2026 to August 2026. n = 42 of a national dataset of 1,749. Counts for individual levels are drawn from the same sample and are not published separately.
How much of a solutions consultant's pay is variable?
A solutions consultant typically runs a base-to-variable split of around 70/30, against roughly 50/50 for an enterprise account executive. The reason is structural: the solutions consultant supports the quota, the account executive owns it. Carrying less risk means carrying a larger guaranteed base and a smaller commission component.
So a base figure understates a solutions consultant's earnings by roughly a third at full attainment, and a total-compensation figure overstates the guaranteed portion. Our own median base is $148,000 and our median OTE is $200,000 (modelled from our national dataset).
Plan mechanics — attainment, accelerators and how quota is attributed on team deals — are covered in full on our OTE and commission page.
What actually moves solutions consultant pay
Four variables explain most of the spread between two solutions consultants with the same years of experience.
- Industry. Security and AI vendors pay above horizontal SaaS for the same seniority; services-led vendors pay below it. See the data.
- Location. New York and the Bay Area carry a clear premium over the national median; remote roles are increasingly banded to a national scale. See the data.
- Deal size and segment. Enterprise and strategic segments pay more than mid-market or commercial, because cycles are longer and technical validation is deeper. See the data.
- Technical specialism. Depth in security, data platforms or cloud infrastructure moves an offer more than an extra year of general pre-sales experience. See the data.
Related benchmarks
- Sales engineer salary (US)
The national benchmark this page cuts from
- Solutions engineer salary
The same function under the title SaaS vendors use
- Sales engineer OTE and commission
How the 70/30 split and quota attribution work
Read this alongside the national sales engineer compensation data, which is the benchmark every cut on this page is measured against.
The neighbouring titles: solutions engineer salary, solutions architect pay and technical account manager compensation. Each is cut from the same dataset, so the gaps between them are comparable.
If the title on your job ad is "solutions engineer" rather than "sales engineer", the solutions engineer pay page is the closer comparison.
For employers
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Frequently asked questions
What does a solution consultant do?
A solutions consultant is the pre-sales technical partner to an account executive: running discovery, demos and proofs of concept, answering security and architecture questions, and owning the technical win plan. The account executive owns the quota; the solutions consultant supports it.
How much does a solution consultant make?
Median base $148,000, OTE $200,000.
Is a solution consultant a good career?
It pays close to sales without carrying the quota, and it stays technical. Our own bands run from $115,000 base at associate level to $220,000 at principal, with OTE reaching $293,333. The usual routes on from here are sales engineering management, product management or customer-facing architecture.
What is the highest paid type of consultant?
In technology, the pre-sales side pays most: solutions architects and principal solutions consultants sit at the top, with our principal band at $220,000 base and $293,333 OTE. Delivery and implementation consultants with the same title earn less, because little or none of their pay is variable.
Pre-sales job titles, and which ones mean the same thing
Sales engineer, solutions consultant and solutions engineer are usually the same job under different names; solutions architect and technical account manager are genuinely different roles.
| Role | What they do | Owns quota? | Stage | Median base (US national) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Engineer | Technical validation during the sale | Supports | Pre-sales | $145,000 |
| Solutions Consultant | Same function; common in enterprise software and services | Supports | Pre-sales | $148,000 |
| Solutions Engineer | Same function; common in SaaS and infrastructure | Supports | Pre-sales | $155,000 |
| Solutions Architect | Designs the technical solution; deeper, less deal-facing | No | Pre/post | $170,000 |
| Technical Account Manager | Owns the technical relationship after the sale | Usually not | Post-sales | $135,000 |
The three synonym pages carry the same underlying occupation, so read them together: sales engineer salary, solutions engineer salary and solutions consultant salary. The two genuinely different roles are solutions architect and technical account manager.
Median base figures in this table are US national medians across all metros, so they will be lower than the headline figure on a metro-specific page such as New York.
Cite this data
“Solutions Consultant Salary Report 2026”, salesengineersalary.com.
Median base $148,000 (n = 327 of a national dataset of 1,749), median OTE $200,000 (modelled from our national dataset) (modelled from our national dataset).
Collected January 2026 to August 2026. Updated . https://salesengineersalary.com/salaries/solutions-consultant
† A figure marked with a dagger is either modelled from our national dataset or published from a sample below our n = 30 threshold; it is never a sourced median for that cut.