Kerala Tech Salary Report 2026
Salary bands across Full Stack, AI / GenAI, Data Science and DevOps roles for engineers with Kerala roots, working in Kerala, Bengaluru and the GCC. Built from Upcode placement data, a 42-employer hiring-partner survey and 2,000+ cross-checked public listings.
The headline numbers
Median Full Stack entry CTC, Kerala (2026)
₹4.2 - 6.5 LPA
For first-job software engineering roles in Kerala-based product and service companies hiring 2026 cohort grads. Excludes Bengaluru / GCC placements.
Median Full Stack mid-level CTC, Bengaluru (3-5 yrs)
₹14 - 22 LPA
Based on Kerala-origin engineers placed at product companies in Bengaluru by Upcode and partner referrals.
Median AI / GenAI engineer CTC, India (2026)
₹18 - 32 LPA
For engineers with 2+ years of applied LLM / RAG / agent experience at Indian product companies. Skewed toward Bengaluru, with a smaller cluster in Kochi.
Median Data Science entry CTC, Kerala (2026)
₹4.5 - 7 LPA
For data analyst / junior data scientist roles in Kerala-based BFSI, healthtech and analytics teams.
GCC Malayalee software CTC range (2026)
AED 8K - 22K / month
For Malayalee engineers in UAE, Saudi and Bahrain across product engineering and platform roles. Excludes service-company body-shopping rates.
How we built this
- ✓Placement data: 800+ Upcode alumni who reported their first or most-recent offer letter between Jan and May 2026.
- ✓Hiring-partner survey: 42 Kerala / Bengaluru / Kochi / GCC employers who shared anonymised salary bands by role and experience.
- ✓Public listings cross-check: 2,000+ Naukri / LinkedIn / Indeed listings for Kerala-origin software engineering roles in Q1-Q2 2026.
- ✓All figures are CTC, not in-hand. Bands shown are the middle 50% (25th to 75th percentile). Outliers removed.
- ✓Numbers in this public summary are rounded. The downloadable PDF has the un-rounded dataset, role-level cuts, and city-level breakdowns.
For journalists, recruiters and researchers
All figures in this report are free to cite with attribution. Suggested citation: "Upcode Software Labs, Kerala Tech Salary Report 2026 ( https://upcode.in/research/kerala-tech-salary-report-2026)". For an interview or the raw dataset, email [email protected].
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