Updated 22 Jun 2026

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.

By Javad PK and Sujith PS.

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 enquiry@upcode.in.

Kerala Tech Salary Report 2026

The headline numbers

How we built this

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For journalists, recruiters and researchers