Remote vs hybrid go-to-market roles: pay differences in 2026

The remote vs hybrid pay gap in 2026 is mostly a location gap: fully remote go-to-market roles typically pay around 80% of the top-tier hub rate: in the US, roughly 75–85% of San Francisco, San Jose or New York pay, and in the UK around 80–85% of London pay. Hybrid roles tied to an office are usually paid at that office's local rate, so a hybrid London or Bay Area role pays more than the same job done remotely, while a hybrid role in Manchester or Austin pays about the same as remote.

The difference is mostly in base salary. On-target earnings for quota-carrying roles move less, because commission rates and quotas are often set company-wide. This guide explains how software companies set location-based pay, shows the 2026 location indices from the TRG GTM salary guide, works through what that means for six common GTM roles, and covers how to negotiate if you are remote or hiring remotely.

How do software companies set pay for remote GTM roles?

Most companies use one of three models. Which one your employer uses matters more to your pay than whether the job is labelled remote or hybrid.

The tier model dominates in the US. Carta's July 2025 analysis of startup pay data from more than a million employees found New York and San Jose paid at the San Francisco rate, Seattle at 97%, Washington DC at 93% and Boston at 92%. Lower-cost cities were closing the gap: Carta reported Jacksonville, Cincinnati, Charleston and Kansas City among the cities gaining most on San Francisco between 2024 and 2025.

What are the 2026 location indices for GTM pay?

Our salary guide uses the indices below to adjust its London and US tech-hub ranges for other locations. Each index shows typical base pay as a share of the most expensive hub (100). They blend published city data: Robert Half's 2026 customer success manager medians by UK city, Skipcall's 2026 London versus regional SDR data, Carta's 2025 startup pay by US city and Robert Half's 2026 demand generation bands by US city.

The UK figures are anchored by Robert Half's 2026 customer success manager medians: £49.25k in London, £44.5k in Bristol, £44k in Manchester and £43k in Edinburgh. The London premium over those cities works out at roughly 10–15% for comparable roles. Skipcall's May 2026 SDR analysis, drawing on Glassdoor data, puts London base pay 15–20% above the UK national average and says fully remote roles outside the M25 may see a 5–10% reduction.

In the US, Robert Half's 2026 demand generation manager bands show the spread clearly: $121k–$171k in San Jose against a national band of $92k–$130k, with New York slightly above San Jose and Austin around 88% of it.

What does a remote GTM role pay compared with a hub role?

Applying the indices to the guide's 2026 ranges gives the illustrative figures below. They are base salaries only. They show how a tier-based employer would typically price each location, not what every company pays.

The remote US demand generation figure ($96k–$128k) sits almost exactly on Robert Half's national band ($92k–$130k), which is a useful check that the indices are realistic. The remote UK SDR figure (£27k–£33k) is close to Skipcall's remote and regional entry-level range. Full ranges for every role are in the salary guide; see in particular customer success, account executives and revenue operations.

Why OTE moves less than base for remote sellers

For quota-carrying roles, location affects base more than variable pay. Most companies set commission rates and quotas by segment and level, not by city, because the customer does not pay less because the seller lives in Leeds or Denver. Skipcall makes the same observation for UK SDRs: the London premium on OTE is smaller than on base, because quotas and commission rates are usually set company-wide.

Here is a hypothetical example. A company pays its London mid-market AEs £70k base and £70k variable at target, a £140k OTE. A remote UK AE in the same segment is offered £58k base, about 83% of London. If the company keeps the same quota and variable, the remote AE's OTE is £128k, or 91% of London, and at 120% of quota the gap narrows further. Some companies instead scale variable by the same index, so ask which approach your employer uses.

Does hybrid pay more than remote?

Not because it is hybrid. It pays more when the office it is tied to is in a higher-paying location. A hybrid role three days a week in central London is priced at London rates; a hybrid role in a Manchester office is priced at Manchester rates, which are close to the UK remote figure. The same applies in the US: hybrid in San Jose or New York pays the top-tier rate, hybrid in Austin or Chicago pays the local tier.

What has changed is how many roles are genuinely remote. The Flex Index found in July 2024 that 79% of tech firms let employees choose whether to come into the office, but that the share of tech firms with no offices at all had fallen to 23% from 37% a year earlier. Larger companies were much more likely to require office time: 74% of firms with more than 25,000 employees used structured hybrid policies, against 7% of firms under 500. In Great Britain, the ONS reported that 28% of working adults were hybrid workers in early 2025, rising to 45% of those earning £50,000 or more.

For GTM candidates this means remote roles are still common at smaller software companies and much less common at large ones, where the best-paid roles increasingly come with an office expectation.

Which GTM roles are most and least remote-friendly?

How should employers set remote GTM pay?

How to negotiate pay for a remote GTM role

Worked example: a London hybrid offer against a remote offer

Here is a hypothetical comparison for a customer success manager choosing between two offers from similar companies. Offer A is hybrid, three days a week in central London, at £60k base with a 10% bonus. Offer B is fully remote at £52k base with the same 10% bonus, about 87% of Offer A, which is slightly better than a strict 82 remote index would give.

On cash alone, Offer A is worth £66k and Offer B £57.2k, a gap of £8.8k. But the London role carries costs the remote role does not. A candidate living outside London who commutes three days a week may spend several thousand pounds a year on rail travel, plus time. Someone already living in London and walking to the office faces almost none of that cost and should weigh the offers very differently.

The point is not that one offer is better. It is that the headline base difference overstates or understates the real gap depending on where you live, and both candidates and employers should run the numbers for the specific person rather than assuming the index tells the whole story.

Is the remote discount shrinking?

There are signs that it is, slowly. Carta's 2025 data showed lower-cost US cities closing the gap on San Francisco, with Jacksonville gaining 5% and Cincinnati, Charleston and Kansas City each gaining 4% between 2024 and 2025. As more companies require office time, the pool of genuinely remote roles shrinks, and employers competing for remote talent in scarce specialisms have to pay closer to hub rates. At the same time, larger employers' return-to-office requirements push their best-paid roles towards hubs. Expect the gap to persist for most roles, narrowing for scarce senior skills.

Cross-border and international remote roles

Roles covering one market from another follow a simple rule in most companies: pay follows the person, not the territory. A UK-based AE covering North American accounts is usually paid on UK rates, though often at the upper end, and US-hours working patterns are a fair point to raise in negotiation. The main exception is leadership. VP-level roles with global remits are often paid closer to US benchmarks wherever the person is based, because the employer is competing in an international pool.

Employment law, tax and benefits also follow the person. A US company hiring someone in the UK needs a UK entity or an employer of record, and must meet UK employment rights including pension auto-enrolment and holiday entitlement. Candidates should check who their legal employer will be.