Meta’s 2025 work visa filings show base salaries as high as $650,000 for a vice president of engineering, AI, and as much as $450,000 for software engineers, a window into how much the company says it must pay for scarce technical talent. The filings, which cover more than 5,000 federal work visa applications Meta made in 2025, also list six-figure pay for AI research scientists, machine learning engineers, product managers and data science leaders.
That matters because Meta is not disclosing its full payroll or total compensation, only the salary floors tied to visa requests. Under federal rules, employers must pay H-1B workers at least the required wage, and Meta’s filings are an attestation that it pays at least those amounts for comparable roles and meets or exceeds local prevailing wages. The disclosed figures are minimums, not ceilings, but they offer a rare look at the company’s price tag for elite AI and engineering jobs at a time when meta layoffs have kept pressure on its staffing decisions.
The H-1B program was built to let U.S. employers hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs they say they cannot adequately fill at home, and the filings become public only because the system requires wage disclosure. When demand outstripped the cap, the program relied on a lottery; recently, that lottery design moved from random selection to wage-weighted selection. That shift makes the pay levels in Meta’s filings more than a curiosity. They now sit closer to the center of how companies compete for visas.
HR Executive said a $100,000 fee would force companies to rethink hiring strategies, while larger corporations may absorb the cost and small and mid-sized firms would be hit harder, with their ability to innovate and compete globally limited. For Meta, the salary disclosures underscore how expensive the highest-end AI and engineering roles have become. For smaller firms, the same system can look less like a recruiting tool than a barrier.
The next question is whether rising visa costs, combined with tighter selection rules, push more employers toward domestic hiring or simply make the biggest companies even better equipped to keep winning the people they want.
