Boston advertises a higher base salary for enterprise account executives than New York does. Indeed's job-posting data puts the Boston average at $169,512 against $151,089 in New York.*
That is not a market signal. It is a reporting artefact, and if you set a band off it you will either overpay on base or lose candidates at the offer stage when the variable side turns out to be thin.
Why the Boston number is inflated and incomplete at the same time
Massachusetts pay transparency took effect on 29 October 2025. Employers with 25 or more staff in the state must publish a pay range on every posting, set at what they "reasonably and in good faith" expect to pay.
The detail that matters for sales hiring is the carve-out: employers are not required to include bonus or commission in the posted range.
So every Boston enterprise AE posting now carries a fully disclosed base, and nothing at all about the half of the package that is actually in dispute. Scrapers like Indeed read the base, average it, and publish a confident-looking figure. The number is real. It is also answering a question you did not ask.
What the three main sources actually say
| Source | What it measures | Boston figure |
|---|---|---|
| Indeed | Base, from 210 job postings | $169,512 average |
| RepVue | Base and OTE, rep-reported | No Boston page exists |
| Recruits Lab | Total cash, agency estimate | $340K to $430K OTE, +3% on national |
RepVue publishes metro pages for New York and Austin. It has no Boston account executive page at all: the URL returns a 404.
That absence is worth more than most of the numbers. The one source that collects what reps say they are paid, rather than what employers advertise, does not have enough Boston submissions to publish. So for the OTE half of a Boston package you are working from a national median and an agency estimate, and nothing local and rep-verified.
Treat anyone quoting you a precise Boston OTE with suspicion, including us. The honest position is a national figure adjusted for a market you cannot directly measure.
The national anchor, and the number that undermines it
RepVue's US enterprise AE medians, as of October 2026, drawn from 35,605 ratings:*
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Median base | $140,000 |
| Median OTE | $280,000 |
| Top performer ceiling | $678,811 |
| Reps hitting quota | 39% |
Read the last row against the second. A $280,000 OTE describes what a rep earns at 100% attainment, and 39% of enterprise AEs get there. For the other 61%, OTE is a number in a contract, not a number in a bank account.
This is the single most useful fact in this guide. When a candidate tells you they are on $300K OTE, they have told you almost nothing about their income. We have written separately on how to work out which quota attainment figures are real.
What to actually budget for Boston
Boston's base premium is real, even allowing for the posting distortion. The city competes for the same enterprise sellers as New York while carrying a deep healthtech and vertical SaaS bench, and those buyers pull reps out of the general pool faster than general software can replace them.
A defensible 2026 band for a Boston enterprise AE carrying a $1M-plus quota:
| Component | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Base | $150,000 to $175,000 | Above RepVue's $140K national median, below the $169.5K posted average |
| Split | 50/50 | Anything richer on base signals a long sales cycle or a weak comp plan |
| OTE at 100% | $300,000 to $350,000 | Below the agency $340K to $430K, which reads optimistic against rep-reported data |
If you are pitching above $400,000 OTE you are either selling into financial services, or you are quoting a number almost nobody in your team will reach.
The practical takeaway
Post the base range you mean, because Massachusetts requires it and candidates will compare it. Then put the commission structure in the first conversation, not the third, because the posting legally does not have to carry it and every serious candidate knows that.
Ask every candidate for attainment as a percentage and the dollar figure they actually took home. The gap between those two numbers tells you more about the rep, and about their last employer's comp plan, than any salary guide will.
If you want a band pressure-tested against what reps in your specific segment are genuinely earning rather than what the aggregators publish, talk to us.
*Figures correct at the time of writing, 17 October 2026. Salary aggregators restate their averages continuously and the Massachusetts disclosure regime is still bedding in, so re-check any figure before it goes into an offer.