Typical comp shape
Sales engineers usually earn rsu + espp + commission. Common employers include Snowflake, Databricks, MongoDB, Confluent. Sales engineers earn both commission and full RSU grants, producing unusually high effective tax rates without planning.
What Florida changes
Florida has no wage income tax, which is structurally favorable for sales engineers with meaningful RSU comp. The savings vs a CA-resident colleague can be $30-60k per year at senior IC levels. That math is why Austin and Seattle are the two top relocation destinations for Bay Area tech workers.
Planning cadence
For a sales engineer in Florida, the three planning windows are: after each RSU vest (withholding check and sell-vs-hold), before any ISO exercise (AMT model at federal only), and in Q4 (estimated tax top-up to clear the safe harbor). A move-out question — if you're considering leaving Florida for a high-tax state, time it around vesting.