Which jobs in tech competes with high finance?

Highest paid "key" tracks on average are Engineering, Applied AI / ML Research and Product Management. Other key tracks are Design, Data Science / Analytics, Technical Program Management, Growth and Product Marketing.

These are all the tracks that revolve around building the technology that fuels a product (Eng, Applied AI/ML), ensuring there aren't any technical roadblocks to impede that "building" process (TPM), managing a product's future success (Product), acquiring and retaining users (Growth) and crafting the right messaging / positioning for a product (PMM). Hence all "key" tracks as they all revolve around a tech company's core offering: its products.

On top of that, you have customer facing teams that are also comp'd well albeit less guaranteed and more performance based comp such as Pre-Sales, Sales, Customer Success, Support Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Delivery / Implementation etc. These guys all handle the customer end of things and although aren't "core" to the product / infra work they are absolute necessetities in the B2B tech space.

Generally ~80-90% of people in tech working in "key roles" will never make it past the senior "individual contributor" level. This is roughly ~2 levels above where you start after undergrad. Or one level above where you start as an MBA. For the level above that, maybe only 10-20% of people will make it there at some point. The levels that come with real cash, it's even less than that maybe only 1-5% ever make it to those levels.

For context, senior IC level usually nets you about $250-450k all-in and the level above that nets you about $325-650k all-in. It's only at the levels beyong that where you can see numbers approach mid-high six figures or low seven figures which, as I mentioned before, are relatively inaccessible to most people in the industry. But if you are a rockstar and make it to like Director or VP of Product, Engineering Director or VP, Design Director or VP, PMM Director, Group / Principal Product Manager, Distnguished / Principal / Senior Staff Engineer at a relatively young age (say ~30-40) you'll be pulling in a floor of $500k and a ceiling of 7 figures easily. LIkewise if you're a hotshot salesperson on the largest enterprise accounts at a B2B tech company you'll also be pulling it in.

Corporate functions (HR, Finance/FP&A, etc) and strategy type of jobs (BizDev/Partnerships, BizOps, CorpDev, Strategy&Ops etc) have lower ceilings than the "key roles" but still pay pretty well. Especiially the strategy focused roles. Not unheard of for e.g. FP&A Managers to make $180-250k where they would otherwise make less than that in other industries.

Overall not really comparable to high finance but still an extremely lucrative industry if you're in the right spot. Even moreso if you're a founder, exec or very prominent individual contributor of a startup that has break out success. Hours are of course way better and environment is usually much more relaxed and less stuffy / uppity than most other industries.