Every conversation about salaries for private staff at some point encounters a published range. A recruitment aggregator, a trade association, a salary guide, an HR platform. The numbers look authoritative. They are usually wrong for the UHNW segment by a material margin.
Clients budgeting against these numbers often undershoot. Candidates quoting these numbers often undersell themselves. Misaligned expectations stall searches and cost placements. This article explains why published data breaks down at the top of the private market and what to use instead for reliable benchmarking.
It is written for principals and senior operators setting salary bands, and for candidates preparing to negotiate at senior UHNW level.
For current opportunities, see our job board. To discuss a search, see our Private Households & Estates page and Family Office recruitment page.
Public salary aggregators draw from three kinds of sources: job postings, employee-reported surveys, and recruiter-contributed data. Each has limitations at the UHNW end.
Job postings. Private households at UHNW level rarely advertise roles. Senior support and specialist domestic roles are filled through direct approach, not posted. The roles that are posted are typically mid-market, and the salaries reflect that. Aggregators drawing from postings miss the top of the market almost entirely.
Employee surveys. UHNW private staff rarely participate in public surveys. Confidentiality obligations, both contractual and cultural, prevent disclosure of actual packages. Those who do report often understate or omit discretionary components (bonuses, accommodation value, non-cash benefits).
Recruiter contributions. Some aggregators include data supplied by recruitment firms. Large firms with corporate-side focus skew the data toward mid-market ranges. Specialist UHNW firms rarely contribute because the role volumes are too small to influence aggregate statistics and because the clients they serve value discretion.
The net effect is that public salary data reflects the mid-market accurately and the UHNW segment poorly. The gap between the two is widest at the most senior and most specialist roles.
Reason one: the UHNW market is private. Compensation information does not circulate publicly. Principals, candidates, and recruiters treat package details as confidential by default. Aggregators cannot price what they cannot see.
Reason two: packages are not just base salary. Accommodation, discretionary bonuses, carry, co-investment, school fees, health insurance, private travel, and long-service bonuses can add 30% to 100% or more to the headline cash number. Aggregators typically capture base salary, sometimes bonus, and rarely anything else. The full package is invisible in published ranges.
Reason three: role definitions are inconsistent. A "Housekeeper" at a three-bedroom home and a "Housekeeper" at a principal residence are classified identically in aggregators. The work, the scale, and the pay are completely different. Aggregators average across all of these, producing a number that is accurate for mid-market housekeepers and wrong by a factor of two for UHNW ones.
Senior EAs and PAs. Published ranges for experienced EAs often sit at £50,000 to £75,000. UHNW-level EAs earn £90,000 to £150,000 plus bonus. Senior PAs with long tenure can earn substantially more with discretionary upside.
Chief of Staff. Published data often conflates Chief of Staff with senior manager or programme lead roles. UHNW Chief of Staff salaries sit at £130,000 to £250,000 base, with bonus structures often 25% to 100% of base. Public data tends to show £100,000 to £150,000 total.
Estate Manager. Aggregators quote £60,000 to £90,000 for experienced Estate Managers. At UHNW level, £100,000 to £200,000 plus is the realistic range, with larger households paying materially more. Multi-property estates with substantial capital budgets and large staff headcounts regularly exceed £250,000.
Private chef. Published ranges often top out around £60,000. Principal-household chefs earn £100,000 to £180,000 plus. Michelin-trained chefs with formal background command the top of the range and sometimes more.
Nanny. Aggregators quote £30,000 to £45,000. Career nannies at UHNW households earn £55,000 to £90,000 base. Senior career nannies, particularly Norland-trained, at major UHNW households start at £100,000.
The pattern is consistent. Public data captures the mid-market ceiling. The UHNW floor is often above the public ceiling.
Published data also misses the premium for specialisation. For nannies in bilingual families, native-speaker requirements are common. Parents want their children to acquire a language naturally, which means the nanny must speak it as a first language. This is a functional requirement, not a preference.
A UHNW family requiring a native Mandarin-speaking nanny in London is hiring from a tiny pool. The premium is significant. A UHNW family requiring a French native-speaker butler in New York is in a similarly constrained pool. The premium applies. Aggregators do not capture this segmentation. They treat all nannies as one pool, all butlers as one pool. The actual market for native-speaker or specialisation-required roles prices well above the aggregated average.
The same pattern applies across many private roles. A chef with formal French training working in a London principal household is priced differently from a chef working in a family restaurant. A chauffeur with close-protection training is priced differently from a standard chauffeur. Specialisations multiply, and none of them appear in public data.
Candidates at the UHNW end sometimes rely on published ranges when evaluating offers. This is a mistake. A PA with eight years of UHNW experience, native fluency in two languages, and direct-principal access is priced in a different market from the published PA range. Accepting at public-data levels means accepting 30% to 50% below market.
What candidates should do instead. Benchmark against placements in comparable households, not against aggregator ranges. Speak with specialist recruiters who have visibility of actual packages. Cross-reference against international norms when the role allows cross-border consideration. Do not accept the first published range as a ceiling.
Clients using published data often set budgets that are unworkable for the actual role. The consequence is not that the candidate pool is shallow. It is that the best candidates filter out, and the shortlist is constructed from candidates for whom the salary is either acceptable by necessity (a warning sign for retention) or by step-down (a warning sign for ambition).
What clients should do instead. Request recent comparable placement data from specialist recruiters. Build the budget from the role's specific scope, not from the generic role title. Factor in the full package, not just the cash base. Be prepared to adjust once the search reveals what the market actually clears.
Use placement data, not posting data. Actual offers accepted, not advertised ranges.
Match on scope, not title. A senior EA at a single principal is in a different market from a senior EA in a multi-office family office. Match the scope of your role to the placements you benchmark against.
Include the full package. Base, bonus, accommodation value, benefits, and any carry or equity. The headline cash is often under half the total at senior levels.
Update frequently. UHNW private staff salaries have risen substantially in recent years. Data even two years old is often out of date.
Accept jurisdictional variation. London, New York, Monaco, Geneva, and Dubai operate as separate markets with their own dynamics. A single global benchmark is rarely useful.
A specialist private recruiter is one of the few sources of reliable UHNW salary data. Specialist firms see actual offers accepted, across comparable households, updated weekly. They can provide ranges that reflect the real market, adjusted for scope, region, and role specifics.
This data is not published. It is shared on a confidential basis with clients and candidates during active searches. It does not appear on aggregator platforms because the firms that hold it do not supply it in aggregated form.
The implication. Clients and candidates who want accurate UHNW salary data need to work with specialist firms. Aggregators will consistently understate the segment. Specialist firms, working from their own placement data, provide the real picture.
Oplu benchmarks salaries against our own placement data: recent offers accepted, actual packages, and current live-search signals. For every search we run, we hold current data on what comparable roles at comparable households actually pay. We share this with clients during scoping and with candidates during the offer process.
Where a client's initial budget is below the market rate for the role, we say so clearly. Where a candidate's initial expectation is below the market rate, we tell them. Accurate data serves both sides. Published ranges do not.
The gap between published data and UHNW reality is likely to widen. Three reasons.
UHNW demand continues to grow. Single-family offices, multi-residence households, and specialist private teams are expanding. The candidate pool is not growing at the same pace.
Specialisation is increasing. Language, regional, technical, and protocol specialisations command premiums that aggregators cannot capture.
Discretion remains the norm. The cultural and contractual confidentiality of UHNW packages will not diminish. Public data will continue to lack visibility of the top segment.
Clients who rely on published data will continue to misbudget. Candidates who rely on published data will continue to undersell. The fix is to use primary sources: specialist recruiters, placement comparables, and honest scoping conversations.
Oplu can provide salary ranges for any role we cover, drawn from recent placements and adjusted for the client's specific scope. We do not publish these ranges. They are shared in confidential conversations during active searches.
For candidates at senior level, we brief honestly on what the market is paying for their profile. For clients at budget-setting stage, we confirm what they need to pay to attract the right candidate pool. In both cases, the data is specific, current, and calibrated to the actual role.
For current opportunities, see our job board. To discuss a search, get in touch.
Because UHNW roles are rarely advertised, candidates do not participate in public surveys, and specialist recruiters do not contribute to aggregators. The net effect is that public data captures the mid-market and misses the top of the private market, often by a factor of one and a half to two at senior levels.
9 min
8 min
9 min
12 min
12 min
