Austin, Denver Score High in U.S. List of Software Engineer Pay

If you are a software engineer, you are in demand. This you know.

What you may not know is how your salary stacks up to that of your peers around the country. For that, I present to you the State of U.S. Salaries Report, courtesy of a San Francisco company called Hired.

To no one’s surprise, the average salary for a software engineer in the Bay Area is tops, at $132,000. The report surveyed engineers in 11 metro areas (see map below), including seven of Xconomy’s coverage areas.

What might be surprising is that, adjusted for cost of living in San Francisco—I pity the fools—engineers in Austin, TX, and Denver, CO, actually make out the best.

I haven’t delved into the methodology of the study, but presumably it accounts for things like rents and housing prices, which have bounced back (and then some) from the recession in places like San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and New York. The report also goes into detail about what kinds of offers software engineers get if they move between different cities.

But you know what my main takeaway is? Software engineers are doing fine. Let’s move on to the real problems of the world.

U.S. salary report for software engineers (image and data from Hired).
U.S. salary report for software engineers (image and data from Hired).

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.