Hiring developers by US market
What each market pays, how deep it is, and which direction it is moving.
Twenty-eight US metropolitan areas, ranked by the published median annual wage for software developers. The spread between the top and the bottom is about a factor of two, which is why a national median is close to useless as a budgeting input.
| Metro area | Employed | Median wage | vs US median | Location quotient |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Jose, CA | 87,350 | $213,110 | +57% | 7.09 |
| San Francisco, CA | 69,030 | $186,640 | +37% | 2.68 |
| Seattle, WA | 92,770 | $167,280 | +23% | 4.10 |
| New York, NY | 121,000 | $166,830 | +23% | 1.17 |
| Boston, MA | 42,310 | $166,090 | +22% | 1.44 |
| San Diego, CA | 20,610 | $163,270 | +20% | 1.23 |
| Los Angeles, CA | 55,540 | $160,920 | +18% | 0.82 |
| Portland, OR | 18,260 | $156,000 | +15% | 1.39 |
| Washington, D.C. | 69,060 | $154,930 | +14% | 2.03 |
| Baltimore, MD | 16,850 | $138,900 | +2% | 1.14 |
| Denver, CO | 27,010 | $137,610 | +1% | 1.55 |
| Charlotte, NC | 20,820 | $135,920 | 0% | 1.41 |
| Chicago, IL | 40,370 | $134,380 | -1% | 0.82 |
| Austin, TX | 31,960 | $134,120 | -1% | 2.28 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth, TX | 67,030 | $133,290 | -2% | 1.52 |
| Philadelphia, PA | 28,480 | $133,040 | -2% | 0.91 |
| Atlanta, GA | 36,300 | $132,960 | -2% | 1.16 |
| Raleigh, NC | 12,580 | $132,770 | -2% | 1.56 |
| Miami, FL | 18,900 | $132,650 | -2% | 0.62 |
| Phoenix, AZ | 29,380 | $131,750 | -3% | 1.14 |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN | 27,410 | $130,920 | -4% | 1.29 |
| Detroit, MI | 24,870 | $130,760 | -4% | 1.20 |
| Tampa, FL | 14,230 | $130,450 | -4% | 0.91 |
| Orlando, FL | 13,440 | $129,620 | -5% | 0.88 |
| Salt Lake City, UT | 19,040 | $129,600 | -5% | 2.12 |
| Houston, TX | 22,940 | $129,440 | -5% | 0.64 |
| Kansas City, MO | 12,160 | $124,990 | -8% | 1.02 |
| Pittsburgh, PA | 10,320 | $124,500 | -8% | 0.85 |
Location quotient compares how concentrated the occupation is locally against the national average. Above 1 means more of this work than the size of the local economy would predict.
Read the employment column alongside the wage column. A high median in a market with few people means a long search rather than an expensive one, and those are different problems with different answers. The location quotient is the better guide to whether the people exist at all.
Each page below covers one market in detail: the full set of technical occupations, how the market has moved across the last three published years, the loaded cost of a local seat, the industries that shape who is available, and where hiring plans in that market tend to go wrong.
Which markets are moving, and in which direction
Comparing the May 2023 and May 2025 releases gives a rough sense of direction for each market. It is rough on purpose: the Bureau does not design these releases to be read as a time series, because survey panels overlap and the methodology is revised between them. Treat a move of a couple of points as noise and a larger one as a direction worth noting.
| Metro area | Median wage change | Employment change |
|---|---|---|
| Detroit, MI | +22% | +3% |
| Portland, OR | +17% | +5% |
| Pittsburgh, PA | +16% | +38% |
| Kansas City, MO | +16% | -9% |
| Orlando, FL | +16% | +8% |
| Salt Lake City, UT | +12% | +32% |
| New York, NY | +12% | +2% |
| Washington, D.C. | +9% | -4% |
| Tampa, FL | +9% | -10% |
| San Francisco, CA | +8% | -18% |
| San Jose, CA | +7% | -10% |
| San Diego, CA | +7% | +2% |
| Los Angeles, CA | +5% | -5% |
| Phoenix, AZ | +5% | -1% |
| Philadelphia, PA | +5% | +13% |
| Chicago, IL | +4% | -2% |
| Houston, TX | +3% | +15% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth, TX | +3% | +13% |
| Miami, FL | +3% | -7% |
| Atlanta, GA | +3% | -10% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN | +3% | -13% |
| Austin, TX | +2% | +19% |
| Denver, CO | +2% | -2% |
| Raleigh, NC | +1% | -22% |
| Baltimore, MD | +0% | +8% |
| Seattle, WA | +0% | +22% |
| Charlotte, NC | +0% | +6% |
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, metropolitan area files for May 2023 and May 2025. Not a growth rate.
22 of these markets show median wages up by more than two percent over the period and 0 show them down by more than two percent. Where pay and employment are both rising, demand is running ahead of local supply and a band set from older data will now be under the market. Where both are falling, availability has improved and it is worth asking why the people now available became available.
The US technical labour market in numbers
Software development is one of fourteen technical occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes separately. Together they account for about 4,860,150 people, of whom 1,687,890 are software developers, which is why that one occupation dominates most conversations about technical hiring. The other thirteen matter because they compete for the same people.
| Occupation | Employed | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software Developers | 1,687,890 | $105,210 | $135,980 | $171,980 | $214,670 |
| Web Developers | 70,190 | $64,230 | $92,650 | $126,230 | $162,290 |
| Web and Digital Interface Designers | 113,330 | $73,290 | $104,000 | $158,820 | $201,550 |
| Software QA Analysts and Testers | 186,740 | $80,310 | $104,300 | $133,180 | $167,010 |
| Data Scientists | 262,440 | $85,660 | $120,230 | $158,880 | $199,130 |
| Information Security Analysts | 190,650 | $97,810 | $129,180 | $163,500 | $199,850 |
| Computer Systems Analysts | 519,530 | $82,860 | $105,850 | $134,110 | $167,710 |
| Computer Programmers | 92,230 | $75,850 | $100,390 | $130,680 | $160,460 |
| Database Architects | 67,140 | $109,370 | $139,500 | $169,290 | $204,000 |
| Database Administrators | 69,990 | $79,610 | $104,620 | $135,460 | $163,320 |
| Computer Network Architects | 179,740 | $104,620 | $134,050 | $168,200 | $202,680 |
| Network and Computer Systems Administrators | 314,340 | $78,010 | $99,130 | $126,640 | $155,050 |
| Computer and Information Systems Managers | 670,570 | $138,060 | $175,140 | $220,730 | $297,510 |
| Computer Occupations, All Other | 435,370 | $79,370 | $116,580 | $157,500 | $188,470 |
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 national file, read 25 September 2026. Figures cover all US employers.
The spread across these titles runs from $175,140 for computer and information systems managers down to $92,650 for web developers. That gap is the practical reason technical people move sideways between titles rather than upward within one: for many engineers the fastest available pay rise is a change of job title rather than a change of employer. If you are hiring at the lower end of that range, expect to lose some candidates to the upper end of it, and expect that to happen after they have accepted.
It is worth reading the employment column alongside the wage column. Occupations with small headcounts, such as database administrators and architects, are specialisms where a local search will frequently produce nobody, regardless of what you are prepared to pay. Occupations with large headcounts are where a well-run process matters more than a generous band, because the people exist and the competition is for their attention.
Why technical hiring goes wrong
Most of the expensive mistakes in technical hiring are made before anybody is interviewed, and they are the same mistakes each time. They are worth naming because each one is avoidable at no cost.
The brief describes a stack rather than a system
A specification listing ten technologies and no description of what the system does filters for keyword matches. Keyword matches are exactly the candidates who get rejected in the technical round, which means the brief has selected for the people who will waste your engineers' time.
The band comes from the wrong market
A remote role competes with the markets that pay most, whether or not you are located in one. Teams that set a remote band from their own local figures have answered a different question and then conclude that nobody good is available.
The process outlasts the candidate's patience
In a concentrated market anybody worth hiring is in several conversations. Five interview stages optimise against the risk of a bad hire while creating the near-certainty of losing good ones. Adding a stage midway loses precisely the candidates the stage was meant to be careful about.
The filtering is pushed onto engineers
If your engineers are interviewing ten people per role, the most expensive people in the process are doing the cheapest part of it. Two or three properly assessed candidates is the goal; ten screened ones is a failure of the stage before.
Nobody owns the decision
Processes without a named decision-maker drift, because everybody defers and nobody declines. Candidates read this accurately as a signal about what working there would be like, and the strongest ones withdraw first.
The vacancy is not counted
Every month a role is open, the work it was meant to do is not happening. That cost is identical whichever way the seat is eventually filled, and in a specialist search it routinely exceeds the difference between the options being compared.
The setup is blamed on the hire
No running environment, no reviewer with capacity, no access to the real system. The difference between a first merged change in week one and week four is almost entirely on the employer's side, and it gets attributed to the developer far more often than to the conditions that produced it.
- New York, NY
- Seattle, WA
- San Jose, CA
- Washington, D.C.
- San Francisco, CA
- Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
- Los Angeles, CA
- Boston, MA
- Chicago, IL
- Atlanta, GA
- Austin, TX
- Phoenix, AZ
- Philadelphia, PA
- Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
- Denver, CO
- Detroit, MI
- Houston, TX
- Charlotte, NC
- San Diego, CA
- Salt Lake City, UT
- Miami, FL
- Portland, OR
- Baltimore, MD
- Tampa, FL
- Orlando, FL
- Raleigh, NC
- Kansas City, MO
- Pittsburgh, PA