Key Takeaways

It’s no surprise that tech jobs can offer some of the best compensation around, especially as high demand for skilled team members grows.
We’ll look at the top jobs and where they’re located.
Just remember: it’s not only pay that brings happiness and job satisfaction.

It won’t be news to you that tech jobs offer some of the best compensation around. Continued high demand for workers in these fields means that the pay continues to improve. The data are showing that salaries for occupations in the tech sector are growing much faster than wages overall.

For tech occupations, average salaries in the U.S. jumped 7.7% to $96,370 annually last year, while the average national wage growth was 2.2%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dice’s annual salary survey showed that these increases in pay were most often due to upward mobility in the same company (48%), while some came after a change of employer (23%). Average annual bonuses were just over $10,000, and 37% of the tech workers surveyed received one.

Almost half of respondents reported a salary increase as a result of upward mobility at the same company, with 38% receiving a merit increase and 10% receiving an internal promotion. The second most common reason for a rise in salary was a result of the professional changing employers (23%). Technology careers are a job-seeker’s market.

Top Jobs:

Software Architect
Data Scientist
Devops Engineer
Software Engineer
Java Developer

So, you might ask, which tech jobs tend to pay the most, and where are they? Forbes reports that jobs in 3 areas regularly clear six figures: Software Architect, Data Scientist, and Devops Engineer, which pay salaries that range from just over $106,000 to $116,500 on average.

Data Scientist and Devops Engineer not only guarantee robust wages, but both positions are seeing extremely healthy growth–the role of Devops Engineer has seen a 225% jump in postings on Indeed since January 2015, according to the Forbes account. Other well-paid tech jobs include software engineer and Java Developer, with strong growth and an average salary just under $100,000.

Valued skills

The tech skills that are currently in the highest demand and thus command the highest pay include analysis of big data and cloud expertise. Specifically, being able to work with HANA various programming languages are a plus. Familiarity with Puppet, Cassandra, Cloudera, PaaS, OpenStack, CloudStack. Pig, and MapReduce were the tech skills that were most valuable to employers this past year. Here is Forbes’ list of the Top 10 highest-paying tech jobs.

Top Markets

Forbes provides a list of cities rated according to the average tech job salaries, taking into account the local cost of living. Here is their top 10:

1. Austin

2. Seattle

3. San Francisco

4. Chicago

5. Dallas

6. San Jose

7. Boston

8. Salt Lake City

9.New York City

10. Denver

Markets where the salaries for tech jobs are showing the most growth include:

Baltimore/Washington, D.C. $102,873 (5% increase in average salary for 2015)
Minneapolis $100,379 (9% increase in average salary for 2015)
Portland, Oregon $100,309 (10% increase in average salary for 2015)

We can also talk in terms of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) occupations, which casts a wider net. WalletHub determined the cities where STEM job openings and compensation are likely to see the most growth over the next few years: