Salaries for Software Engineers Continue to Rise in Major Tech Hubs

Joint analysis from Hired and Vettery finds increases in salaries for top software engineering roles, while remote roles spike in non-tech hubs

The tech industry proved to be highly resilient in 2020, in spite of challenges faced by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest report from Hired and Vettery, the leading AI-driven hiring marketplaces for matching highly-qualified and individually-vetted talent with top companies. Average salaries for top software engineering roles increased in all major tech hubs last year – by 5% in the San Francisco Bay Area, 3% in New York, 7% in Toronto, and 6% in London respectively.

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The annual State of Software Engineers Report includes data from Hired’s and Vettery’s combined marketplaces of more than 10,000 participating companies and 245,000 job seekers. The report found that backend, full stack, and frontend engineers saw the highest demand, while skills such as Google’s Go, Redux.js, Google Cloud, and AWS have landed engineers the most interview requests from employers.

Additionally, the prevalence of remote work saw spikes in job offers in markets outside of the traditional tech hubs, with Denver offering 34% remote roles, while London and Toronto had 6% and 9% remote roles respectively out of all positions offered.

“Demand for software engineers and their skill set continued to grow despite the massive economic downturn amid the pandemic and one of the most difficult job markets in US history. As many companies will pick up their hiring efforts again this year, they will have to compete even more for top engineering talent,” said Josh Brenner, CEO of Vettery. “That’s why it will be crucial for companies to leverage AI and real-time data to hire and scale more efficiently and identify the best talent based on skill – not pedigree – and across various locations and backgrounds. With 83% of software engineers saying they seek “new challenges and continuous learning”, companies will also need to offer things like remote work flexibility and professional development opportunities to attract and retain top talent.”

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Additional key findings from the report include:

• Backend, full stack and frontend engineers saw the highest demand. These engineers saw 58%, 57% and 30% of all interview requests respectively.
• The highest in-demand skills for software engineers are Redux.js, Google Cloud, AWS and React.js. Engineers proficient in Redux.js received 2.9x more interview requests than the marketplace average, while candidates with Google Cloud, AWS and React.js skills received 2.7x more interviews.
• Go and Scala are the most popular coding languages, landing candidates 2.3x and 2.2x more interview requests respectively.
• AWS was requested 8x more in job listings compared to Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure skills.
• Kubernetes and Docker are among the 10 most requested skills by employers. This is likely a result of the increasing shift to the cloud and containers which has been accelerated further by the pandemic.
• Software engineers in smaller job markets received a 2-5% higher salary for remote jobs compared to local job offers. Chicago showed the biggest difference with 5% higher pay for remote roles.
• 54% of software engineers surveyed are more productive when working remotely. The biggest challenge was in accessing their colleagues for real-time collaboration, followed by having ‘too many video calls’—the ‘Zoom fatigue.’
• Software engineers are generally passionate about their jobs. Their primary motivation for learning a new programming language or framework is simply because they enjoy it. They also want to solve problems such as the lack of economic opportunity and unemployment with their coding skills.
• Software engineers are increasingly self-taught. While 45% of software engineers have a computer science degree, 24% are self-taught, and another 10% learned how to code through a bootcamp program.

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