The 10 U.S. cities with the highest-paying IT jobs

analysis
Mar 28, 20125 mins

San Jose and San Francisco beat out New York, Washington, and Boston as companies dangle higher pay for mobile developers

If you’re looking for the highest-paying IT jobs in the country, go west, young techie, go west. San Jose, Calif., and San Francisco rank first and second as the highest-paying cities for technology jobs in America, according to recent data from recruiting company CyberCoders, with average salaries as much as $14,000 higher than third-ranked New York.

That’s not to say that you can’t land a good-paying gig anywhere to the right of California. The list contains major cities scattered around the United States, including Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Dallas.

As to which jobs are most lucrative, CyberCoders has observed an increase in salaries for mobile developers, though according to other reports out there, IT salaries across the board have increased over the past year.

“Some of the highest-paid candidates are those who have multiplatform skills and can design and code for the fast-paced, ever-changing world of mobile applications,” said Matt Miller, CTO of CyberCoders.

Following is CyberCoders’ top 10 list of highest-paying cities for technology jobs, along with samplings of jobs with high-range, midrange, and low-range salaries.

Highest-paying U.S. cities for tech jobs:

  1. San Jose, Calif.
  2. San Francisco
  3. New York
  4. Washington, D.C.
  5. Boston
  6. Los Angeles
  7. Brooklyn, N.Y.
  8. Philadelphia
  9. Chicago
  10. Dallas

1. San Jose, Calif.

Average annual salary: $119,412 among 85 jobs

Median annual salary: $120,000

High-range salaries:

  • Director of display algorithms, $170,000
  • NAND flash firmware, $165,000
  • SSD architect, $165,000
  • Director of engineering, $162,500
  • Clustered file-system architect, $152,500

Midrange salaries:

  • Applications engineer, $120,000
  • ETL (extract, transfer, and load) developer, $120,000
  • GUI software engineer, $120,000
  • Senior Java developer, $120,000
  • Data scientist, $120,000

Low-end salaries:

  • Cisco network engineer NCA, $80,000
  • Embedded Linux developer, $75,000
  • Ruby on Rails engineer, $70,000
  • Junior software developer, $60,000
  • Systems engineer, $57,500

2. San Francisco

Average annual salary: $112,739 among 649 jobs

Median annual salary: $115,000

High-range salaries:

  • Senior VP of product development, $200,000
  • Manager of quality engineering, $187,500
  • Chief Web services architect, $180,000
  • Director of Web engineering, $175,000
  • Security architect, $170,000

Midrange salaries:

  • C/C++ software engineer, $115,000
  • Infrastructure security and operations lead engineer, $115,000
  • Linux systems administrator, $115,000
  • SharePoint developer, $115,000
  • Senior Android developer, $115,000

Low-end salaries:

  • Senior UI/UX engineer, $70,000
  • Data migration specialist, $65,000
  • Confirmit developer, $62,500
  • Software engineer, $62,500
  • Junior Flash/JavaScript developer, $55,000

3. New York

Average annual salary: $105,192 among 716 jobs

Median annual salary: $105,000

High-range salaries:

  • Knowledge management developer, $290,000
  • Technology strategy analyst, $250,000
  • Tools developer, $235,000
  • Data center manager, $196,250
  • Senior sales engineer, $186,250

Midrange salaries:

  • Android application developer, $105,000
  • Ruby on Rails developer; $105,000
  • Adobe Flex developer, $105,000
  • Grails developer, $105,000
  • Network engineer, $105,000

Low-end salaries:

  • Network security analyst, $60,000
  • Junior iOS developer, $55,000
  • Junior Flash/JavaScript developer, $55,000
  • PHP developer, $55,000
  • Help desk analyst, $45,000

4. Washington D.C.

Average annual salary: $99,618 among 144 jobs

Median annual salary: $100,000

High-range salaries:

  • Program manager, $175,000
  • Senior sales engineer, $172,500
  • Senior digital forensics examiner, $160,000
  • Digital forensics manager, $140,000
  • J2EE SOA engineer, $135,000

Midrange salaries:

  • Scala engineer, $102,500
  • Technical product manager, $102,500
  • Python programmer, $100,000
  • Ruby on Rails developer, $100,000
  • Java developer, $99,375

Low-end salaries:

  • Drupal developer, $60,000
  • Front-end GUI designer, $55,000
  • Interactive creative designer, $52,500
  • WebSphere developer, $47,500
  • Systems administrator, $45,000

5. Boston

Average annual salary: $99,099 among 186 jobs

Median annual salary: $100,000

High-range salaries:

  • Director of application development, $300,000
  • Rails director, $208,333
  • Rails engineering manager, $147,500
  • Senior sales engineer for health care, $145,000
  • QA automation manager, $140,000

Midrange salaries:

  • Data mining engineer, $100,000
  • Information architect, $100,000
  • JavaServer developer, $100,000
  • Ruby developer, $100,000
  • Web QA/software test engineer, $100,000

Low-range salaries: 

  • Junior systems administrator, $60,000
  • Junior front-end developer, $50,000
  • Support engineer, $50,000
  • Open source Web developer, $47,500
  • Junior mobile client engineer, $45,000

6. Los Angeles

Average annual salary: $96,705 among 220 jobs

Median annual salary: $97,500

High-range salaries:

Global network engineer, $187,500

Director of engineering, $175,000

Director of ad platform technology, $175,000

Digital forensic examiner, $167,500

Software sales engineer, $162,500

Midrange salaries:

  • Senior software engineer, $98,750
  • Application developer, $97,500
  • MS4 app developer, $97,500
  • Symfony developer, $97,500
  • Object-C developer, $96,250

Low-range salaries: 

  • Desktop support associate, $52,500
  • Level 2/3 support, $52,500
  • Graveyard tech support, $50,000
  • User support engineer, $50,000
  • Network engineer, $43,750

7. Brooklyn, N.Y.

Average annual salary: $96,696 among 28 jobs

Median annual salary: $101,250

High-range salaries:

  • iOS developer, $122,500
  • Android developer, $117,500
  • SEO specialist, $117,500
  • Senior software engineer, $115,000
  • Ruby on Rails developer, $112,500

Midrange salaries:

  • Senior Python/Django developer, $110,000
  • System engineer, $102,500
  • MySQL DBA, $100,000
  • JavaScript UI developer, $95,000
  • Linux systems admin, $90,000

Low-range salaries:

  • iPhone developer, $80,000
  • Web content administrator, $65,000
  • .Net developer, $57,500
  • Junior PHP developer, $50,000
  • Senior PHP developer, $50,000

8. Philadelphia

Average annual salary: $95,289 among 35 jobs

Median annual salary: $97,500

High-range salaries:

  • Cisco certified internetwork expert, $135,000
  • Database analyst manager, $120,000
  • Senior mobile developer, $120,000
  • Senior iOS developer, $115,000
  • Front-end engineer, $112,500

Midrange salaries:

  • Senior Silverlight developer, $102,500
  • Open source developer, $100,000
  • PHP engineer, $97,500
  • Silverlight developer, $87,500
  • Database analyst, $82,500

Low-range salaries:

  • CTO, $70,000
  • Network administrator, $70,000
  • PHP Web developer, $70,000
  • Ruby developer, $70,000
  • Linux support engineer, $65,000

9. Chicago

Average annual salary: $94,899 among 198 jobs

Median annual salary: $95,000

High-range salaries:

  • Cisco certified internetwork expert/voice practice lead, $175,000
  • Senior sales engineer, $172,500
  • CIO, $152,500
  • Cisco unified communications practice lead, $145,000
  • Senior Erlang developer, $135,000

Midrange salaries:

  • VMware engineer, $97,500
  • .Net Web developer, $95,000
  • Devops engineer, $95,000
  • Linux admin, $95,0000
  • Software developer, $95,000

Low-range salaries:

  • Junior software engineer, $55,000;
  • Software analyst, $55,000
  • Entry-level QA analyst, $50,000
  • IT budding superstar, $47,500
  • Assistant IT director, $45,000

10. Dallas

Average annual salary: $94,799 among 87 jobs

Median annual salary: $92,500

High-range salaries:

  • Software architect, $175,000
  • Director of operations; $147,500
  • Sales engineer/network, $147,500
  • Cisco certified internetwork expert, $135,000
  • Voice pre-/post-sales engineer, $135,000

Midrange salaries:

  • Data mining systems analyst, $95,000
  • Java engineer, $95,000
  • Senior .Net developer, $92,500
  • PHP/MySQL engineer, $90,000
  • Business systems analyst, $90,000

Low-range salaries:

  • IT support analyst, $55,000
  • Drupal developer, $52,500
  • Software developer, $50,000
  • Front-end engineer, $42,500
  • Network operations center trainer, $37,500

This story, “The 10 U.S. cities with the highest-paying IT jobs,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.