Where should you live if you want to make the most money as a software engineer? While the Bay Area, Seattle and New York City pay top-dollar, Boston is among the top 10 cities for median pay for this tech talent.
That's according to a new report from Levels.fyi, a site that analyzes tech salaries at companies across the world. It recently published its annual compensation report, which analyzed top-paying companies for software engineers, the highest-paying titles and where engineers earned the most compensation.
Boston ranked No. 8 on the list, with median pay for software engineers (including bonuses and stocks) at $160,000.
Not surprisingly, the Bay Area was the top-paying location for total engineer compensation in the U.S. The median pay for software engineers in the Bay Area, which includes stocks and bonuses, is $249,000. The next highest is Seattle, at $225,000, followed by New York City, at $185,000.
Several other thriving tech hubs are among the top 10, including Portland, Oregon, at No. 5, where engineers make $169,000 a year. In Austin, Texas, the seventh-best paying metro, engineers make $167,000. In Denver and Boulder, Colorado, engineers earn $154,000.
The top U.S. cities for software engineers outpace most other international cities when it comes to engineer compensation. Tel Aviv, Israel, was the top international city for software engineers, according to Levels.fyi, with a compensation of $137,916, followed by Vancouver, Canada, ($115,656) and Sydney ($110,237).
When it comes to the top-paying companies for entry-level engineers, New York trading firm Jane Street Group LLC tops the list, according to Levels.fyi. Early-career engineers at Jane Street earn a total compensation of $325,000. The next-best U.S. company is Figma Inc., where engineers make $240,500, followed by Roblox Corp., which offers entry-level engineers $238,120 in total compensation.
For senior engineers — those with typically five or more years of experience — the top-paying firm is Databricks Inc., which pays a total compensation of $584,250, according to the report. Netflix Inc. was No 2., at $535,000, followed by Two Sigma, at $500,000.
No Boston-based firms topped Levels.fyi's lists of highest-paying companies for software engineers, regardless of experience level.
