Where should you live if you want to make the most money as a software engineer? The Bay Area, Seattle or New York City.
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.
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, including equity compensation 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, Ore., 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, Colo., 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, Australia ($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 San Francisco's Figma Inc., where engineers make $240,500, followed by Roblox Corp. in San Mateo, 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. The San Francisco software firm pays a total compensation of $584,250, according to the report. Netflix Inc. in Los Gatos was No 2., at $535,000, followed by Two Sigma, a New York City hedge fund, at $500,000.
