Dive Brief:
- Engineering managers, site reliability engineers (SRE) and DevOps specialists are the highest-paid software developer roles internationally, according to a survey of 65,000 software developers from Stack Overflow. Engineering managers globally earn a median salary of $92,000.
- Managers and SREs also took the top two spots in the U.S, earning a median wage of $152,000 and $140,000, respectively. Data scientists, machine learning specialists, DevOps specialists and data engineers tied in third place for roles with the top salaries with a median salary of $125,000.
- In keeping with demand trends for software developers, the majority of U.S.-based developers are not actively looking for a job, according to the report. Three in 10 said they were not interested in new job opportunities, while 55% are open to new opportunities despite not actively looking for a new role. The survey, conducted in February and released in May, gathered more than 34,000 salary responses.
Dive Insight:
Salary trends in software development are an indicator of cross-industry talent demand. As more companies and sectors embrace digital, the chase for tech talent heats up.
Though these jobs are among the top in the tech industry, leaders have struggled to attract and develop a diverse engineering talent pool.
Men account for almost 88% of the engineering pool in the U.S., and 92% in the global community, according to Stack Overflow. Globally, 68% of software developers are white. Engineers of Black or African descent make up 4.5% of the pool.
"Consistent with the data from last year, we still see evidence that people of color are underrepresented among professional developers," the Stack Overflow study said.
According to Hired's 2019 State of Salaries report, Black developers receive the lowest salaries among races, earning $13,000 less than Asian software professionals. When compared to 2018 numbers, the wage gap between Black tech workers and their white counterparts expanded by $5,000.
