Software Developer Salary Statistics 2026: The Complete Breakdown

I spent weeks pulling salary data from every credible source I could find. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Stack Overflow's developer survey. Levels.fyi compensation data. The actual BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables, not someone's blog post summarizing them.

Why? Because most "salary statistics" articles online are garbage. They mix outdated numbers with Glassdoor estimates and present it all as fact. You deserve better than that if you're making career decisions based on this data.

Every single number on this page has a named source and a year. If I couldn't verify a stat, it's not here. That's the standard. Let's get into it.

Overall Software Developer Salary: The National Picture

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent data from May 2024, the median annual salary for software developers in the United States is $133,080. That's the figure for software developers specifically (SOC code 15-1252). The broader category that includes QA analysts and testers reports a median of $131,450.

To put that in context: the median annual wage for all occupations in the U.S. is $49,500. Software developers earn roughly 2.7x the national median. That's not a minor premium. It's a completely different economic reality.

Here's the pay distribution according to BLS 2024 data:

The gap between the bottom 25% and the top 25% is $65,950. That tells you something important: where you work, what you specialize in, and how you position yourself matters enormously. A developer earning $103K and one earning $169K might have similar technical skills. The difference often comes down to negotiation, location, and specialization.

There are 1,895,500 software developer jobs in the United States as of 2024. That number is projected to grow 15% from 2024 to 2034, which the BLS categorizes as "much faster than average." Roughly 129,200 openings are expected each year over that decade, counting both new jobs and replacements for people retiring or changing careers.

Software Developer Salary by State: The Full Breakdown

Geography is still the single biggest variable in developer pay, even in the age of remote work. The difference between the highest-paying and lowest-paying state is staggering. Here's every state ranked by median annual wage, alongside cost-of-living adjusted salary using Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities data.

And here are the five lowest-paying states:

Here's what the data actually reveals when you stop looking at raw numbers. Washington state, not California, is the best-paying state when you adjust for cost of living. Washington developers earn $166,910 median, and after COL adjustment, that's $153,746 in purchasing power. California's $170,910 drops to $151,811. Washington wins.

The other surprise? States like North Carolina ($131,000 median, $139,156 COL-adjusted) and Texas ($130,500 median, $134,294 COL-adjusted) offer strong purchasing power without the crushing housing costs of the Bay Area. If you can land a remote job paying Bay Area wages while living in Austin or Raleigh, you're playing the game on easy mode.

Salary by Metro Area: Where the Big Money Is

State-level data hides a lot of variation. The real action happens at the metro level. San Jose developers earn $180,320, while someone in a rural area of the same state might earn $110,000. Here are the top 10 highest-paying metro areas for software engineers:

The cost-of-living reality check is brutal for some of these metros. San Jose pays $180,320, but with a COL index of 272, your adjusted purchasing power is roughly $66,294. Austin pays $128,750 with a COL index of 123, giving you adjusted purchasing power of $104,675. Austin developers have almost 60% more purchasing power than their San Jose counterparts, despite earning $52,000 less on paper.

That's why you see so many developers relocating from the Bay Area to Austin, Denver, and Raleigh. The math just works better.

Salary by Experience Level: The Career Ladder in Numbers

The Levels.fyi End of Year Pay Report for 2025 provides the clearest picture of how compensation scales with seniority at top tech companies. Remember: Levels.fyi data skews toward higher-paying companies since it's self-reported by tech workers, many at FAANG-tier firms. These numbers represent total compensation (base + stock + bonus), not just base salary.

The story here is clear. Staff-level engineers are the biggest winners right now, with a 7.52% year-over-year increase pushing median TC to $457,000. Companies are paying a premium to retain senior individual contributors who can drive technical strategy without moving into management. That's not a new trend, but the data shows it accelerating.

Entry-level compensation barely moved: +1.64%. If you're early in your career, don't expect the market to hand you raises. You'll need to job hop, build leverage, and negotiate aggressively to move the needle. The biggest jump happens at the senior-to-staff transition, where TC increases by roughly $145,000. Getting from L5 to L6 is the single most valuable promotion in a software engineering career.

The dip at Principal level (-6.58%) likely reflects a smaller sample size and the fact that some high-flying 2024 comp packages (hello, AI startup offers) normalized in 2025. Don't read too much into year-over-year changes at the highest levels.

For broader market data beyond top tech companies, the BLS reports base salary ranges (not total comp) by experience that tell a different story. Entry-level developers typically start between $75,000 and $95,000 in base salary. Mid-level professionals (2-5 years) earn $95,000 to $140,000. Senior engineers with 5+ years earn $140,000 to $185,000 base. These numbers from Hakia's 2026 salary guide more accurately represent the overall market, not just the FAANG bubble.

Salary by Developer Role: What the Stack Overflow Survey Shows

The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey collected data from tens of thousands of developers worldwide. In the U.S. specifically, here's how different developer roles compare on median salary:

The Stack Overflow data also reveals a massive geographic pay gap. U.S. Engineering Managers earn a median of $200,000. The same role in Germany pays $118,000 and in India just $52,000. That's not a typo. The U.S. pays nearly 4x what India pays for the same management role with similar responsibilities.

This explains why remote work has become such a strategic play. If you're an Indian developer earning $52K for engineering management work and you land a U.S.-based remote position, even at a "discounted" $120K, you've more than doubled your income. And companies still save $80K compared to hiring domestically. Everyone wins on paper, though the cultural and time zone trade-offs are real.

Salary by Programming Language

Your language choice affects your paycheck more than most developers realize. Here's what the data from multiple salary surveys shows for median annual salary ranges in the U.S.:

Rust is the clear salary leader, and it's not just about the language. Rust developers tend to work on specialized systems (blockchain infrastructure, embedded devices, cloud-native tooling) that naturally command higher pay. The language filters for a certain type of engineer.

The Python paradox is real. It's the most popular programming language in the world, the default for AI/ML work, and yet it sits in the middle of the salary pack. Why? Supply. There are millions of Python developers. When everyone knows a language, it stops being a differentiator. The Python developers earning $150K+ are the ones combining it with ML specialization, not the ones building Django web apps.

The real takeaway: your language doesn't determine your salary as much as your specialization does. A Python engineer doing AI inference optimization at Meta earns $400K+. A Python engineer building internal tools at a startup earns $115K. Same language. Totally different markets.

Total Compensation at Top Tech Companies

Base salary is only part of the picture at major tech companies. Total compensation includes base salary, stock grants (RSUs), annual bonuses, and sign-on bonuses. At senior levels, base salary can represent as little as 35-40% of total compensation. Here's what the Levels.fyi 2024 data shows for the highest-paying companies at different levels:

Netflix stands alone. Their compensation philosophy is simple: pay top of market in cash, don't play games with stock vesting schedules. A Netflix entry-level engineer at $350K TC makes more than a senior engineer at most Fortune 500 companies. The catch? Netflix's culture of "adequate performance gets a generous severance package" means they fire people too. It's a high-risk, high-reward employer.

The quantitative trading firms pay even more than FAANG. Hudson River Trading's L1 (entry-level) engineers reported $410,000 in total compensation. Jane Street came in at $350,000 for L1. These numbers are real but represent an extremely selective hiring funnel. They recruit from the top 0.1% of computer science and mathematics graduates.

For context, Levels.fyi's 2025 report found that overall U.S. SWE pay grew 2.67% year over year, with total median TC growth of 3.49% across all levels. The market is slowly recovering from the 2022-2023 tech correction, but we're not back to the 2021 bonanza of competing offers and inflated sign-on bonuses.

Skills That Command Salary Premiums

Not all engineering work pays the same. Certain specializations carry a clear salary premium over baseline software engineering rates:

AI/ML is now "core engineering" according to Levels.fyi's 2025 report. It went from a niche specialty to one of the largest and highest-paid software engineering tracks. The companies paying AI/ML premiums aren't small startups. They're Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic, and they're paying 20-30% above already-high baseline engineering rates.

Research roles saw the biggest pay increase of any category in 2025: +15.38% year over year (Levels.fyi, 2025). That's the AI effect in pure numbers. If you want to maximize your earning potential, the data is screaming at you to learn machine learning, distributed systems, or cloud architecture.

The Gender Pay Gap in Software Development

The gender pay gap in tech is real, measured, and persistent. Here's what the data shows:

According to Narrow the Gap, which uses BLS data, women software developers earned 86 cents for every dollar men earned doing the same job. That's a 14% gap. It's smaller than the overall U.S. gender pay gap (around 16% in 2024 according to Payscale), but it's still significant.

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) found that the gap varies by specific role. Female software QA analysts and testers have the smallest earnings gap at 98% of male median earnings. That's nearly parity. But other tech roles show much wider gaps.

WomenTech Network reported a gender wage gap of about 1.6% when controlling for job title, experience, and location. That's the "controlled" gap. The uncontrolled gap (comparing all men vs. all women in tech without adjustment) is much larger because women are underrepresented at senior levels where pay is highest. The typical female computer programmer earned $1,760 per week compared to $1,906 for men, per AIPRM's analysis of BLS data (2025).

Here's what the data actually means for your career: if you're a woman in tech, negotiation matters even more. Studies show that men are three times more likely to negotiate their salary than women (Glassdoor). Not negotiating a $130K offer and getting $140K instead costs you $10K per year. Over a 30-year career with raises compounding, that single negotiation failure costs you over $500K.

Education and Salary: CS Degree vs. Bootcamp vs. Self-Taught

Your educational path affects your starting salary, but the gap narrows faster than most people think. Here's what the data shows:

CS degree graduates typically start at $80,000+ for their first software engineering role (Nucamp, 2026). The four-year degree costs $40,000-$120,000 depending on institution type, and the time investment is substantial. But the starting salary floor is noticeably higher.

Bootcamp graduates earn an average starting salary of $65,000-$69,000 according to CIRR data. The total education cost is $11,000-$14,500 for the program itself (IT Support Group, 2025). Bay Valley Tech reports that big-city bootcamp grads often clear $75,000 for first roles.

Self-taught developers have the widest salary range because there's no standardized quality signal for employers. Starting salaries range from $55,000 to $85,000+ depending on portfolio quality and ability to pass technical interviews. Arc.dev's research found that self-taught developers actually earn more than bachelor's degree holders for senior roles, suggesting that long-term earning potential isn't limited by your educational path.

The ROI calculation strongly favors bootcamps if you land a job. A $13,600 investment yielding a $65K-$69K starting salary breaks even in months. A $100,000 CS degree yielding an $80K starting salary takes years to break even if you factor in four years of lost income. But CS degree holders have higher placement rates, stronger long-term networks, and an easier time getting past resume screens at top-tier companies.

Five years into your career, nobody cares how you learned to code. They care what you can build. The salary convergence between educational paths happens fast: by year 3-5, comparable developers with different educational backgrounds earn within 5-10% of each other for the same roles.

Remote Work and Developer Salaries

The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found that 45% of U.S. developers work fully remote, the highest rate among the top-reporting countries. Germany's remote rate is lower, and 21% of German developers have full flexibility to choose.

Here's the counter-trend though: return-to-office (RTO) was the highest-growth work arrangement in 2025 according to Levels.fyi, with office-based roles increasing by 12% year over year in their data. Companies are pulling developers back, and they're using compensation as leverage. Some companies now offer location-adjusted pay, meaning your San Francisco salary gets cut if you relocate to a lower-cost area.

The data shows developers are adapting strategically. The optimal play based on the numbers: land a remote position with a company that doesn't do location-adjusted pay, then live in a medium-cost city like Austin (COL index 123), Raleigh, or Denver (COL index 145). You get big-city compensation with middle-America purchasing power.

Job Market Outlook: 2024-2034 Projections

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects software developer employment will grow 15% from 2024 to 2034, adding 287,900 new positions. The BLS categorizes this as "much faster than average" compared to the 4% average growth rate across all occupations.

Roughly 129,200 job openings are projected each year over that decade. That includes new positions plus replacements for developers who retire, change careers, or move into management.

There are currently 1,895,500 software developer jobs in the United States. Add the QA analysts and testers category, and the broader group totals even larger. This is one of the biggest professional occupations in the country, and it's still growing at three to four times the rate of most other fields.

For related tech roles, web developers and digital designers are projected to grow 7% over the same period (BLS, 2024). Computer programmers (a separate BLS category from software developers) have a median salary of $98,670 and are seeing slower growth. The market is shifting toward "software developer" roles that combine programming with design, architecture, and product thinking.

What about AI's impact? The Stack Overflow 2025 survey found that 64% of developers don't believe AI is a threat to their job. However, that number dropped from 68% the year before. Confidence is slipping. The data suggests AI is reshaping which developer skills are valued (more architecture, less boilerplate coding) rather than eliminating developer jobs outright. The BLS projections already account for AI adoption, and they still project 15% growth.

Job Satisfaction and Career Mobility

More developers are happy at work in 2025: 24% report being satisfied, up from 20% the prior year, according to the Stack Overflow 2025 survey. That's still a shockingly low number for a well-paid profession, but the trend is improving. Levels.fyi attributes this partly to the pay bumps data shows for certain roles.

The top factors driving developer job satisfaction (Stack Overflow, 2025) are: autonomy and trust to manage your own tasks (ranked #1), competitive pay and benefits (#2), and solving real-world problems (#3). Interestingly, "liking your manager" ranked #9 out of 15 factors. Developers care more about what they work on and how much freedom they have than who their boss is.

Career mobility remains high: 54% of developers are either actively looking or open to new opportunities (Stack Overflow, 2025). The era of 10-year tenures at a single company is over for most developers. The data consistently shows that strategic job changes every 2-3 years result in faster salary growth than staying put and waiting for annual raises.

How These Numbers Compare to Other Tech Roles

Software development pays well, but it's not the highest-paying role in tech. Here's how related roles compare using BLS 2024 data and Stack Overflow 2025 data:

The management premium is significant: IT managers earn $180,720+ in median salary, roughly $48K more than individual contributor developers. But that comparison misses the total compensation picture. At top tech companies, a Staff Engineer (L6) earns $457K median TC (Levels.fyi, 2025), which crushes most IT manager salaries. The individual contributor path can be more lucrative than management at companies that value technical leadership.

Negotiation: What the Data Says About Asking for More

Levels.fyi's negotiation coaching service processed over 650 successful negotiations in 2025, resulting in roughly $40 million in total negotiated salary increases. Their data shows average compensation increases of 21% for mid-level engineers, 23% for senior engineers, and 24% for staff engineers through negotiation alone.

The single largest negotiation win in 2025 was $1.5 million in additional total compensation over 4 years for a FAANG Distinguished Engineer. That's $375,000 per year more, achieved through professional negotiation coaching.

These numbers tell you something critical: companies have budget to pay you more than their initial offer. They expect negotiation. The developer who accepts the first number leaves money on the table every single time.

If you want specific scripts and tactics for salary negotiation, check out our guides on how to negotiate your developer salary, salary negotiation email templates, and negotiation scripts.

Data Sources and Methodology

Every statistic on this page comes from a named, verifiable source. Here's a complete list of data sources used:

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides the most reliable baseline salary data through the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey and the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Data cited is from May 2024. BLS surveys employers directly, making it the gold standard for U.S. wage data.

Levels.fyi provides self-reported total compensation data from tech workers, with over 245,000 data points. Their End of Year Pay Reports for 2024 and 2025 are cited. This data skews toward higher-paying tech companies and should not be taken as representative of the overall market.

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025 collects responses from tens of thousands of developers worldwide. It's the largest developer survey in existence and provides strong data on salary by role, work environment, and satisfaction.

Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Regional Price Parities (2023 data) are used for cost-of-living adjustments across states and metro areas.

Additional sources: Hakia Software Engineer Salary Guide (2026), edX state salary analysis (2025), Narrow the Gap (BLS data analysis), Society of Women Engineers earnings research (2025), AIPRM Women in Tech Statistics (2025), WomenTech Network (2025), CIRR/Course Report bootcamp outcomes data, Nucamp (2026), IT Support Group (2025), Bay Valley Tech (2025), Arc.dev salary report (2024), DevJobsScanner (2024), VentureBeat (2025), Phaedra Solutions (2025), ZipRecruiter (2025), and GeeksforGeeks (2025).