Remote salaries increased across all markets; Go is the most in-demand skill; security engineers have highest average salaries
Hired, an AI-driven marketplace matching tech and sales talent with top companies, today released its annual report, the 2022 State of Software Engineers. The report analyzes key software engineering trends around demand, salaries, skills, and preferences, and is based on Hired’s proprietary data from over 366,000 interactions between companies and software engineers.
Key findings include an increase in remote salaries for software engineers across all markets as companies have expanded their talent search worldwide. The data also showed Canada and the U.K. seeing high salary growth, with average salaries catching up to the U.S. to be more competitive.
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On the city level, Hired data showed smaller regions also saw higher salary growth versus bigger tech hubs as talent moves to smaller, lower cost of living areas. The Austin market has seen the highest average salary increase: 9% for engineers from $139,000 in 2020 to $151,000 in 2021.
“Amid the ongoing tech talent shortage, the demand for software engineers on Hired has doubled, with candidates receiving more than twice the amount of interview requests than in 2020,” said Josh Brenner, CEO at Hired. “To win top engineering talent, companies have to offer increasingly competitive salaries, flexibility, and most importantly, extend their talent pipelines outside of traditional technology hubs to other regions globally. We’ve also seen a leveling of the playing field – companies of all sizes, and not just large or notable ones – now offer highly competitive salaries, especially as they compete for remote talent. For tech job seekers, learning relevant skills is more important than ever and we see specialized skill sets leading to higher demand and salaries.”
The report found enterprises (i.e. companies with 1,001+ employees) often face increased pressure to compete with startups (1-300 employees), which have seen an unprecedented level of funding and growth. Smaller companies are quickly catching up with compelling pay and benefits to attract and hire top talent – bringing pay from startups on par with enterprises with an average annual salary of $155,000 for software engineers in 2021.
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Additional key findings from the report include:
- Coding language Go was the most in-demand skill: With skills being the new currency in this global job market, Go dominated as the most in-demand skill for software engineers, followed by coding languages Ruby on Rails and Scala. Engineers proficient in Go, Ruby on Rails, and Scala had nearly 2x more interview requests on Hired compared to the marketplace average.
- Security engineers saw the highest salaries: Security engineers experienced the highest salary growth compared to 2020 and received the highest average salary ($165,505/year) out of all software engineering roles.
- Full stack engineers saw the highest demand: Engineers with full stack expertise received the highest increase in interview requests compared to other software engineering roles on Hired’s platform.
- Remote software engineering salaries increased globally: Remote salaries increased across all markets in 2021. The most notable increases were for candidates in markets such as Toronto, Los Angeles, Austin, and Denver, which saw salary increases for average remote salaries between 7-14% year-over-year (YOY).
- Companies are hiring more remote software engineers from smaller markets: Software engineers who are open to remote work received 20% more interview requests overall versus candidates who are not. While the San Francisco Bay Area continues to offer the highest salaries on average across all regions at $168,000/year, smaller markets, including Austin, Seattle, and Chicago, have seen higher salary growth last year versus the traditional tech hubs – reinforcing the shift towards hiring remote talent in smaller regions.
- Software engineers continue to embrace non-traditional education and upskilling: The number of software engineers who acquire their skills through non-traditional avenues, such as bootcamps and self-directed learning, have steadily increased over the last two years. While 46% of software engineers have a computer science degree, 24% are self-taught, and another 11% learned how to code through a bootcamp program.
- Software engineers are most motivated in their careers by opportunities for new challenges and continuous learning; building products and problem-solving; and earning potential: The top three pressing issues that engineers are most excited to tackle with their coding skills are public health, access to education, and the future of work in the upcoming years.
- Companies must prioritize company culture and flexibility to recruit top software engineering talent: When surveyed on the most critical elements of an ideal work environment, software engineers ranked “great managers,” “flexibility around work hours,” and “coworkers they get along with and can learn from” as most important, respectively.