The tech boom continues, and it’s no wonder: a recent study showed that, as of the end of February 2019, there were half a million open tech jobs listed in the U.S. Not only that, but new ones are generated at almost 400% the rate of non-tech jobs, and they pay around twice as well to boot. And we’re not talking just about opportunities for hardcore tech professionals who have been around the block. Gone are the days when a newly graduated college student or someone hoping to switch careers had to settle for barely getting by in an entry-level job – at least in the tech world. Many entry-level tech jobs pay well, some in the six-figure range, from the outset of one’s career. Those looking to jump into an industry that is such an economic prime mover are swarming to tech hub cities to claim them.
As jobs in the tech industry continue to far outpace the rest of U.S. jobs in terms of average salary, Comparably sought to produce a ranking of the jobs that paid the highest during the entry-level period (defined here as the first three years of an employee’s career). Some jobs require some basic tech knowledge, others will teach it on the job. Forty-three percent of open positions at tech companies are, in fact, for non-tech roles.
Purpose of the study
Comparably pored through thousands of anonymous salary records to determine which entry-level tech jobs are most popular and earned the biggest paycheck. From there, we analyzed the difference in average salary between gender and ethnicities to find out whether there continues to be a salary imbalance that pervades the industry. Lastly, we looked at salary on a micro level, breaking down data by cities to get a clear look at wherethe entry-level tech jobs that pay best are, and who is still lagging behind the salary boom.
The results
- Data Scientist is the best-paying job for entry-level workers throughout the study. It bested the average salary of Product Manager – the 2nd highest-paying job – by almost $7,000 per year.
- Those with previous sales or marketing experience in other industries have a shot at jumping into tech Sales or Marketing jobs, as much of the experience can translate.
Compensation by gender
- Men still make more money than women in tech in most positions. Male Sales Engineers make on average nearly $10,000 more than their female counterparts.
- The most pay parity we see is in the DevOps Engineer role where the salary difference is by a little over a hundred dollars.
- For just one of the jobs we looked at – Developer – women are paid slightly higher ($101,871) than men ($100,342) on average.
Compensation by ethnicity
- Asian/Pacific Islanders make the most salary in every job title among all ethnicities except in the roles of DevOps and UI/UX Designer.
- Overall African-Americans are paid the least, with some notable exceptions. The highest-paid entry level African-American Data Scientists make a salary that is slightly higher ($113,335) than the nationwide average ($113,254). In five other positions, African-Americans are paid the least amount when compared to other ethnicities: Developer, Mobile Developer, Sales Engineer, UI/UX Designer and Marketing Manager. African-Americans report making more than Caucasians in four job titles: Data Scientist, Product Manager, DevOps and QA Analyst.
- Hispanic/Latinos reported making more than Caucasians in six jobs: Developer, Sales Engineer, DevOps, UI/UX Designer, Marketing Manager and QA Analyst.
Compensation by location
- Entry-level workers in the San Francisco Bay Area are paid the most of any metro area for seven different job titles – Developer, Mobile Developer, Sales Engineer, DevOps Engineer, UI/UX Designer, Marketing Manager, and QA Analyst. Second to San Francisco are entry-level workers in Seattle, where Data Scientists, Product Managers, and Sales Reps make the most.
- The highest-paid workers in the entire study are Data Scientists in Seattle, followed closely by Data Scientists in San Francisco, and Product Managers in Seattle.
- Entry-level tech workers generally make more in New York and Los Angeles than they do in Boston and Chicago, which are lagging slightly behind the more established tech hub cities in pay.
- In Boston the average tech Sales Engineer makes about $30,000 less per year than what the same position pays in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Methodology
- Compensation shown is based on the average salary of 8,005 entry-level workers (0-3 years of experience) in 10 of the most popular jobs in the tech industry. These numbers do not include bonus, stocks or equity.
- Employees are across all ethnicities and locations, and they hail from small, mid-size, and large tech companies (VC-funded, privately-held, and public) to household brands like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.
- Data was collected over a 12-month period, between March 2018 and March 2019.
About Comparably
Comparably is an online career destination for compensation and workplace culture data with a mission to make work dramatically more transparent and rewarding. Employees can anonymously and publically rate their company culture and access salary data through the lens of specific demographics, including gender, ethnicity, age, location, years of experience, company size, title/department, and education. With the most comprehensive and structured data in the industry, it has accumulated 10 million ratings and hundreds of thousands of salary records by employees at 50,000 U.S. companies, from startups to Fortune 50 businesses. The company’s data-driven approach has quickly made it a trusted media resource for salary and workplace culture, and one of the fastest-growing SaaS solutions for employer branding. For more information, go to Comparably.com. For workplace culture and salary studies, including Comparably’s annual Best Places to Work and Best CEOs awards, go to Comparably.com/blog.
