Real salary data

What Software Engineers actually earn in 2026.

The median for Software Engineer is $131,780 across 337204 real salary records (H-1B visa filings and tech job postings), updated Sep 14, 2026.

01 / By source

Real salary bands, by source.

Bands come from 337204 real records. Each source has a different bias, disclosed below.

Approximate salary distribution$131,780

Density curve fitted to the observed quartiles (log-normal). $106,000–$163,800 contains the middle 50% of records in the best-represented source; the shape between them is an approximation.

Source	Records	25th pct	Median	75th pct
H-1B visa filings	337,204	$106,000	$131,780	$163,800
Job postings	516	$162,000	$186,065	$212,000
Tech job postings	49	$259,500	$307,500	$355,500

H-1B visa filings (DOL) — over-represents visa-eligible roles (typically high-skill, high-wage)
Job postings that disclose salary in the ad text
Tech/startup job postings with published salary bands (Ashby ATS)

Salary data updated Sep 14, 2026. Bands are percentiles, not averages; n is the number of underlying records.

02 / By city

What Software Engineers earn, by city.

Real records; cities with at least 10 observations.

City	Records	Range (p25–p75)	Median
Seattle, WA	12,834	$136,000 – $182,312	$161,000
New York, NY	12,484	$135,000 – $190,000	$164,858
Sunnyvale, CA	9,644	$153,301 – $199,534	$181,000
Redmond, WA	9,470	$148,109 – $185,325	$165,342
Austin, TX	9,388	$108,826 – $155,709	$132,267
Irving, TX	8,230	$101,192 – $129,500	$105,997
Plano, TX	7,850	$101,200 – $141,440	$112,923
San Francisco, CA	7,295	$161,637 – $215,000	$187,574
Mountain View, CA	6,880	$172,931 – $214,000	$186,000
San Jose, CA	6,543	$158,224 – $214,148	$184,762
Dallas, TX	6,330	$103,226 – $144,698	$115,000
Bellevue, WA	6,160	$139,299 – $200,000	$171,000

03 / By state

What Software Engineers earn, by state.

State	Records	Range (p25–p75)	Median
CA	65,280	$150,515 – $205,000	$178,360
TX	65,002	$101,192 – $139,464	$110,000
WA	32,202	$137,803 – $186,200	$163,862
NJ	16,290	$110,000 – $155,000	$124,000
NY	15,901	$123,656 – $185,000	$152,100
NC	15,183	$109,919 – $141,003	$121,263
GA	15,130	$103,000 – $141,573	$116,000
IL	12,267	$102,700 – $144,560	$116,480
VA	10,715	$107,890 – $146,307	$122,699
FL	10,286	$94,370 – $138,354	$111,000
MA	8,188	$120,315 – $161,500	$136,500
PA	8,188	$95,295 – $134,562	$108,715

04 / Context

How Software Engineers pay compares with similar roles.

Profession	Risk	Median	Outlook
Architectural and Engineering Manager	Medium	$175,000	+3.8% (2024–34)
Computer and Information Research Scientist	High	$179,000	+19.7% (2024–34)
Computer Network Architect	Critical	$134,000	+11.9% (2024–34)
Computer Systems Analyst	Critical	$104,416	+8.7% (2024–34)
Data Analyst	High	$120,000	+33.5% (2024–34)

05 / Next step

How to move up the pay band.

The skills below appear most often in higher-paid roles:

06 / FAQ

Salary questions, answered.

01Why are the bands different from the BLS median?

The BLS median covers all Software Engineer in the US. These bands come from real records with known biases — H-1B filings skew to visa-eligible (high-skill) roles and tech postings skew to tech employers — so they sit above the national median. We disclose the source of every band.

02How often is this data updated?

The dataset refreshes weekly from live job postings and quarterly from new H-1B disclosures.

Methodology