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Pay · 15-1252

Software developers earn $135,980 a year at the midpoint

One of the largest occupations in the country — about 1,687,890 people — with a midpoint of $135,980 a year.

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$135,980median a year · United States
$65.38an hour $148,100average 1,687,890people
Nine in ten people in this work earn between the two ends. The shaded part is the middle half — where most people are.
$105,21025th $135,980median $171,98075th
$82,46010th percentile $214,67090th percentile
$105,210a year at the 25th percentile, nearer a first job
$174,410best-paying state · California
$95,330lowest-paying state · Mississippi
+28%top state against the national median
  • Read the spread, not the middle. The median is the midpoint across everyone in the occupation, most of them years into the work. A beginner starts nearer the 10th to 25th percentile, which is why the spread is published alongside it.
  • What the figure counts. The figure counts base pay plus tips, commissions and production bonuses. It leaves out the self-employed, unpaid family workers, private household workers, and the value of benefits or profit sharing.
  • Where you live moves it more than your resume does. National figures. A state or metro area can sit far from the national number, and that gap is usually larger than any difference a resume makes.
  • Not in these numbers. Growth and annual openings are not in this dataset. They come from the separate Employment Projections tables, where an opening is a modelled ten year average and not a posted vacancy.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, 2025. Retrieved through the BLS Public Data API on 2026-08-13. bls.gov/oes “BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.”

Among the best-paidNumber 34 of 788 occupations by median pay — in the top five per cent.
State matters a lotThe same job pays $174,410 in California and $95,330 in Mississippi — a gap of $79,080 a year.

Software developer earnings, from starting pay up to the top 10%

Pick the job, where you work and how long you have done it. The range comes from the published wage percentiles for that job.

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Related work, and what it pays

Occupations in the same group of the federal classification — the usual next steps, or the ones beside this one.

Software developers$135,980
Computer Occupations, All Other$116,580−$19,400 Computer Systems Analysts$105,850−$30,130 Database Administrators$104,620−$31,360 Network and Computer Systems Administrators$99,130−$36,850 Computer user support specialists$61,860−$74,120

Software developer pay rate, hourly to yearly

Starts at this job’s median. Change the rate or the hours; a full-time year is 40 hours for 52 weeks.

$135,990a year

Examples

Resumes written for this kind of work.

Real sheets, filled in end to end — for this job and the ones beside it.

All templates →

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A resume for software developers

Name the job in the builder and the duties, skills and credentials it is screened on are written in for you.

System designTesting and CICode reviewDebugging in productionDatabases and migrationsAPIsVersion controlObservability
  • Owned services end to end, including deployment, monitoring and the on-call rotation.
  • Broke a long-running migration into reversible steps so it could ship without a freeze.
  • Brought untested legacy code under test before changing it, rather than around it.

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No. 34 of 788 by median pay

Better paid than 96% of the occupations in the survey.

  1. 32 Database Architects $139,500
  2. 33 Optometrists $136,570
  3. 34 Software developers $135,980
  4. 35 Physician Assistants $135,880
  5. 36 Aerospace Engineers $134,960

Software developer wages in each state

The 49 states where the most people do this work, of 50 with a published figure: their medians range by 1.83 times. Figures are the 2025 survey.

State Median a year Where most start 10th to 90th Employed
California $174,410 $105,060 $105,060 — $272,670 284,390
Washington $166,540 $96,810 $96,810 — $255,350 107,030
New York $166,180 $97,430 $97,430 — $224,590 113,510
Massachusetts $165,210 $102,810 $102,810 — $213,970 48,190
Oregon $142,720 $83,070 $83,070 — $213,540 21,830
New Hampshire $139,720 $92,510 $92,510 — $205,370 10,840
Maryland $138,680 $87,690 $87,690 — $222,610 31,350
Colorado $138,390 $96,480 $96,480 — $213,010 43,320
District of Columbia $136,880 $85,140 $85,140 — $197,000 6,120
Virginia $136,460 $83,350 $83,350 — $211,930 88,280
New Jersey $135,940 $84,880 $84,880 — $207,200 51,570
North Carolina $134,710 $83,840 $83,840 — $179,310 58,470
Connecticut $134,120 $85,930 $85,930 — $205,160 13,660
Delaware $133,020 $96,620 $96,620 — $174,390 3,380
Texas $132,150 $82,600 $82,600 — $183,680 163,880
Illinois $132,110 $80,980 $80,980 — $194,740 56,310
Idaho $131,590 $71,030 $71,030 — $178,980 5,750
Georgia $131,010 $80,110 $80,110 — $176,000 49,700
Florida $130,980 $80,050 $80,050 — $204,400 87,890
Rhode Island $130,590 $83,540 $83,540 — $168,630 5,070
Minnesota $130,050 $79,900 $79,900 — $169,810 35,890
Arizona $129,690 $81,740 $81,740 — $178,500 38,050
South Carolina $129,450 $76,010 $76,010 — $212,460 13,230
Nevada $128,810 $73,990 $73,990 — $194,470 4,520
Utah $128,810 $77,810 $77,810 — $177,970 31,940
Pennsylvania $126,550 $77,750 $77,750 — $178,080 55,920
Missouri $126,120 $72,570 $72,570 — $169,340 20,020
Michigan $125,570 $78,930 $78,930 — $166,510 43,460
Vermont $125,280 $82,480 $82,480 — $209,420 1,740
New Mexico $124,520 $77,110 $77,110 — $184,710 3,960
Hawaii $124,040 $64,690 $64,690 — $238,930 1,600
Maine $123,120 $82,930 $82,930 — $179,990 2,790
Wisconsin $122,660 $77,710 $77,710 — $168,630 21,730
Alabama $122,540 $71,590 $71,590 — $175,330 17,450
Tennessee $122,430 $75,280 $75,280 — $166,380 19,030
Montana $121,990 $73,370 $73,370 — $221,400 2,160
West Virginia $121,000 $60,480 $60,480 — $168,620 2,650
Oklahoma $118,100 $75,190 $75,190 — $169,700 6,880
Wyoming $115,170 $72,950 $72,950 — $156,620 1,510
Iowa $114,890 $74,390 $74,390 — $165,880 9,040
Ohio $114,090 $77,790 $77,790 — $168,400 44,790
Kansas $113,420 $71,690 $71,690 — $165,740 13,580
Nebraska $110,900 $77,520 $77,520 — $158,720 7,260
Kentucky $109,010 $76,310 $76,310 — $168,110 7,660
Indiana $105,920 $74,850 $74,850 — $164,650 14,130
Arkansas $104,490 $60,570 $60,570 — $162,380 6,050
Louisiana $102,800 $66,350 $66,350 — $151,780 4,080
South Dakota $96,310 $65,530 $65,530 — $160,380 2,380
Mississippi $95,330 $44,700 $44,700 — $158,300 1,880

No estimate is published for 1 states: the survey withholds a figure when too few employers report it. Nothing has been filled in for them.

What people often ask

What is a software developer’s yearly income?

A software developer makes a median of $135,980 a year (2025 survey). The middle half earn between $105,210 and $171,980.

What is a software developer’s hourly pay rate?

The median pay rate is $65.38 an hour; the average is $148,100 a year.

What is the starting pay for a software developer?

Starting pay is usually near the 25th percentile, $105,210 a year, and sometimes as low as the 10th, $82,460.

Which state pays software developers the most?

California, with a median of $174,410 a year.

How many people work as software developers?

About 1,687,890 in the United States — number 34 of 788 occupations by median pay.

Jobs that pay about the same

Median pay within $4,930 of what software developers earn — $135,980 a year — but not always the same spread.

See all 788 occupations