Tech salaries, from federal payroll data
Wage bands for 15 technology occupations, built from what US Department of Labor figures say employers actually pay — not from salaries people typed into a form. Every figure names the workforce behind it.
| Computer and Information Systems Managers | $138,060 | $175,140 | $220,730 | 670,570 | 76 |
| Computer Network Architects | $104,620 | $134,050 | $168,200 | 179,740 | 73 |
| Computer Occupations, All Other | $79,370 | $116,580 | $157,500 | 435,370 | 76 |
| Computer Systems Analysts | $82,860 | $105,850 | $134,110 | 519,530 | 75 |
| Data Scientists | $85,660 | $120,230 | $158,880 | 262,440 | 75 |
| Database Administrators | $79,610 | $104,620 | $135,460 | 69,990 | 66 |
| Database Architects | $109,370 | $139,500 | $169,290 | 67,140 | 59 |
| Information Security Analysts | $97,810 | $129,180 | $163,500 | 190,650 | 71 |
| Mathematical Science Occupations, All Other | $60,750 | $81,490 | $107,180 | 3,720 | 2 |
| Network and Computer Systems Administrators | $78,010 | $99,130 | $126,640 | 314,340 | 76 |
| Operations Research Analysts | $68,360 | $88,940 | $125,990 | 108,510 | 66 |
| Software Developers | $105,210 | $135,980 | $171,980 | 1,687,890 | 94 |
| Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers | $80,310 | $104,300 | $133,180 | 186,740 | 70 |
| Web and Digital Interface Designers | $73,290 | $104,000 | $158,820 | 113,330 | 55 |
| Web Developers | $64,230 | $92,650 | $126,230 | 70,190 | 49 |
Where these numbers come from
The pay figures on this page come from the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics wage series — payroll figures employers report from their own records, covering everyone working in the occupation rather than only those who happen to answer a poll. Nobody self-reported them, and no salary here was submitted by the person earning it.
What that does and does not tell you. These are earnings of people already in the job, not the pay advertised on current openings — and advertised pay tends to run above them. It is a sample of employers, not a count of all of them, so every figure is an estimate. The number beside each band is how many people work in the occupation in that area: it says how substantial the local workforce is, not how many employers were surveyed. And BLS publishes no margin of error for the percentiles — only for the employment count — so treat the median as a solid central figure rather than a precise one.
Where the second band comes from. Some pages also show what employers formally attest they will pay a sponsored worker, from H-1B Labor Condition Application disclosures. Those are real, filed, public wages and the employer is legally bound by them — but the population is only employers who sponsor work visas, which is neither everyone hiring for the role nor a random sample of them. Sponsorship concentrates in large, well-paying technology employers and in IT staffing firms that file toward the lower end, and we have not measured which effect wins. So it sits beside the earnings band, never averaged into it: there is no meaningful figure halfway between what a role pays and what a visa filing committed to.
What we deliberately do not show. Any area with fewer than 100 people in the occupation, or where the estimate is too thinly sampled to stand behind (current data: OEWS-May2025). And any trend or year-on-year change: we hold a single release, and drawing a line through one point would be inventing a finding. When a second lands the trend appears here, and not before.
This covers the pay figures on this page. For the postings, the AI extraction and the market estimates — and the full list of things we deliberately do not claim — see our methodology.