Software Developers salaries in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX
What software developers earn in the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX area, from US Department of Labor payroll data covering the 22,940 employed there.
What the role earns here
Half of software developers in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX earn between $101,190 and $159,450, with a median of $129,440. Bureau of Labor Statistics — employer-reported payroll, 22,940 employed · OEWS-May2025.
What sponsored roles here attest
Employers sponsoring H-1B workers for this role in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX formally committed to a median of $114,400 ($105,976–$148,750), across 1,099 certified filings · FY2026-Q2. That is a narrow, self-selected slice of employers — see the note at the foot of this page — and it runs 12% below the earnings median above.
How Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX compares
The median here is 5% below the national figure for software developers ($135,980), which puts Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX 47th of the 94 areas with a published wage estimate for this occupation.
Areas that pay similarly
The nearest medians on either side of Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX — the useful comparison for someone weighing a move, rather than the same handful of top-paying metros on every page.
| Area | 25th | Median | 75th | Employed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | $100,450 | $130,450 | $165,430 | 14,230 |
| Jacksonville, FL | $101,540 | $130,330 | $159,250 | 7,200 |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | $99,250 | $129,940 | $169,000 | 2,900 |
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | $103,360 | $129,620 | $162,860 | 13,440 |
| Salt Lake City-Murray, UT | $102,560 | $129,600 | $160,740 | 19,040 |
| Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC | $99,230 | $129,090 | $160,550 | 7,160 |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | $101,670 | $129,030 | $156,320 | 9,820 |
| Trenton-Princeton, NJ | $101,440 | $128,770 | $159,790 | 3,390 |
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→ Everything hiring in Houston, TX — openings, the skills they ask for, and who is hiring.
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.