Despite some isolated waves of layoffs and hiring freezes in recent months, the job market in tech is, as the New York Times puts it, still bonkers.
Outside of the medical field, tech jobs, such as software developers, big data engineers, web developers, and more are routinely listed as some of the highest paying jobs.
To make matters even sweeter, some of the best places to work are overwhelmingly at many tech companies.
With all that in mind, we wouldn't blame you if you wanted to make a career in the tech industry. Here is a list of 12 of the best tech companies to work for according to employees.
Nevertheless, you still may be asking yourself: what do technology jobs pay?
Stack Overflow, the famous software development platform, recently published its annual Developer Survey.
If you haven't already, we highly recommend you check it out. It's chock-full of exciting and insightful info about the software engineering field and the tech industry in general.
Whether it be the most loved and dreaded technologies used, most popular cloud platforms, and, most interestingly, the highest paying tech jobs in 2022.
The survey lists dozens of different tech jobs and their median salaries. But in this article, we'll be taking a deep dive into the top 10.
The 10 highest-paying tech jobs in 2022 were:
Outside of the Executive (VPs, Directors) and the C-Suite, it should be no surprise that Engineering Managers commanded some of the highest salaries in the tech industry.
The median salary for an Engineering Manager reported by the Developer Survey was $111,976 in 2022.
Engineering managers must be technical experts. But, as the name suggests, they must also be people and project managers.
In many tech companies, engineering managers lead a team of engineers, software developers, web developers, and others as they build products for their firm.
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However, EMs are not expected to merely act like a boss but as a leader too. This means that EMs are responsible for supporting their engineers in their career growth and helping them further their professional goals.
"Engineering management really boils down to three aspects: people, process, and project management. Different teams really require different things." - a PM/EM at Lyft.
"Management is about guiding teams to make the right decisions." - an EM at Google.
"The best engineering managers can toggle back and forth between manager and IC roles. Make sure your technical foundation and fundamental skills are solid enough to pull that off." - former Head of Engineering at Stripe.
Needless to say, Engineering Manager is not an entry-level position. It will require expert knowledge of computer science, several years of working as an engineer, and showing leadership and management potential to be promoted into this position.
Your career path would likely look something like this:
To learn more about working up to the Engineering Manager position, check out our Software Engineer Career Path article here.
The second position on the list of high paying tech jobs is the role of a Site Reliability Engineer.
The median salary for a Site Reliability Engineer reported by the Developer Survey was $95,979 in 2022.
As the name suggests, these engineers are responsible for creating scalable and highly reliable software systems.
If you remember, in October of 2021, Facebook and its subsidiaries like Instagram and Whatsapp suffered a significant outage.
Everything was unavailable for nearly seven hours. Not only was this a highly publicized event, but it also cost the company around $65 million.
In short, it is the responsibility of site reliability engineers to ensure that things like this don't happen.
SREs need to prevent similar outages after software is deployed and ensure that reliability is built in while it is being developed.
The role was first fleshed out in its current form at Google by Ben Treynor Sloss, now a VP of Engineering at the company. The company has since published a famous e-book on the subject, which you can find here.
The role of a Site Reliability Engineer is similar to DevOps. Becoming an SRE may require first spending time as a software developer, moving into a DevOps Engineering role, and then onto the SRE role.
Another important role in tech similar to that of a Site Reliability Engineer is that of a Security Engineer. They, too, play their part in ensuring that technical systems are reliable and secure.
The median salary for a Security Engineer reported by the Developer Survey was $91,416 in 2022.
Security Engineers are responsible for developing secure systems or maintaining the security of networks or software products.
They are also involved in helping Site Reliability Engineers design technical systems that can withstand natural disasters or blackouts, which could potentially cause outages.
The primary adversaries, if you will, of a Security Engineer are all the hackers or nefarious agents looking to exploit vulnerabilities in their firm's technical systems.
It's not uncommon for them to be responsible for defending against phishing, malware, ransomware, and DDoS attacks while also ensuring that potential vulnerabilities are accounted for during the development process.
Many career paths lead to becoming a Security Engineer. However, many start working as entry-level IT specialists, computer programmers, software engineers, database or systems administrators, or network engineers.
One of the most consequential developments throughout tech has been the widespread adoption of cloud computing in recent years.
Now, in 2022, virtually all enterprise workloads use a cloud service.
Next year, the cloud service market will grow to over $600 billion.
Building and maintaining these cloud computing systems is the responsibility of Cloud Infrastructure Engineers.
The median salary for a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer reported by the Developer Survey was $89,580 in 2022.
Cloud Infrastructure Engineers may have various roles, given the complexity of the field.
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For example, they could be tasked with designing cloud architecture, developing cloud solutions, or maintaining cloud networks (or all of the above).
We took a deep dive into the responsibilities and duties of Cloud Architects in a previous article. To learn more, check that out here.
Given the modern importance of cloud infrastructure for nearly every business and the wide range of skills necessary for the role, this is not an entry-level position.
Becoming a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer will require vast knowledge of cloud technologies and cloud computing architecture. Therefore, you may need several years of working as a Software Engineer, especially while developing cloud systems, to be promoted into this role.
The path to becoming a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer or Architect could look something like this:
Despite recent waves of layoffs in the crypto space, Blockchain Developers/Engineers were some of the highest-paid tech workers in 2022.
The median salary for a Blockchain Developer/Engineer reported by the Developer Survey was $79,983 in 2022.
Blockchain Engineers are typically responsible for building and implementing Blockchain solutions for their company. For example, they could be tasked with creating a more secure and tamper-proof record of transactions.
These Engineers will use Blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, Hyperledger, or IBM Blockchain to build these enterprise solutions.
Blockchain is projected to grow significantly by 2030, with it, the need for more Blockchain Engineers.
Needless to say, becoming a Blockchain Engineer will require extensive knowledge of and experience with working with Blockchain technology.
Unlike some of the other positions listed previously, you could quickly become a Blockchain Engineer in your engineering career as long as you have the necessary experience and skills.
The 21st Century is defined by Big Data. It is one of the most valuable assets, and companies like Facebook and Google make billions off of data alone every year.
However, this data ultimately can't provide any value unless it can be collected, stored, and analyzed.
That's where a Data Engineer comes in.
The median salary for a Data Engineer reported by the Developer Survey was $79,983 in 2022.
Before other individuals, such as Data Scientists, Analysts, or Data Architect can discover insights into a company's data, Data Engineers must first develop systems to collect and deliver it.
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Unlike a Data Scientist or Data Analyst (who may have a Math/Analytics background), Big Data Engineers (as the name suggests) have a very engineering-heavy professional experience.
As such, jumping into a Data Engineer role would likely entail some years of working as a Software Engineer.
DevOps Specialists and Engineers are also highly-paid tech jobs, given how important DevOps has become for tech companies these days.
The median salary for a DevOps Specialist reported by the Developer Survey was $79,236 in 2022.
There's no getting around it: software development is complex.
As technology has exponentially improved in recent decades, the software development processes at many tech companies have become even more complex and sophisticated.
'DevOps' is a portmanteau of "Development" and "Operations."
Ultimately, DevOps Specialists are responsible for bridging the gap between the development and deployment of software products. In doing so, they are responsible for developing processes to make each faster and more effective.
DevOps Engineers work alongside Software Engineers, Sysadmins, and Operations staff and are responsible for helping promote code releases or deployments.
DevOps is not an entry-level position. As you can expect, such a cross-functional role requires experience with software development processes and IT operations.
Many DevOps Specialists start as Engineers, System Administrators, or in the IT Operations department.
While not an explicitly technical set of roles, Marketing & Sales Professionals were another group of highly paid positions at tech companies in 2022.
The median salary for a Marketing/Sales Professional reported by the Developer Survey was $78,180 in 2022.
Indeed, these roles are not technically 'tech jobs,' but they are essential and highly influential individuals at virtually every tech company. A fact that was spoofed in Silicon Valley:
All jokes aside, if it wasn't for a company's Marketing and Sales Professionals, no one would know about or purchase the products that the engineering teams build.
Generally speaking, becoming a Marketing and Sales Professional requires a business background. Joining a tech company's Marketing or Sales department would also likely require business experience in these technical fields.
The role of Product Manager is another tech job that commanded a high salary in 2022.
The median salary for a Product Manager reported by the Developer Survey was $76,783 in 2022.
Product Manager is inherently multidisciplinary and cross-functional role.
PMs play a central role in many of the processes involved in the product life cycle.
As such, they are often referred to as "mini-CEOs."
For example, Product Managers will routinely determine what features should and should not be included in a product, how to measure product success, interpret user feedback, and work alongside internal and external stakeholders.
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Product Management is one of the fastest-growing and exciting jobs in tech.
In fact, Glassdoor has ranked the Product Manager role as one of the best jobs in America.
So, how do you become a Product Manager?
Typically, you can jump into the role of Associate PM. Many Big Tech companies have APM programs you can apply to jump into Product Management.
You can learn more about the Product Manager Career Path here.
Finally, last but not least, Data Scientists/Machine Learning Specialists were among the highest-paid tech professionals in 2022.
The median salary for a Data Scientist/Machine Learning Specialist reported by the Developer Survey was $74,651 in 2022.
In the 21st Century, data has become one of, if not the most valuable asset on the planet. So much so that many have called it the new oil of the modern economy.
At this point, the world is producing 2.5 quintillion bytes daily. For context, that's over 11 million GTA V's daily.
To shift through and make sense of all that data, especially in a way to help boost growth and solve problems, companies make use of data science.
Data Scientists use various tools, such as A/B Testing, Linear Regression Modeling, and Machine Learning (which we will get to), to discover insights within a company's data and help make recommendations to better accomplish the goals of the firm.
Many Data Scientists are also Machine Learning Specialists. Machine learning models are AI applications designed to recognize and learn patterns found in datasets to make more accurate predictions of future outcomes.
Worried about data science interview questions? Practice common data science questions in this course.
Becoming a Data Scientist or Machine Learning Specialist may require extensive knowledge of data science and several years of working in more junior positions, such as Data Analyst or Software Developer.
At the end of the day, before you too can get one of these high paying tech jobs, you'll undoubtedly need to ace the interview first!
Luckily, here at Exponent, we have you covered.
💬 Study up on example interview questions
📖 Read through our company-specific interview guides
👯♂️ Practice your interviewing skills with our peer-to-peer mock interview practice tool.
👨🎓 Take one of our complete interview courses
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