Software Developers Salaries by Employer

By the H-1B Salary Data Editorial Team · Last updated: October 2026

Software Developers (SOC 15-1252) accounts for 208,734 certified LCA cases in this dataset, and its median offered wage of $138,000 sits about 12% above the all-occupation median of $123,282. Occupation is the single strongest organising principle in LCA wage data, stronger than employer brand and stronger than state: the legal wage floor for a filing is the prevailing wage for that occupation in that area, so roles are priced by local occupational labour markets first and by individual employers second. That is why this site leads with occupation pages for anyone researching a specific career, and treats employer pages as the second step in a comparison.

Within this occupation, pay still varies widely. The middle half of filings spans $110,635 to $170,000, a spread driven by experience level (the LCA records a prevailing-wage level from I to IV), by worksite geography, and by how employers map their internal titles onto this SOC code. A Level I entry-level offer and a Level IV fully competent offer for the same occupation code are both legitimate filings, and they can differ by tens of thousands of dollars. Readers should therefore use the range, not only the median, and should check the worksite table below for the places where this occupation is concentrated.

Wage Table — Software Developers

Important Caveat for This Code

SOC 15-1252, Software Developers, is a known reclassification catch-all in LCA data. When the Standard Occupational Classification system was revised, a large share of roles previously filed under older computer occupations — including much of what was filed as Computer Programmers and Software Developers, Applications — was consolidated into this single code. Employers also differ in how they map internal job titles onto SOC codes, so the same engineering role may appear here for one employer and under a neighbouring code, such as 15-1251 or 15-1253, for another. Treat this page as a broad picture of developer-type filings rather than a precise census of one job title, and compare it with the neighbouring computer occupation pages before drawing conclusions about any single employer's pay for developers.

Top Employers for Software Developers

The employer ranking for an occupation is dominated by staffing model as much as by headcount. Large technology firms file directly for their own product roles, while consulting and staffing firms file for roles that will be performed at client sites, which is one reason the same employer can appear at the top of many different occupation rankings. Following an employer link from this table takes you to that employer's own page, where you can see whether its overall median is driven by this occupation or by a very different mix of roles — an important check before using any single employer's headline figure as a benchmark for this occupation.

Top Worksites for Software Developers

Geography concentrates strongly for most professional occupations. A small number of metropolitan areas typically account for a large share of filings, because headquarters, client sites and specialist labour pools cluster together. That concentration also pulls the national median upward or downward: an occupation concentrated in high-cost coastal metros will show a higher national median than the same occupation would show if its filings were spread evenly across the country. Comparing this occupation's median in a specific city page against the national figure here is the cleanest way to see that local effect in the data.

How These Figures Were Computed

Every figure on this page was computed by our script directly from the U.S. Department of Labor OFLC LCA disclosure files for FY2024 Q4 and FY2025 Q1–Q4, retrieved in October 2026. We kept only cases whose CASE_STATUS is exactly “Certified” — denied, withdrawn and certified-withdrawn cases are excluded. Headline medians use filings whose wage unit is a year, because annual salaries compare cleanly; hourly, weekly and monthly filings are counted in case totals but are not converted into the headline median, and our methodology page explains that choice in full. Wages below $15,080 a year (the annualized federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour) or above $1,000,000 a year are excluded from medians as likely data-entry placeholders, and the number excluded is reported in the manifest that accompanies this site. Medians are shown alongside means because a handful of very large offers can drag a mean far above what a typical filing actually offered.