---
title: "What can you do with a computer science degree?"
description: "14 careers computer science graduates commonly move into, with BLS median pay, projected growth and entry requirements for each."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors/computer-science"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T07:20:09.337Z"
---

# What can you do with a computer science degree?

**What the degree involves:** Programming, algorithms, data structures, discrete maths, and a lot of debugging.

Computer science is one of the few majors where the degree and the job share a vocabulary, so a large share of graduates end up somewhere in software, data or infrastructure. The spread inside that is wide: writing product code, keeping systems running, securing them, testing them and analysing what they produce are all different jobs with different days.

14 common destinations, ordered most common first rather than highest paid first. 1 of 14 have a master's or a doctoral or professional degree as their BLS typical entry education, and 10 of 14 are projected to grow. A major is a body of study, not a job assignment: these are destinations of people who took the degree, not what the degree entitles anyone to.

| # | Occupation | Median annual wage | Projected change | Openings a year | Typical entry education |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [Software Developer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/software-developer) | $135,980 | +15.8% | 115,200 | Bachelor's |
| 2 | [Computer Systems Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-systems-analyst) | $105,850 | +8.7% | 34,200 | Bachelor's |
| 3 | Web Developer | $92,650 | +7.5% | 5,400 | Bachelor's |
| 4 | [Computer User Support Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-user-support-specialist) | $61,860 | -3.7% | 40,800 | Some college |
| 5 | [Information Security Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/information-security-analyst) | $129,180 | +28.5% | 16,000 | Bachelor's |
| 6 | [QA Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/qa-analyst) | $104,300 | +10.0% | 14,000 | Bachelor's |
| 7 | [Network and Computer Systems Administrator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/network-and-computer-systems-administrator) | $99,130 | -4.2% | 14,300 | Bachelor's |
| 8 | Database Administrator | $104,620 | -0.7% | 3,800 | Bachelor's |
| 9 | [Data Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/data-scientist) | $120,230 | +33.5% | 23,400 | Bachelor's |
| 10 | Computer Programmer | $100,390 | -6.0% | 5,500 | Bachelor's |
| 11 | [Business Intelligence Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/business-intelligence-analyst) | $120,230 | +33.5% | 23,400 | Bachelor's |
| 12 | [Computer Network Architect](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-network-architect) | $134,050 | +11.9% | 11,200 | Bachelor's |
| 13 | Video Game Designer | $104,000 | +7.0% | 9,100 | Bachelor's |
| 14 | Computer and Information Research Scientist | $140,300 | +19.7% | 3,200 | Master's (graduate study) |

Wages are BLS OEWS, May 2025. Projected change, annual openings and typical entry education are BLS Employment Projections. Occupation descriptions are O\*NET. Nothing on this page is estimated and no figure is generated by an AI model.

Full record for any row, including wage percentiles and state-level pay: https://nuecareer.com/careers/{slug} or https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/{slug}. Other majors: https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology