---
title: "Software Developer"
description: "Research, design, and develop computer and network software or specialized utility programs. Analyze user needs and develop software solutions, applying…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/software-developer"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Software Developer

**Category:** Computer and Mathematical · **SOC code:** 15-1252 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 15-1252.00

Research, design, and develop computer and network software or specialized utility programs. Analyze user needs and develop software solutions, applying principles and techniques of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis. Update software or enhance existing software capabilities. May work with computer hardware engineers to integrate hardware and software systems, and develop specifications and performance requirements. May maintain databases within an application area, working individually or coordinating database development as part of a team.

Also advertised as: Application Developer; Application Integration Engineer; Developer; DevOps Engineer (Development Operations Engineer); Infrastructure Engineer; Software Architect; Software Developer; Software Development Engineer.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $135,980 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $65.38/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $82,460 to $214,670, with the middle half between $105,210 and $171,980
- **Total US employment:** 1,687,890
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +15.8% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 115,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 6/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 1,687,890 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $82,460 |
| 25th | $105,210 |
| 50th (median) | $135,980 |
| 75th | $171,980 |
| 90th | $214,670 |
| Mean (average) | $148,100 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $174,410 | $157,523 | 284,390 |
| WA | $166,540 | $155,626 | 107,030 |
| NY | $166,180 | $153,983 | 113,510 |
| MA | $165,210 | $156,217 | 48,190 |
| OR | $142,720 | $138,079 | 21,830 |
| NH | $139,720 | $134,133 | 10,840 |
| MD | $138,680 | $132,128 | 31,350 |
| CO | $138,390 | $134,291 | 43,320 |
| DC | $136,880 | $124,548 | 6,120 |
| VA | $136,460 | $134,970 | 88,280 |
| NJ | $135,940 | $124,939 | 51,570 |
| NC | $134,710 | $142,813 | 58,470 |
| CT | $134,120 | $129,447 | 13,660 |
| DE | $133,020 | $133,276 | 3,380 |
| TX | $132,150 | $136,157 | 163,880 |

36 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 51 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/software-developer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/software-developer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 1,693,800 in the 2024–2034 base year to 1,961,400 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 267,700 jobs, or +15.8%. Much faster than average: 15.8% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 115,200 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 84.8% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 5.1% |
| Master's Degree | 4.5% |
| High School Diploma | 3.1% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 1.7% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 0.8% |

## What the work involves

- Analyze information to determine, recommend, and plan installation of a new system or modification of an existing system.
- Confer with systems analysts, engineers, programmers and others to design systems and to obtain information on project limitations and capabilities, performance requirements and interfaces.
- Develop or direct software system testing or validation procedures, programming, or documentation.
- Consult with customers or other departments on project status, proposals, or technical issues, such as software system design or maintenance.
- Modify existing software to correct errors, adapt it to new hardware, or upgrade interfaces and improve performance.
- Analyze user needs and software requirements to determine feasibility of design within time and cost constraints.
- Determine system performance standards.
- Store, retrieve, and manipulate data for analysis of system capabilities and requirements.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Programming — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Technology Design — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Analysis — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Engineering and Technology — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Investigative (I), Conventional (C), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| I — Investigative | 6.05 |
| C — Conventional | 5.62 |
| R — Realistic | 3.61 |
| A — Artistic | 2.37 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.87 |
| S — Social | 1.81 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 84.1 |
| INTJ | 83.3 |
| ISTP | 76.5 |
| INTP | 64.5 |
| ISFJ | 62.3 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ, INTJ. The bank also flags this occupation as introvert-friendly, meaning O\*NET work-context ratings put it low on public contact and performing for the public.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Computer Systems Engineers/Architect](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-systems-engineers-architect) — median $116,580
- [Computer Systems Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-systems-analyst) — median $105,850
- [QA Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/qa-analyst) — median $104,300
- [Computer Programmer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-programmer) — median $100,390
- [Database Administrator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/database-administrator) — median $104,620
- [Database Architect](https://nuecareer.com/careers/database-architect) — median $139,500
- [Computer Hardware Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-hardware-engineer) — median $161,740
- [Computer Network Architect](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-network-architect) — median $134,050
- [Web Developer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/web-developer) — median $92,650
- [Information Security Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/information-security-engineer) — median $116,580

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

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

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/software-developer