What Are Silicon Valley’s Highest-Paying Tech Jobs?
Product management, reliability, and security jobs pay the most in Silicon Valley, says job search firm Indeed
Job-search site Indeed crunched its Silicon Valley hiring numbers for 2018, looking at tech job searches, salaries, and employers, and found that engineers who combine tech skills with business skills as directors of product management earn the most, with an average salary of US $186,766. Last year, the gig came in as number two, at $173,556.
Also climbing up the ranks, and now in the number two spot with an average annual salary of $181,100, is senior reliability engineer. Application security engineer is third at $173,903. Neither made the top 20 in 2017.
And while it seems that machine learning engineers have been getting all the love in 2018, those jobs came in eighth place, at $159,230. That’s still a bit of a leap from last year, when the job made its first appearance on Indeed’s top 20 highest-paying jobs in the 13th spot at $149,519. This year’s top 20 is below; last year’s numbers are here.
Highest-paying tech jobs in Silicon Valley (January through October, 2018)
| Rank | Job Title | Annual Salary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Director of product management | $186,766 |
| 2 | Senior reliability engineer | $181,100 |
| 3 | Application security engineer | $173,903 |
| 4 | Principal software architect | $165,487 |
| 5 | Senior solution architect | $164,584 |
| 6 | Software engineering manager | $162,115 |
| 7 | Software architect | $159,642 |
| 8 | Machine learning engineer | $159,230 |
| 9 | Computer vision engineer | $156,217 |
| 10 | User experience architect | $155,394 |
| 11 | Platform engineer | $155,075 |
| 12 | Data warehouse architect | $154,950 |
| 13 | Director of information technology | $152,331 |
| 14 | Senior back-end developer | $151,313 |
| 15 | Senior software architect | $150,970 |
| 16 | Salesforce developer | $150,923 |
| 17 | Ruby developer | $149,944 |
| 18 | Server engineer | $149,435 |
| 19 | Python developer | $149,331 |
| 20 | Senior software engineer | $148,098 |
Source: Indeed.com
There was less shuffling in the ranks of companies doing the most hiring in Silicon Valley. Apple and Amazon held on to the number one and two positions, respectively, while Walmart made a big move from number 13 in 2017 to number three this year—these three companies accounted for nearly 10 percent of the job postings on Indeed in 2018. The full list is below.
Companies hiring the most employees in Silicon Valley (January through October, 2018)
| Rank | Company | Percentage of tech job postings in the San Francisco Bay Area |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apple | 4.20 |
| 2 | Amazon | 3.41 |
| 3 | Walmart | 2.01 |
| 4 | 1.78 | |
| 5 | 1.49 | |
| 6 | Cisco | 1.30 |
| 7 | Oracle | 1.14 |
| 8 | Salesforce | 0.98 |
| 9 | Nvidia | 0.76 |
| 10 | Adobe | 0.73 |
| 11 | Paypal | 0.68 |
| 12 (tie) | Workday | 0.64 |
| 12 (tie) | eBay | 0.64 |
| 12 (tie) | VMware | 0.64 |
| 15 | Splunk | 0.61 |
| 16 | Oath | 0.57 |
| 17 | Intel | 0.49 |
| 18 | Visa | 0.47 |
| 19 | Tesla | 0.45 |
| 20 (tie) | SAP | 0.43 |
| 20 (tie) | 0.43 |
Source: Indeed.com
Tekla S. Perry is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., she's been covering the people, companies, and technology that make Silicon Valley a special place for more than 40 years. An IEEE member, she holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University.