Top 15 Highest Paying Software Developer Jobs In 2021

Today we're gonna get into the top 15 paying jobs in software.

We're going to dive into the different things dive into the different fields inside software you'll notice some of it might be more i.t related some of it might be more development related and we're gonna dive into these things talk about them just to give you more context and potentially more guidance on the path that you want to take. 

Let's jump right into it so here in the top 15 it's ordered from the least to the greatest.

Systems engineers

At a national average of one hundred and two thousand dollars per year. So what exactly is a systems engineer a systems engineer you could think about kind of like the person who's in between the hardware and the software. They're in charge of making sure that the system as a whole is gonna work properly that you have your hardware your databases your server set up properly and you have your software being able to talk to it in the right manner. So systems engineering is actually very interesting because it can be applied to a lot of different fields specifically the cases that I gave was for the software related field but there's also systems engineers that have built out different systems in different fields such as the mechanical engineering world the aerospace world and just any other engineering field.

Security specialist making about a hundred and six thousand dollars per year. Their main focus is to make sure that the mainframe security is on point because we wouldn't want any type of  hackers any type of people trying to get the data that the company has about their specific products think of this way if the company was storing proprietary information inside their databases. You wouldn't want anyone to have access to that information because if they knew what the databases looked like if they knew what the information looked like you would be able to hack the information that maybe even erase it and it would be detrimental to the company.  I.T security specialist make sure that the it system inside the business is secure and it won't be hacked.

Number three this is the one that basically everyone is familiar with which is software engineer. The
software engineers make on average about a hundred and nine thousand dollars according to indeed and the reason I say this is one of the more typical ones is because when you apply a big tech this is usually the the title that they give you if you go to google, microsoft or amazon it will be the software engineer title. It's more like of a generalist where you're just able to build out software applications that are required so if you fall under software engineering you could go from anywhere like the low level programming of the actual hardware to software to even the high level programming of maybe web applications this is a great starting point to start your software career because as a generalist you're gonna get to find what your niche is and what the specific things are that you love about being a software developer.

Number four we have the full stack developer making about a hundred and thirteen thousand dollars per year. A full stack developer is a software developer who can build a product end to end by end to end I mean they're able to build the front end which is the UI and making the application whether it's a web app or a mobile app look nice and the backend which is all of the databases and how the data is going to be stored if you're a full stack developer you're a very versatile developer and for that reason it's one of the highest paying jobs in the industry. For entry-level positions not only that it's one of the most demanded.

Now coming in at number five we have a cloud engineer making about 121000 $ per year. With the rise of AWS and azure and all these companies demands for more cloud engineers this job has been more and more in demand. Over the years now I clearly remember when the word cloud first came up it was such a weird concept to me I just didn't understand what is this cloud in the sky that people are getting data from but these companies AWS, Azure google all these big tech companies getting involved are showing that it is such an important tool to have it allows you to basically have collaborative efforts happening in one place it allows you to store data without having to have your own server or database. It fundamentally solves so many business problems in this world that the technology just keeps growing and growing and because it is still a relatively new field it is in high demand that people are getting paid a lot to become cloud engineers.

Now next at number six we have data scientists coming at around 121000 $ a year now honestly just data scientist is the hot new thing right now. It's trending. It's the new tick tock and the reason for this is because people are realizing that when they get data when they're able to go into a database and collect all these data you can learn from that you can understand from they could develop analytics and if you build the right models from that you can predict things you can allow machine learning to take into place you can allow artificial intelligence to be leveraged properly and now this allows people in the business world to make business decisions based off the data that they have.

So next at number seven we have mobile developers making about 125000$ per year. Now this one's actually the one that's very close to my heart because this is where my passion for developing came from I remember when I was sitting there in college and all I was doing my freshman year was playing flappy bird I was clicking that button just so that stupid bird could flap up and I would keep hitting the green pipes but most importantly I was just fascinated with how it even worked I was fascinated how some people were just able to get to level 100 by defying gravity and going through all the pipes and I wanted to learn how the code actually worked. Mobile development was one of the biggest things that motivated me towards becoming a developer I wanted to learn more about it that's when I started to take my first computer science class and it took me down this path so mobile development is simple. How do you actually make a software application for your phone whether it's IOS or android or even then cross platform. If you leverage a tool like react native this field is blowing up because people are realizing that we're going mobile now in fact our phone is like an extension of us. If you happen to leave your phone at home you're gonna feel like you forgot something and you can't focus the rest of the day so if you want to be part of that industry if you want to be part of the change because everything is now going mobile. This is definitely a field you can consider.

For the next one we have number eight and I actually want to put it next with number nine so number eight we have development operations engineer coming at 127 000 $ per year and number nine we have a site reliability engineer coming in at 128 000 per year. Now the reason I personally want to combine them is because from my experience with blue origin was that these are basically the same thing. So development operations engineer also called devops engineering and site reliability engineering also called sre engineering have to deal with making the processes of a regular software engineers work a lot easier in automating those things. So similar to like how a software engineer built software to automate a regular person's job. The sre and devops built software to automate the software engineers job so they make it easy and automate things so the software engineer just has to worry about

writing code and they don't have to worry about all the pipelines that it has to pass all the testing that it has to do because all that is automated through scripts and through frameworks. Now here in this article they separate a little bit more by saying that devops is actually involved in the operations of creating the scripts while sre kind of is the intermediate between the devops and the software engineer but I personally would probably categorize them as just the same thing sorry if I offend anyone.

Now next coming in at number 10 we have data warehouse architect and they have a national average around 134 000 $ per year. Now data warehousing is such an important job and in fact this was the bulk of my work at blue origin. So you could think of a data warehousing architect like the person who plans a database so that you could just throw in a bunch of data and they'll neatly organize and stack everything where it's supposed to go.  So that someone can ask for that data on the other side and get it in a clean manner. So data warehousing is super important because if it is done right it will allow all the other types of software developments whether it's full stack to data scientists it will allow all of them to have such an easier job by getting the data in a simple and easy to use manner.

Now coming in at number 11 we have the software architect making about 138 000 $per year. The software architect is responsible for using their knowledge and their understanding and planning out how a system should be built what should be attached to it what sort of API should it have, should it be a micro service type of system like, what is the general architecture of this software system so that it can work and help every other party that's going to use it in the most efficient manner by designing and thinking and architecting the software system in a specific way. You're going to save the company a lot of headaches in the future so there's an important concept here that's called design for change if you have a design that is adaptable to future changes then it's going to be robust and it's not going to break down whenever something new is introduced to this and this is an important topic in terms of software architect that they have to keep in mind so they could build a robust system.

Now coming in at number 12 we have the enterprise architect making about 140 000 $ per year. The enterprise architect is very similar to the software architect in regards that they have to think about the design and how it's going to be implemented but the enterprise architect is a level up higher instead of just focusing on a specific software solution the enterprise architect is gonna focus on different software solutions and how they're all gonna come into play. So inside of big companies enterprise architects usually design how all these internal tools are gonna interact with each other to make sure that they are effective and that they are really usable inside of the company.

Now coming in at number 13 you're going to notice we're going to switch a little more from the development to the more people skills but we have a software engineering manager making around 144 000 $ per year so these managers make sure they use their expertise to be able to guide and lead a team of developers software engineering managers are usually entrusted with the couple projects of problems that they have to solve and they have maybe a handful of developers who are going to help them to solve that problem so you need a lot of people skills, a lot of communication skills to make sure that both the customers and your developers are happy and not only that to make sure that they're developing the right thing for your customers. If you like the technical side of it but you also like to talk to people you also like to solve the problems, this might be a good place for you.

Now next coming in at number 14 we have the technical program manager making about 145 000$ per year on average. Now in different companies the software engineering manager and the technical program manager tend to work at the same level but they have different responsibilities so depending on the company the software engineering manager and the technical program manager may have different responsibilities. You could usually think as a software engineering manager the one who knows a little bit more about technology can relate to the developers that he's managing and can also talk in terms of how they're going to develop these next and coming features or fixed bugs. Well the technical program manager is one of the business side of things they're going to develop the budget, they're going to develop the timeline and the time frame for building out the software application and they're going to be in charge of talking to the customers to make sure that everyone's happy and everyone's on the right path.

Finally the big one that we've all been waiting for number 15 the chief technology officer or the CTO making an average of 157 000 $ per year. The CTO this is the head honcho. He is part of the executives inside of business. This is the person who is overseeing all of the technology departments inside of a business. He has to make sure that they're running like actual businesses with profits and loss. He has to make sure that they're all communicating properly. He has to make sure that the right systems are set up in place so that the company can be successful and the technologies will all work together. Without a CTO you're gonna see a company struggle to have cohesion within the different software teams. So if you're looking to climb up the corporate ladder this is the top position that you want to aim for.

So guys that is it you got to see the top 15 ping developer jobs in software go ahead.