Seattle is the fastest-growing U.S. city for software developer jobs, according to a new report from job database Glassdoor. The study also revealed that U.S. retail saw more gains in software jobs in the past five years than any other industry.
Both of those findings go together, of course, given Seattle’s status as home to the king of online retail, Amazon.
Software jobs in Seattle grew 6.7 percent in the past five years, according to the report. In contrast, San Jose, which sits right in the middle of the Silicon Valley tech nerve center, saw software jobs decrease by 7.7 percent over that same time period. The data suggests that software jobs are disbursing beyond core tech regions and high-tech companies.
Glassdoor analyzed all job listings with “software” in the title on June 1, 2012 and the same day in 2017 to measure changes over the past five years.
Researchers saw a sharp rise in software jobs in retail, banking and financial services, and manufacturing. Ironically, in the computer software and hardware industry, software jobs have declined. Those jobs are also declining in aerospace and defense.
Retail has experienced the biggest increase in demand for software developers, driven largely by big online players like Amazon and Walmart. In the past five years, the industry’s software job postings increased by 7.5 percent.
“Working as a software engineer no longer requires working in a software company,” the report says. “Instead, it can mean building tools for online stock trading platforms, or writing code that automates logistics at an online retailer.”
The Glassdoor study backs up findings from a LinkedIn report published last week. It revealed Seattle is the fastest-growing market for software developers and it has the second highest median salary for that field, behind San Francisco.
