Top 10 Highest Paying Software Engineering Jobs in 2020 ($150,000+ Salary)

In this video, I'm going to be discussing the top 10 highest paid software jobs, like not just software engineering, but just software jobs in general. And remember, these lists vary. What I did is I took, you know, lists from reputable sites, along with doing my own research and kind of compiled a list, took averages. And that's how I figured out like what the top 10 highest paid, highest paying software jobs are in 2020. There are really two ways you can do this. You can create a list of highest paid software jobs, or you can do like highest paid software development and engineering jobs based on the programming language you understand or use in your job. But in this video, I'm going to just be focusing on software jobs. And give this video a thumbs up if you'd like me to make a video where I talk about the top 10 highest paid programming languages, you know, for 2020 and, you know, 2021 is right around the corner. So for 2021 as well. I was going to initially start from like number one, but like there's no fun in that. So I'm going to start at number 10. And also I'm going to make sure that this video is broken up into chapters. That way you can bounce around. So number 10 is full stack development with an average salary of $95,000. In my opinion, full stack development is really kind of like a cross between like software engineering and web development. The reason being is because you still need to understand object-oriented programming, which is a very important aspect of software engineering. From like a web development standpoint, you also need to understand HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Because as a full stack developer, you're going to be coding in basically every stack. So you also need to have some understanding in back-end development and databases like SQL and also, you know, languages like C-sharp, Java, C++, and maybe even Python. So you're really a jack of all trades. So that's number 10 full stack development. Moving on, senior web development is number nine with an average salary of around $97,000. As a senior web developer, you'll be in charge of turning business requirements into web-based, you know, requirements for your other developers to, you know, know what they need to code in order to meet those requirements for the product owner, along with developing specifications for web-based applications. Also having understanding in like JavaScript, CSS, HTML, you know, REST APIs is, you could say, paramount for this job. And having about at least five years of experience is what is necessary in order to land a job as a senior web developer. Number eight on the list is a job that you're definitely more familiar with, especially if you've been watching my videos, which is software engineering. Software engineers have an average salary of around $109,000 in 2020. As a software engineer, you'll be utilizing your coding skill sets, understanding and algorithms, data structures, along with problem solving. When it comes to coding, having an understanding of object-oriented programming is absolutely necessary, which means that you'll want to know languages like Python, Java, C++, or C-sharp. Along with having some experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JavaScript frameworks are a plus. You'll also want to be able to technically communicate well. That's important for the interview, along with working in a team setting where you'll need to come up with the most optimal solution for whatever application you're building. But before we continue this video, let's hear a word from our sponsor, Trend Micro, and how their home network security can protect, manage, and control your home network. Every device that I have is connected to the internet. And due to the pandemic, I've been, you know, working from home and spending more time at home than ever. 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And once again, thank you to Trend Micro for sponsoring this video. Number seven with an average salary of $110,000 is DevOps Engineering. Basically, you're in charge of the deployment pipelines, releases, and overseeing the software deployment. It's a pretty boring job, so I'm just going to leave it at there. Number six, which is Security Engineers. Security Engineers is number six on the list with an average salary of $111,000. As a security engineer, you implement security measures that are necessary to protect the organization's networks and systems from cyber attacks. As a security engineer, you'll investigate security violations, along with developing security standards, amongst other things. Number five, mobile development at $119,000. I don't have to say a ton about mobile. It's pretty straightforward. Mobile development is definitely probably the highest paid programming job outside of the more senior level roles that I'll get to in a bit. You want to either have skill sets in Java or Kotlin for native Android development, Swift or Objective-C for iOS. Also, understanding CSS, HTML, and JavaScript will be beneficial since a lot of companies are building their mobile apps using frameworks like React. Data science is number four on the list with an average salary of around $123,000. This field of study has become increasingly popular as more and more of the major tech companies are trying to analyze data better and get better analysis from data mining, along with relevant information from the data that they're extracting from their users to basically keep us on their apps for as long as possible with endless scrolling. To become a data scientist, you should be familiar with programming languages like Python, Java, and even R. I took bioinformatics and data mining in college, which I guess you could say is underneath the umbrella of data science, and we did a lot of Python programming. We used R to actually visualize our data and take the data from Excel spreadsheets and turn it into a graph, along with greedy algorithms and binary trees and force and all this crazy stuff. There's a reason why they get paid a lot of money and are at the top of this list. Number three is actually a job that I think is really cool, which is the technical program manager role with an average salary of like $138,000. And on some lists, it was upwards of $140,000 and even up to, I think, $150,000. So for those of you all who are interested in project management or the business side of creating software, but also want to combine that knowledge and experience with your technical expertise, technical program management will be a great job for you because you'll work with the development teams and you'll also work with the business side and kind of be like the middleman between the two. Next up is software architect with an average salary of $140,000. There were a number of architectural roles that made almost every list where there were at least two. And what I did was I just made the job title generic because realistically you kind of have a similar path for all the architectural roles, right? You become a software developer or engineer. You specialize in some aspect of either like, you know, maybe security, databases, full stack development, software engineering, or mobile development. And then you progress through your career. You get better at, you know, technical communication and understanding the full life cycle of software development. And you become a senior developer. And then I guess you could say after senior development is where, is when you'll become an architect. So if we were like numbering things, typically like a dev four, no, like a dev, well yeah, a dev four or five would be an architect. So as you progress through your career, you're going to make sure that you have an understanding and, you know, problem solving and algorithms, data structures, object-oriented programming, DevOps, most importantly, software design patterns. That's a big part of your job as an architect. Last but not least, this one, I guess, makes perfect sense being number one, which is software engineering manager. Software engineering managers have an average salary of $145,000 and I can only imagine what software engineering managers make at, you know, fan companies, probably 100,000 over that. Based on my findings, it seems like you need at least five years of experience as a software engineer. Even some jobs, it's like you need five years of like experience as a manager already. So ideally you want to have experience in full stack development or like mobile development, working with languages like Python, Java, JavaScript, Angular, React, and the list goes on. But really like an object-oriented programming language, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a JavaScript framework. Also, you want to be sure to have some experience working cross-functionally with other teams and having those leadership skill sets where, you know, you took the lead on a project or even having experience leading other developers. An understanding of DevOps and Git. I will say when it comes to being a software engineering manager, some companies don't have the manager code at all and they're focused on the people and making sure that the team is happy, people are working on the right things and collaborating with the architect, you know, scrum master and project manager. So that concludes this list of the 10 highest paid software jobs, not software engineering jobs. Give this video a thumbs up. I greatly appreciate that and it will help out with the algorithm a lot. Once again, thank you to Trend Micro for sponsoring this video and subscribe to the channel. If you haven't already, I'd love for you all to become a part of this amazing community of creators and engineers. And as always, have a blessed rest of your week. I'll see you all soon. Peace.