Five More Surprising Tech Newsmakers

In my previous post, I wrote about newsmaking cities for tech employment in 2012. As the Bay Area Council Economic Institute has pointed out, there are strong IT employment opportunities in some surprising places. Here are five more:

Des Moines — “We’re creating different types of start-ups using local ingredients,” Christian Renaud, a principal at a Des Moines startup incubator told The New York Times. Among them: Ag Local, which provides an online marketplace for trading meat; EyeVerify, a biometric identification company; and Tikly, which created a platform for bands to sell concert tickets.

Kansas City — Back in March, Dice ranked Kansas City among the fastest-growing cities for technology jobs. Dice reported that tech professionals there can expect to take home more than $75,000 a year, a 13 percent increase year over year, with job opportunities at financial services and legal firms. And startups have been relocating there in recent months to take advantage of Google Fiber’s 1 Gigabit-per-second service.

St. Louis — A report from CTIA — The Wireless Association and the Application Developers Alliance on the “app economy” points to St. Louis as an “app cluster” location. It’s home to companies such as Integrity, a digital marketing agency; Graphite Lab, a videogame and website developer; and Coolfire Solutions, which in addition to commercial work produces apps for “the military and intelligence communities.”

Manufacturing and health care companies are looking for tech talent there, and yearly tech salaries hover around $71,000, according to Dice.

Boulder, Colo. — The Bay Area Council Economic Institute ranked Boulder second on its list, with 22.7 percent of its jobs in technology. Google, Living Social and Microsoft are among the companies there, as well as Golden Spike Co., a private venture that plans to take humans to the moon. During Boulder Startup Week in April, it was flying job candidates in.

Huntsville, Ala. — No. 3 to Boulder on the Economic Institute’s list, it says 22.4 percent of Huntsville jobs are high tech. In addition to aerospace and defense companies, it is home to the Alabama Supercomputer Authority, health care applications vendors and an array of tech employers.