Where the Computer Science Jobs Are

The number of students studying computer science is on the upswing — and why not, with starting salaries of $91,500 at Microsoft, $88,900 at Salesforce.com, $87,500 at Google and $78,100 at Oracle, according to PayScale.

They’re far from the only employers for computer science grads, though. Job aggregator Indeed.com puts the average salary for computer science grads at $88,909.

While there are few surprises in its list of top 10 cities for jobs — defense contractors are hiring in No. 1 Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley, New York and San Francisco are hot — its list of the biggest employers of computer science grads is interesting:

1. CSC
2. AppLabs
3. General Dynamics
4. Microsoft
5. Deloitte
6. Amazon
7. Man Tech Int’l Corp.
8. Raytheon
9. HP
10. Northrop Grumman
11. Intel
12. SAIC
13. Ernst & Young
14. Dell
15. Oracle

And these are the most in-demand job titles, with average salary across all experience ranges:

1. Software engineer — $93,000
2. Systems engineer — $91,000
3. Software developer — $89,000
4. Java developer — $98,000
5. Business analyst — $84,000
6. .NET developer — $91,000
7. Web developer — $82,000
8. Systems administrator — $77,000
9. Project manager — $93,000
10. Network engineer — $91,000

Online financial adviser Wealthfront, meanwhile, has released a cool interactive salary tool showing what various tech jobs pay across the country, CNET points out. It’s based on surveys of 8,362 employees at 135 private companies, ranging in size from six employees to more than 100. It puts the mean for software architects at $183,000 a year plus equity, compared with $163,000 plus stock for managers. Presenting salaries visually, its representation comparing the overall picture with that of the central/Midwest area is certainly an eye-opener.