Top 10 Cities for Tech Employment

While the economy remains tight, IT job availability continues to outpace other sectors, especially in hard-to-fill skill areas. Tech hiring managers are resolute in their staffing priorities for 2012 — they need innovative professionals who design, code, build and operate. Indeed, developers dominate the new year’s most pressing hiring needs for a second straight year, although ops professionals make their list debut. This slideshow highlights the top 10 metro locations for tech employment, identified by Dice.com, based on the number of jobs posted as of January 3, 2012.

Click through for the top 10 metro areas for IT employment, as identified by Dice.com — January 2012.

The New York/New Jersey area came in at number one with 8,349 jobs posted on January 3, 2012. That’s an eight percent increase over the same time last year.

Close behind, second place Washington D.C./Baltimore had 7,424 open positions posted. While coming in second, the rate dropped 17 percent as compared to the same time last year.

With an increase of 26 percent, number three Silicon Valley had an impressive 5,026 positions listed.

In fourth place, Chicago was up 15 percent over January 2011, with 3,377 jobs posted.

Los Angeles was close behind with 3,036 jobs listed, an increase of 10 percent over last year.

In sixth place, Boston was up 25 percent over last year with 3,009.

With an increase of 26 percent, Atlanta showed improvement with 2,943 open positions.

Dallas came in at number eight with 2,625 jobs posted, an increase of 20 percent of 2011.

Seattle showed progress with an 15 percent increase in job listings over last year, for a total of 2,553 open positions.

Philadelphia rounds out the top 10 with 2,163 jobs listed, a 26 percent increase over 2011.