San Diego’s technology workers earn the lowest average salary out of 10 U.S. tech cities, confirming long-held concerns that local engineers are not paid competitive wages, according to a report published Thursday.

But there are signs suggesting wages could be headed for a boost if the region’s tech scene continues to grow.

The report comes from Silicon Valley-based Hired, a company that created an online marketplace for tech jobs. The company’s platform flips the recruiting process, requiring employers to apply for a chance to interview workers and share their salary offers.

The report includes data from 420,000 interview requests and 10,000 companies. In the U.S., Hired examined 10 technology hubs: the San Francisco Bay Area; Seattle; New York; Los Angeles; Boston; Austin, Texas; Washington, D.C.; Denver; Chicago; and San Diego.


The data show San Diego’s technology workers — which include software engineers, product managers, designers, data analytics jobs, and development and operations (DevOps) roles — earned an average salary of $113,000 in 2018. That exceeds the median household income in San Diego County, which was $70,588 in 2017, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

But San Diego’s average salary lags other U.S. tech hubs. San Francisco topped the list at $145,000, and Chicago and Denver — cities long considered to be peers to San Diego — also beat out local wages.

Austin, which has charged past all other up-and-coming tech hubs, is paying workers $125,000 on average.


This is the second year San Diego has ranked at the bottom of all U.S. markets reviewed for the report.

“San Diego has always tracked lower,” said Hired CEO Mehul Patel, who has overseen four years of data collection for its “State of the Salaries” report. “San Diego has a really mixed group of industries, and as a result, it’s not a concentrated tech ecosystem like San Francisco or New York.”

But the same could be said for Chicago and Washington D.C. What sets San Diego apart from their performance? Perhaps the weather.

“It’s a very desirable place to live,” Patel said. “Demand may not be as strong as the supply.”


There is good news for San Diego tech workers, however. Salaries climbed 5 percent in 2018, up from an average salary of $108,000 in 2017. That’s notable because San Diego’s tech wages had been flat since 2015.

“There was a sudden pop in San Diego, which I found interesting,” Patel said. “That’s not been the case in many other markets we looked at.”

For context, Los Angeles climbed 1 percent; Chicago, 1 percent; and San Francisco, 2 percent.

The uptick could be tied to a variety of factors, including a strong national economy and the global growth of the software industry.


But local happenings could also have contributed to the growth, including a recent boost to the software startup scene. Also, Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs and Apple have all opened satellite offices, raising the bar for local salaries.

“These larger companies have more of an appetite to stretch their salary offers,” said Brett Wayne, a local technology recruiter and managing director of Cypress HCM.

It was largely the entrance of tech giants to Austin that accelerated its growth as a tech hub, Patel said. Apple’s recent announcement that it will opening a San Diego office, hiring 1,200 workers and making the new location a “principal engineering hub” is significant for the region’s tech scene.


“This is the beginning,” Patel said. “We saw this in Austin five to seven years ago when the first big companies set up shop. It has catalyzing effects.”

The change won’t come overnight, however. And it may not come at all if economic factors decline or if the local tech scene stalls.

For now, tech workers are continuing to accept jobs with lower pay, even amid high competition.

"(Employers) pay what someone will accept,” Wayne said.


For its salary report, Hired adjusted each region’s average salary to San Francisco’s cost of living.

“Despite the Bay Area’s large paychecks, job seekers are feeling underpaid due to the high cost of living and sky-high real estate prices,” the report reads.

When considering expenses such as rent, local taxes, utilities and transportation, San Diego fared better than San Francisco, Boston, Washington and New York.


Under that calculation, the adjusted salary of San Diego tech workers comes out to $166,000, meaning the average local worker would need a $21,000 raise to maintain his or her current standard of living in San Francisco.

