Baltimore called good for software engineers

Baltimore is one of the top cities in the United States for software engineers, a new study shows.

The city ranked third among places where software engineers are most in demand and where their paychecks go furthest, according to a survey by SpareFoot, an online self-storage marketplace, and ZipRecruiter, an online employment site.

San Antonio, Texas, ranked first and Pittsburgh second.

“Baltimore is in need of software engineers, and with top ten rankings in pay and cost of living, it’s hard to imagine those jobs won’t get filled soon,” the study said.

The study, using ZipRecruiter data from the past 30 days, compared the number of software developers in each metropolitan statistical area and divided it by the number of active job seekers in that area to determine the “opportunity index.” Researchers also looked at median software engineer salaries for each city, provided by PayScale, and combined them with cost-ofliving data from AreaVibes.

A software engineer in Baltimore has a real adjusted salary of $77,322, ninth-best on the list. The cost of living is equal to the national average, based on data provided by AreaVibes. But Baltimore ranked first in “opportunity index,” or the number of available software developer jobs divided by active job seekers.

In top-ranking San Antonio, software engineers earn a real adjusted salary of $89,621, the second-highest salary on the list. Cost of living in that city is 14 percent below national average, while opportunity index ranked third.

The median national salary for software engineers this year is $82,000, according to data from PayScale. But the study says fewer recent graduates are looking for jobs in Silicon Valley because housing is not affordable there.

Cities that made the final list had the best opportunities as well as the most favorable salaries and cost of living.