What Are Silicon Valley's Highest-Paying Tech Jobs?

An anonymous reader writes: Job-search site Indeed crunched its Silicon Valley hiring numbers for 2018, looking at tech job searches, salaries, and employers, and found that engineers who combine tech skills with business skills as directors of product management earn the most, with an average salary of US $186,766. Last year, the gig came in as number two, at $173,556. Also climbing up the ranks, and now in the number two spot with an average annual salary of $181,100, is senior reliability engineer. Application security engineer is third at $173,903. Neither made the top 20 in 2017. And while it seems that machine learning engineers have been getting all the love in 2018, those jobs came in eighth place, at $159,230. That's still a bit of a leap from last year, when the job made its first appearance on Indeed's top 20 highest-paying jobs in the 13th spot at $149,519. This year's top 20 is below; last year's numbers are here. Further reading: 'Blockchain Developer' is the Fastest-Growing US Job (LinkedIn study).

Not surprising, Cat Herders and Monkey Wranglers

[bobstreo]

both make a lot of money. Management jobs with engineering and business experience, I'd guess just business, then engineering would follow.

Next would be AI's, but ain't nobody paying them.

Re:

[supercell]

After dealing with with many "Realtors" I have come to learn that profession is filled with former strippers, hooters girls and mainly people that do not want normal jobs. They are not particularly intelligent and most are not very motivated. I've meet many that are Realtors as a side profession. Based on my personal experience, people want become realtors these days are looking for an easy buck. So you find those type people.

So I wouldn't count realtors as tech jobs, not by a long shot.

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[q_e_t]

Only 7% in NYC make more than $250k. So given some have had housing longer than 20 years, and $345k is greater than $250k, you are saying something like 95% of people in NYC are at poverty level. Seems unlikely. My wife is from NYC and has lived in SF, and on much less.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

I also make more than what is listed in the article. But I didn't say anything because I'm an engineer and I understand what the word average means.

Job-search site Indeed crunched its Silicon Valley hiring numbers for 2018, looking at tech job searches, salaries, and employers, and found that engineers who combine tech skills with business skills as directors of product management earn the most, with an average salary of US $186,766. Last year, the gig came in as number two, at $173,556.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

None of those words were mentioned in the article. We must sometimes operate on limited data.

I suspect there are a lot of outliers, probably some above what the article cites as average and probably many well below. Extra little bit of data is I know an engineering manager in silicon valley that makes a little over $90K. Makes me suspect that the range is very wide.

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[Darinbob]

Chairman of the Board.

Does Real Estate agent count?

[OrangeTide]

It's technical in that you have to use electronic lists and send lots of emails to people. If you hustle you can sell houses in the Bay Area and make 5X what an engineer does, with a whole lot less brains.

More than that for some

[Nova Express]

One correctional sergeant made $983,6602 in total compensation 2017 [transparen...fornia.com].

And people wonder why government in California is going bankrupt...

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[mnemotronic]

One correctional sergeant made $983,6602 in total compensation 2017 [transparen...fornia.com].

Damn. $350k in benefits. There's a story in there somewhere.

The retirement system investment officers making big bucks is understandable. They get huge kickbacks from the mutual funds they approve for 401k or pension retirement programs. Perhaps Sgt Taylor is a high-level manager and not just a nightstick toting 2nd shift guard.

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[pak9rabid]

Yeah no. I have friends that are agents. They work their asses off for their money, while I'm here sitting at home all day making about the same.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

As do I. And I actually buy and sell properties using my friends as agents so I have a very clear picture of how this works.

Not everyone's situation is the same. But if you can keep stirring the pot and moving houses you can make significant money. If you work for a large real estate company and give most of you profits to a broker, then you're not going to make so much.

Chinese Political Officer

[Anonymous Coward]

The fucking SJWs get $285,000 administrator jobs to purge the company of anyone who is not a Maoist or a Muslim, then they learn to code once they're in the company and become highly praised technology leaders afterwards. Average blokes can't even get an interview and often end up blacklisted without knowing it because they blogged something mainstream in 2009 that people decided was off-color in 2016.

appropriate captcha: messes

Should have gone into music

[Crashmarik]

https://www.mercurynews.com/20... [mercurynews.com]

San Francisco Orchestra Minimum Salary 141K average 171K

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

So they can barely afford to live in their eponymous city.

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[cats-paw]

what's the point of this ? Orchestra members are paid too much?

you have to be at the very top, probably 0.5% or even 0.1% (think about how many people want to be musicians for a living) in terms of ability to get hired into a _major_ symphony orchestra.

do you have to be in the top 1% or ever 10% of software engineers to make 141k in San Francisco ?

I doubt it...

Not sure if editor is trolling or not...

[kekx]

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1102/ [xkcd.com]

Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

But you still have to live in Calf. That 150K salary cant even get you a 1 bedroom apartment.

Hint: Not mine

[WCMI92]

Exactly. We don't make shit in Kentucky.

Average salaries

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I thought at least the techie site will use median instead of mean. Given median, mean and standard deviation would not hurt.

Or at least give the mean after throwing out the outliers.

Re:

[LarryRiedel]

That's might give the impression the underlying data isn't garbage in the first place.

Crappy House, Commute, Crowds, Not Worth It

[brian.stinar]

I'd rather live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and make less money. Granted, I do have to make sure I have security bolts holding the bars onto my windows, since the crackheads have vice grips to loosen the regular bolts and rob you, but at least I don't have to deal with expensive housing, a long commute, and crowds.

Whenever I get a call from a recruiter in the Bay Area, I tell them I am not interested in relocating unless they have something ridiculous to offer. 200k doesn't count as ridiculous. As earlier p

Yowzers

[wasabii]

Is that in local currency? Geeze. I make that much in a place that costs 1/3rd the amount to live in.

It is to laugh....

[erp_consultant]

186K to live in Silicon Valley?

Where the average house costs a million bucks?

And the State tax rate is double the rate where I live now?

And gas costs nearly $5 a gallon?

I would need at least double that to have the same standard of living as what I have now.

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[aaarrrgggh]

The number seems very low; my highest paid employee is at $170k, and that is not a highly sought-after tech role, just a senior managing electrical engineer in Los Angeles. I would have expected closer to $225-275k median pay for “top talent/prime role” type job.

But, your cost of living expectations are unrealistic. At $180k single income family a $1 million home is reasonably affordable, and you have a disposable income penalty of about 15%. If you rent, the picture gets a little worse since y

Why People live in the Bay Area - Math

[FeelGood314]

When I lived most of the workers were essentially migrant workers. We got paid a lot but no one intends to stay. My experience with a family of 4, our costs went up 50% (150K to 230K) and our cost of living went up 60% (40K to 65K). But our after tax savings went from 60K to 95K. That's pretty significant for a young family. The healthcare there was far better than in Ontario and the public schools (if you choose the right ones) are amazing. Weather is unbearable if you happen to be a family of red h

Sales Engineer = $250K

[they_call_me_quag]

The author of this "study" is correct in saying that "engineers who combine tech skills with business skills ... earn the most" but they are incorrect in placing product management at the top of their list.

An experienced enterprise sales engineer at a company like Salesforce or Oracle can pull in $250,000 a year. And unlike a "director product management," a sales engineer at that pay level is not a manager; one can hit this level of pay without having any headcount.

Why are sales engineers paid so well? Three reasons:

(1) Limited supply. Finding people with the rare mix of technical and interpersonal skills is difficult and big companies need a lot of sales engineers.

(2) Revenue generation. Unlike product management, sales engineers are on the front line of the revenue generation process. Lose all of your product managers and your sales team can keep functioning for a year or so. Lose all of your sales engineers and the revenue engine seizes up immediately.

(3) Sales culture. Big companies throw huge amounts of money at their sales executives. The top salespeople at places like Salesforce and Oracle bring in over $1M per year. Paying the top sales engineers $250K is a relative bargain.