The Best City In Each State for Tech Jobs [2025]

Jobs in the tech industry have been hot commodities for years, and there's no sign of that stopping anytime soon. New technology and industry innovations need space to exist, and many have found homes beyond the bounds of Silicon Valley. As a result, tech workers have more options than ever before when it comes to where they want to live and work, with tech hubs popping up in states all around the country.

With that in mind, the FinanceBuzz team wanted to identify the top cities in every state for tech jobs. In our analysis, we reviewed more than 400 cities across the country against scoring factors like pay, demand for tech jobs, cost of living, and more to determine up-and-coming tech hotspots around the country.

How we chose these metrics and cities:

To determine the top tech cities around the country, we compared 400+ cities across seven factors:

• Tech job employment per 1,000 jobs: Cities where a higher proportion of jobs fall under the tech-work umbrella are cities where tech jobs are a bigger, more established part of the city's overall workforce.
• Demand for tech workers: Cities with a higher concentration of tech jobs than average tend to also have higher demand for tech workers to fill those jobs.
• Median annual wage for tech workers: Pay is important for workers of any kind, and tech is no exception. Cities where tech workers are paid better score higher in this metric.
• 5-year employment change: Cities where the number of tech jobs has risen drastically in the last five years indicate cities where the tech industry is growing, offering more options for workers.
• 5-year employment change per capita: Sometimes raw job growth can be attributed to the general population growth of a city. For that reason, we also looked at job employment change on a per capita basis to identify cities where tech job growth increased at a greater clip than other industries in the last half-decade.
• 5-year median annual wage change: Cities where tech salaries have increased the most in recent years may indicate places where tech jobs are becoming more valuable.
• Cost of living: It is more expensive to live in certain cities compared to others, and the affordability of a given city may mean it makes more sense for a tech worker to take a lower salary somewhere where the cost of living is more reasonable.

The best cities overall for tech jobs in America

After evaluating and comparing metrics in more than 400 cities in the United States, our team was able to determine the top overall cities for tech jobs across the country.

1. San Jose, California

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's no surprise that San Jose is the best city for tech jobs in the country. Companies such as Adobe, eBay, and PayPal call San Jose home, and the headquarters of tech giants such as Google and Meta are located nearby. San Jose also has the highest number of tech jobs per capita, the highest demand for tech workers, the highest median annual wage for tech workers, and the biggest increase in tech workers per capita in the last five years of any city in the country.

2. Boulder, Colorado

Boulder is one of the hottest tech hubs in the country, attracting both new ventures in the tech space as well as the attention of established companies like Amazon and Google in recent years. Demand for tech workers in Boulder is 2.5 times higher than the national average, and the city's per capita job growth in the tech sector over the last five years is in the top three of the entire country.

3. San Francisco, California

About 50 miles north of San Jose, San Francisco can be seen as an extended part of Silicon Valley. The city houses the headquarters for a number of companies that have used technology to change how people live and work, such as Uber, Airbnb, and Asana, among others. Median annual salaries for tech workers in San Francisco are the second-highest in the country, trailing only San Jose.

4. Seattle, Washington

The corporate headquarters for two of the biggest tech companies in the world, Amazon and Microsoft, are both located in and around Seattle, so it's no surprise that the Emerald City is one of the best places for tech jobs in the entire country. Pay for tech workers in Seattle is the third-highest of any city in the country, and demand for tech workers in the city is more than double the national average.

5. Huntsville, Alabama

Huntsville has been a major hub for aerospace and military technology for decades, so much so that it has earned the nickname "Rocket City." Among other major companies dedicated to those fields, Huntsville is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center as well as the U.S. Space & Rocket Center museum. While demand and pay for tech jobs in Huntsville trails some of the cities ranked higher on this list, the Alabama city more than holds its own in those metrics while having a much more reasonable cost of living than any of the four cities ahead of it.

6. Germantown, Maryland

Home to several federal government offices and located less than 50 miles from both Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, tech workers living in Germantown benefit from the tech infrastructure of those major cities via the fifth-highest median wage in the country as well as increased demand for tech workers in the area.

7. Austin, Texas

Sometimes called "Silicon Hills," the capital of Texas has spent decades becoming one of America's tech powerhouses. Dell was founded in Austin, and companies such as IBM, Intel, and Cisco, among others, have a major presence in the city. Austin also hosts the annual South by Southwest festival, which has a technology emphasis. No single metric explains Austin's overall rating. Instead, it's the fact that the city scored consistently above average across multiple factors.

8. Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Located in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, Pittsfield is the economic center of that part of the state and has put an emphasis on increasing the role of tech work in the area in recent years. The city spent millions redeveloping a former General Electric site into the Berkshire Innovation Center, which opened in 2020 and serves as the heart of an "innovation district" aimed at attracting more tech work to the area. It appears to be working, as Pittsfield's per capita tech job growth is in the top 10 in the entire country over the last five years.

9. Washington, D.C.

The nation's capital is home to many government departments, many of which require tech experts and innovators. Wages for tech workers in D.C. are some of the highest in the country, as is the overall demand for tech jobs and the number of tech jobs per capita.

10. Rock Hill, South Carolina

Less than 30 miles from Charlotte, North Carolina, Rock Hill offers an affordable place to live for tech workers willing to commute while also serving as the home for a number of large tech companies closer to home. Notably, the largest employer in Rock Hill is 3D Systems Corporation, a company headquartered in the city that engineers and manufactures 3D printers and 3D printer equipment.

The top tech city in each state

Looking beyond the best overall cities, we also wanted to determine the best city for tech jobs in every single state in the country, which can be seen on the map below. States are colored to match the overall tech jobs score of their top city, making it easier to compare top tech cities in different states to one another.

Overall, there is a tremendous diversity when it comes to top tech cities across the country. In some cases, a state's literal capital also serves as that state's tech jobs capital, something that happened in 14 different places across the country.

In states like Missouri and New Mexico, the top city for tech jobs isn't in the state capital, but it is in the biggest city in those states. In states like Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Utah, the biggest city and the capital are one and the same, and in each of those cases, those cities are also the best in each state for tech jobs.

Access to freshly educated workers appears to have played a role in establishing certain cities as tech job hotspots in a number of states. For example, Corvallis had the highest tech job score in Oregon and is also home to Oregon State University, the college with the biggest enrollment in the state and a school with one of the largest engineering programs in the country. Other examples of top tech cities across the country that are also home to major universities include Austin, Texas (University of Texas at Austin), Baton Rouge, Louisiana (Louisiana State Unviersity), and Boulder, Colorado (University of Colorado Boulder), among others.

Full state-by-state results

Bottom line

A career in tech can be demanding yet ultimately rewarding. If you set yourself up financially with the tips listed below, a tech career can be doubly rewarding.

• Get cash back for your commute. Fueling your commute can be expensive, but if you use one of the best credit cards for gas you can earn cash back with every purchase.
• Jump-start your credit alongside your career. Finding your footing in a new field is exciting. Sign up for one of the best credit cards for young professionals to make sure your wallet follows your career's success.
• Use a credit card for work expenses. When you use one of the best credit cards for work expenses, you can keep all of your work-related transactions organized and separate from any personal expenses. Likewise, you could cash in on any rewards offered through your purchases.

Methodology

FinanceBuzz collected data on more than 400 different U.S. cities. We found data for seven different factors relating to tech jobs for each city.

Factors were compared against each other using a dynamic formula that assigned each city a score of 0-5 relative to every other city. Those factor scores were then weighted to assign each city a final value out of 100, with higher scores indicating cities that are better for tech jobs.

For each factor, a weight of 3.00 serves as the baseline, with weights above 3.00 having a larger impact on a city's total score and those below 3.00 having a lesser impact. The weights and sources for the individual metrics used are as follows:

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Author Details

Josh Koebert

Josh Koebert is a Senior Data Journalist at FinanceBuzz who writes about personal finance trends. As an experienced researcher, Josh’s data-driven stories focus on the intersection between economics and consumer behavior: where personal finance meets everyday life.