Software Engineering Job Outlook

Computer Engineering Occupational Outlook
Job Outlook Of A Software Engineering
Engineering Career Outlook
Outlook For Software Engineers
Software Engineering Job Outlook Graph

Systems Software Engineer: Job Outlook & Career Requirements. Learn about the work responsibilities of a systems software engineer. Discover what skills and education are needed in addition to job. Computer Software Engineer and Developer Job Outlook Employment of software developers is projected to grow 30 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations. Employment of applications developers is projected to grow 28 percent, and employment of systems developers is projected to grow 32 percent.

Employment Outlook for Software Developers. Employment of software developers is projected to grow 24 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations. Employment of applications developers is projected to grow 30 percent, and employment of systems developers is projected to grow 11 percent.

Earlier this year, the App Association calculated that there were 223,000 unfilled coding jobs in the US. Companies have started touting coding as the new literacy, almost a prerequisite to getting in the door. Last month, General Electric’s CEO Jeff Immelt announced that every new hire at the 305,000-person company will learn to code.

“It doesn’t matter whether you are in sales, finance or operations,” he wrote on LinkedIn on Aug. 4. “You may not end up being a programmer, but you will know how to code…. This is existential and we’re committed to this.”

Everyone from former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Snoop Dogg seems to agree: Computer programming is the single best professional opportunity in the world.

The problem is no one has a clue how to actually teach everyone to code. Decades after demand for engineering jobs began to soar (and even including an aggressive immigration push by tech giants designed to fill those roles with coding talent from abroad), the supply of labor in the US workforce still lags, and the gap is growing. Out of the 1.9 million college students awarded bachelor’s degrees from US colleges in 2014, only 55,367 students received computer science degrees, while only 1 in 10 high schools in the US currently offer computer science classes. A surge in qualified developers is unlikely on the way.

The answer to the supply gap may lie in redefining what it means to code. Elite programmers spend years in universities or hacking in their bedroom to master arcane computer languages. But coding, at its most basic, is something millions of Americans already do every week. It’s called Microsoft Excel. The spreadsheet application, like WordPress, Visual Basic, and Salesforce, give anyone a simple way to program the sort of logical instructions computers can run—and that once required coding skills.

“There are lot of definitions of what a developer is,” says Zach Haehn, head of software engineering at Bloomberg’s San Francisco office. “It’s not just people who write code. People get scared when they see code, but they’ve been doing programming for 20 years, they just don’t think about it as programming…. It’s really just about logical thinking and analysis.”

Microsoft has even given these “civilian” programmers a persona: Mort. Microsoft used this designation to visualize one category of users and design features appropriate for them. The fictional “Mort” is a skilled professional, anyone from a business analyst to a construction site cost estimator, who needs computers to perform specific functions without mastering the intricacies of full-blown programming.

A new industry is emerging (pdf) to serve the Morts of the world by designing and selling what are called no-code or low-code platforms. Companies like Caspio, QuickBase, Appian, and Mendix are creating visual interfaces that enable people to essentially snap together blocks of software, and bypass the actual lines of code underlying those blocks (skilled developers can also dive into the code). With basic training, a non-technical employee can rapidly assemble software tools that solve business problems ranging from simple database queries to applications lashing together multiple legacy enterprise applications.

Forrester reports the sector earned $1.7 billion in 2015 and is on track to bring in $15 billion by 2020 as the majority of large companies adopt “Citizen Development” policies similar to the bring-your-own-device rules. Employees will be empowered to choose tools, and even partially assemble software, to solve their own business problems without IT approval.

Millions of “developers” will be found in the ranks of current employees, suggests Allison Mnookin, CEO of the low-code software platform QuickBase, even if they don’t replace traditional software engineers. “Low-code empowers those embedded in the front lines of the business to solve their own challenges and create apps that fit their needs exactly,” Mnookin wrote by email. “The business gets the solutions they need faster and IT can focus on the strategic work that most requires their skill and which can move the organization forward.”

Professional developers jobs are still safe. Most people still cannot code without engineers assisting. QuickBase surveyed its customers and found about 75% of them rely on IT specialists to start their projects, do about two-thirds of the work, then hand them off for the “last mile.”

That still delivers substantial benefits. QuickBase claims its customers avoid hiring two new IT developers on average and accelerate development time per application by eight weeks.

Software engineering is evolving along the same lines as many forms of technology: routine heavy lifting is gradually automated so people can take on more creative, complex problems. Developers who once bought servers and designed complex backend systems can now buy services from Amazon, Microsoft, or Google with a credit card.

“Coding is not the fundamental skill,” writes startup founder and ex-Microsoft program manager Chris Granger. What matters, he argues, is being able to model problems and use computers to solve them. ”We don’t want a generation of people forced to care about Unicode and UI toolkits. We want a generation of writers, biologists, and accountants that can leverage computers.”

Right now, most companies still want to hire software engineers with academic training. The online hiring platform Hired reports 90% of its job listings for developers mandate a CS degree despite the fact that less than half of developers hold a degree in computer science. But the heart of computer science, argues Haehn, is knowing the available tools and crafting effective solutions to problems. Slinging code is one dimension of success. Classic product management skills—setting a vision, understanding customer problems, managing teams, and designing a product—are just as valuable. That might be one reason why product managers, not software engineers, are already the highest paid employees in Silicon Valley.

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A computer is only as good as the information that’s fed into it. That’s one of the truisms of programming that has held for as long as computers have existed, and ever since Charles Babbage and Ada Byron Lovelace designed the first “difference engine” in 1822, there has been a need for professionals to program them.

But software programming and engineering has only been a widespread occupation since the 1980s. Computer systems had existed for governments and militaries throughout the mid- to late twentieth century, but it wasn’t until home and business computing came into existence that the demand for knowledgeable individuals in the programming field exploded.

And explode it has, over the past decade, in what can be called the rise of the software engineer. A software engineer’s job involves writing code in one or more programming languages to produce any number of programs for both tech companies and the in-house computer technology of other businesses.

Knowledge of mathematics and logic, as well as a propensity for creative thinking and the ability to make do with limited time or resources, are usually necessary. But all that’s required to qualify as a computer engineer is an undergraduate degree, although those who have graduate educations usually have stronger prospects.

An Engineer’s Education

In 2002, there were 117,011 baccalaureate degrees in the computer sciences conferred, and by 2012 there were 145,924 awarded, which represents a 24 percent increase.

Overall, this is a smaller rate of growth than the national totals for undergraduate degrees – 1,244,171 Americans got bachelor’s degrees in 2002 and 1,791,046 in 2012 – a growth of 45%! But software engineers have been much more likely to find jobs in their chosen field.

There were 677,900 software engineers in the United States in 2003, and 1,018,000 in 2013. This represents a 50 percent increase in jobs in the field, which is 12.5 times the overall rate of jobs growth throughout that period (from 127,567,910 jobs in the US in 2003 to 132,588,810 in 2013, or a 4 percent increase).

Computer Engineering Occupational Outlook

Not only does focusing on a career as a software engineer mean you have more job opportunities, it can also mean a bigger paycheck… by a lot. The median salary for software engineers ($92,660) is about twice that of the median US salary overall ($46,440).

There are still other professions that can be more profitable but many require many years of additional education. In comparison with some other common professional positions, the median salary of an accountant is $63,550; that of a lawyer is $113,350; that of a physician is $187,200; and that of a high school teacher is $55,050. While the median salary for a physician is twice that of the software engineer, it usually requires at least 8 years of schooling after college.

Jon Bischke, the CEO of tech recruiting firm Entelo, wrote in an email, “When you combine this with record tech growth and revenues over the last ten years, there aren’t enough qualified software engineers to fill all of the jobs being created by such a boom. Just ask any recruiter! While the number of college students majoring in CS has been growing, it hasn’t been fast enough to keep up with the growth of (and caused by) these software and cloud-based businesses.”

Strong Beginnings

In fact, even for a software engineer just starting out, the financial climate is very good. The median starting salary for a programmer with no work experience is currently $54,900. That person can expect a 60 percent salary growth throughout his or her career, according to Forbes, which has rated software engineering the fourth best college degree in terms of short-term and long-term return on investment.

During this economic recovery, we have heard a lot about recent college graduates having trouble finding jobs. But those with certain degrees will find their chances greatly improved.

Job Outlook Of A Software Engineering

Software engineers face a 3.6 percent unemployment rate, and are thus only half as likely to be jobless as the general populace with an overall current unemployment rate of 7.3 percent. Accountants are unemployed at a rate of 4.2 percent, lawyers at 3.7 percent, doctors at 0.6 percent, and high school teachers at 3.0 percent.

“There’s never been a better time to be a software engineer,” said Bischke. “There are more high-growth companies looking for top engineering talent than ever before, and there are nowhere near enough qualified candidates to fill all of their open roles. Because of this, companies are forced to pay a premium (and that’s putting it lightly) to acquire the top talent that is out there.”

Where There Is Need…

In the past, software engineering was only a viable career for those in Silicon Valley, but today the profession has well-paying centers spread across the West, North, and East. Three of the top five cities for software engineering salaries, according to US News and World Report, are outside of California.

The top-paying city for this field in the United States is Sioux City, Iowa, with a median salary of $126,180 a year, and where the cost-of-living index as tabulated by census.gov is only 92 percent of the national average. This means software engineers here have a high salary and pay less for things like housing, utilities and transportation.

Other cities with a strong climate for software engineers include Andover, MA ($121,750 average salary, 122 percent national cost of living), Newark, NJ ($121,630 average salary, 130 percent national cost of living), San Jose, CA ($116,610 average salary, 156 percent national cost of living), and Bakersfield, CA ($114,450 average salary, 128 percent national cost of living).

Part of this spreading out is due to the fact that tech startups are now able to crop up wherever their founders settle down, which subverts the old Silicon Valley model. In addition, as companies not directly related to technology develop more sophisticated websites, they have more and more need to hire their own software engineers to maintain proprietary programs.

In the case of Sioux City, Iowa, the MidAmerican Energy Company in particular requires the expertise of software engineers in order to support its power grid.

The Wide-Open Future

So does 50 percent job growth over 10 years mean that a saturation of software engineers is approaching, and that growth will plateau? Experts say that’s hardly the case.

While the job increases have certainly slowed, the fact remains that this field is doing much better than the overall average in terms of job creation. While the projected average job growth for the entire country is 11 percent over the next decade, in the field of software engineering it is predicted to be 22 percent.

Compare this to a projected 13 percent for accountants, 10 percent for lawyers, 18 percent for physicians, and 6 percent for high school teachers. This means that among these positions, there will be the absolute most new job opportunities for software engineers by a healthy margin.

Only doctors beat out software engineers on the list in terms of both salary and job security, but in order to practice medicine, one needs an MD, which, as previously noted, involves many more years of schooling beyond an undergraduate education; meanwhile, software engineers can begin making a healthy salary as soon as they have their Bachelor of Science.

Todd Rhoad, managing director of Atlanta-based career consultancy BT Consulting, maintains that the expansion of the internet in rural areas of multiple countries will buoy the job prospects of software engineers worldwide for years to come.

Engineering Career Outlook

“As more countries engage in the Internet and related technologies, the demand will continue to grow,” Rhoad wrote in an email. “However, it takes quite a few years to gain the financial support to purchase and launch a satellite, including all of the ground infrastructure required to distribute the information to users.” Software engineers are the custodians of that ground infrastructure and are critical to its survival.

Outlook For Software Engineers

As long as computers and computing continue to evolve, there will also be lots of need for well-trained software engineers. As hardware technology gets stronger and stronger, it can support ever more complex and demanding software, and computer companies will strive to push the hardware’s limits so that they can attract customers by delivering the most powerful machines.

“Software engineering has already made a large transition from coding to maintaining large complex systems,” Rhoad said. “Eventually, the challenge will become one of human limits to manage such complexity. The systems will grow more complicated but our human ability will remain the same, which infers the need to change our engineering and mathematical approaches. As the level of complexity grows, so does the future for software engineering. Software engineers will easily continue their rollercoaster demand for the next 50 years.”

Asked about where software engineers will see the most growth, Jon Bischke of Entelo cited “Software as a Service (SaaS), particularly those with a [business-to-business] model,” which refers to applications that are remotely hosted on a cloud network. “Not only do you have growth in jobs created at the software and cloud companies themselves, but you also see similar growth in the companies that they serve… who are often building software themselves! It’s a virtuous cycle that leads to jobs being created on both sides of the market. This type of self-sustaining ecosystem shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.”

And as the software grows in scope, greater human efforts (by more and more people) will be needed to create and maintain it, meaning the rise of the software engineer will continue unabated. Rhoad suggests that people in this field – resourceful and well-trained ones – will be needed more than ever as software engineers’ roles expand.

Software Engineering Job Outlook Graph

“The greatest challenge to software engineering in the future is that software engineer’s roles are growing as organizations flatten out. Yep, they get to wear more hats than they did in their past. This reduces their ability to write code. The future of software engineering will be focused on solving the problems that face them, which includes figuring out how we want the world to look and how we can make it happen despite the obstacles put up by our mathematical foundations and organizations’ transformations.”

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