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Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $135,980 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $82,460 at the lower end to about $214,670 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
2 to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$500 to $48,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no license to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Very high demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$135,980
Bottom tenth
$82,460
Top tenth
$214,670
The national median is $135,980 a year. The bottom tenth earn $82,460 or less and the top tenth $214,670 or more (2025 federal wage survey). The catch is that the range hides enormous variation: the same title pays very differently at a large technology company and at a small regional employer.
$82,460 to $105,210
What the bottom tenth to bottom quarter of software developers earn, 2025
Large technology companies hire some new graduates, often with stock on top of salary, but those jobs go to a small number of people and the interviews are hard. Most developers start somewhere less famous.
$174,410 a year
The median in California, the highest of any state
Washington state is close behind at $166,540 and New York is at $166,180. The lowest is Mississippi, at $95,330. State medians from the 2025 federal wage survey, which counts cash pay, not stock.
Roughly, all in
$500 to $48,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
No license is required, so the low end is a self-taught route: a few paid online courses and months of building things you can show. That door is harder to walk through than it sounds, because a degree is the usual filter for junior roles. The high end is four years of a computer science degree at a public university at your own state's rate, around $12,000 a year in tuition and fees. Two years at a community college first, at about $4,150 a year, then transferring to finish, cuts that to roughly $32,000. Bootcamps sit in between at $10,000 to $20,000; check a school's published job outcomes before you pay.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) first, and compare an in-state public degree with a private one before you borrow heavily.
Stock grants
Common at public technology companies. They vest over several years, which is deliberate: leaving early forfeits the rest.
Remote and hybrid work
Still widespread in this field, though large employers have pulled some of it back.
Good health coverage
Technology employers compete on benefits because they compete for the same people.
No licensing costs, ever
Nothing to renew, no board, no exam fees. Your skills are the credential.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A degree is the normal route and the safest one. It is not the only one, but the alternatives got harder.
High school
Grades 9 to 12
Math as far as you can take it, plus any computing class. Then build something small on your own and finish it. Finishing is the skill.
Computer science degree
2 to 4 years
Four years at a public university, or two years at community college then transfer. The University of Washington's Allen School, for example, offers both a computer science and a computer engineering bachelor's degree.
Internships
Summers
Two summers of real work before you graduate is the single biggest factor in landing a first job, and internships at large firms are paid.
The interview gauntlet
1 to 6 months
Technical interviews in this field test problem solving under pressure. People prepare for months, and that preparation is separate from your degree.
Junior to senior
5 years in
The first two years are about learning a real codebase and a real team. Senior titles usually arrive around year five.
Math, especially discrete math and calculus
Degree programs are math heavy, and it is the most common reason people drop out of them.
Computer science or programming
Any language. What you are learning is how to break a problem down, not the syntax.
English
Developers write constantly: documents, explanations, arguments for why to build something one way.
Physics
Good training in modeling a messy real thing as something you can calculate.
There is no board, no license and no protected title. Anyone can call themselves a software developer, and employers screen on interviews and on work you can show instead. Defense, medical device and aviation employers apply their own certification rules to the software itself rather than to the person. For almost every job, what matters is whether your code works.
Community college transfer
Two years at in-district rates, then finish at a state university. The cheapest version of the standard path.
Registered apprenticeships
Technology apprenticeships are registered with the federal apprenticeship office and pay while you train. Still uncommon, but they exist and they are real jobs.
Military and government
Federal technology roles are posted on USAJOBS (the official federal hiring site) and some do not require a degree if you can demonstrate the skills.
Bootcamps, with caution
They worked well when employers were desperate. Junior hiring tightened, so check a school's published outcomes before paying anything.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Backend and distributed systems
The machinery behind the screen. Harder to learn and harder to replace.
Machine learning
In demand right now, and usually the branch that expects a master's degree.
Security
Developers who genuinely understand attacks are rare and in permanent demand.
Boring industries
Insurance, logistics, healthcare and utilities are less famous than technology firms, but they hire steadily.
Finished projects, public
Two or three things you built and shipped beat a long list of tutorials you followed.
Reading other people's code
Most of the job is changing something somebody else wrote years ago. Practice that deliberately.
Explaining things clearly
The developers who get promoted are usually the ones who can make a non-technical person understand the trade-off.
Patience for debugging
Long stretches of being stuck are normal, not a sign you picked wrong.
Assistants that generate code are now part of the job, and they have changed what a junior developer does. They are fast at the routine parts and confidently wrong on the rest, so the valuable skill has shifted toward knowing what to ask for, spotting what is wrong, and understanding the system well enough to be sure. Junior hiring did get harder after 2023. The work has not disappeared, but the bar for the first job went up, which makes internships and finished projects matter more than they used to.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
A short team meeting in the morning to say what you are working on. Then long blocks of writing and reading code, most of it inside a system that already exists. Reviewing someone else's changes and having your own reviewed. Something breaks and you go looking for why, which can take ten minutes or the rest of the week. Meetings about what to build. Most of the day is thinking and typing, sitting down, on a screen.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) lost the Mars Climate Orbiter in September 1999 because its ground software used English units while the software on board worked in metric. The bad numbers sent it too close to Mars.
The federal survey counts about 1,717,800 software developers (2025), one of the largest professional jobs in the country. It projects growth of 7% or more to 2035 and about 95,300 openings a year.
The national engineering exam board offered a professional engineer exam in software from 2013. Only 81 people sat it in five tries, so it was dropped after April 2019.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Software first, then the rest of the field. See every career in tech.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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