The metros that come second to San Jose on engineering pay
Suppose you wanted to run an engineering company on a single principle, which is that nobody pays engineers more than you do. You would set up in San Jose, which settles the matter for nine of thirteen engineering and related occupations. Then you would notice that everyone else in San Jose had roughly the same idea, so now you are all bidding for the same people.
The sensible version of the plan is less ambitious. You accept that San Jose will outbid you and ask who comes second, because the runner-up is the offer a San Jose employer is really up against. It is also the place an engineer could go to get most of the money without moving to San Jose. Second place is mostly San Francisco. The exceptions are a stranger list than you might expect.
San Jose wins most of them
The figures come from federal wage data for May 2025. Each ranking uses the median, which is what the engineer in the exact middle earns, so half the people in the job make more and half make less. Only metros with at least 200 people in the occupation count, and only metros where the government publishes a median at all.
That second condition costs San Jose one occupation outright. Its median for chemical engineers is withheld, which leaves the top spot to Houston. In three others somebody simply outbids it. San Francisco does it for aerospace engineers while Phoenix does it for biomedical engineers and Midland in Texas does it for industrial engineers. Everywhere else the San Jose engineering market is the ceiling.
| Occupation | San Jose median | Best metro other than San Jose | Its median | Jobs there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering managers | $234,600 | San Francisco | $221,600 | 5,000 |
| Software developers | $213,100 | San Francisco | $186,600 | 69,030 |
| Architects | $129,600 | San Francisco | $126,600 | 3,780 |
| Aerospace engineers | $181,600 | San Francisco | $191,300 | 510 |
| Biomedical engineers | $136,500 | Phoenix | $141,200 | 450 |
| Chemical engineers | Withheld | Houston | $138,100 | 1,510 |
| Civil engineers | $130,300 | San Francisco | $130,200 | 10,990 |
| Electrical engineers | $187,100 | San Francisco | $166,000 | 2,470 |
| Electronics engineers | $194,400 | Santa Rosa | $172,300 | 290 |
| Industrial engineers | $137,000 | Midland TX | $141,100 | 320 |
| Mechanical engineers | $168,000 | San Francisco | $161,400 | 5,150 |
| Other engineers | $169,700 | Lexington Park MD | $166,200 | 1,020 |
| Sales engineers | $177,500 | Durham-Chapel Hill | $175,300 | 330 |
Second place is mostly San Francisco
San Francisco is the best-paying metro outside San Jose in seven of the occupations. That puts a San Francisco employer in a slightly odd position. For most engineering jobs it is offering the second-highest pay of any metro, and from the point of view of a candidate who also holds a San Jose offer it is the cheap option.
How cheap depends a lot on the job. For civil engineers San Francisco trails by $100, which is not a difference anyone could plausibly negotiate around. For software developers the gap is $26,500. For electrical engineers it is $21,100, which is the kind of gap that can decide where someone works.
So if you are hiring in the San Francisco engineering market and keep losing people to the South Bay, the useful thing to know is which kind of engineer you are losing. A mechanical engineer there costs you about $6,600 less than in San Jose, which you might be able to close with a shorter commute or a better title. A software developer costs you the full gap, and you either pay it or accept that some candidates will drive south.
The other runners-up are a stranger list
Where San Francisco is not second, the runner-up tends to be somewhere much smaller. Santa Rosa is next after San Jose for electronics engineers. Lexington Park in Maryland is next for the category the government labels other engineers, and Durham is next for sales engineers.
Some of these groups are tiny. Santa Rosa has about 290 electronics engineers and Durham has about 330 sales engineers. A median from a few hundred people is a true number. It also describes a small group, so one large employer hiring or leaving could plausibly move it quite a bit from one year to the next.
That makes these places worth knowing about without being worth planning around. If you need one sales engineer, Durham paying within $2,200 of San Jose tells you the local market is probably competitive. If you need fifteen, it mostly tells you there are not many sales engineers in Durham to begin with.
Midland is the odd one, because it sits at the top rather than in second. It beats San Jose for industrial engineers at $141,100 against $137,000. It manages that with about 320 industrial engineers, which is not many people to be outbidding Silicon Valley with. Every ranking here covers only metros that publish the figure, so a withheld median anywhere can quietly change who looks like the winner.
Albuquerque keeps turning up
Second place is one number per occupation, so it hides the places that are consistently close. Going down to fifth place shows them.
| Occupation | First | Second | Third | Fourth | Fifth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering managers | San Jose | San Francisco | Albuquerque | Peoria | Manchester-Nashua |
| Software developers | San Jose | San Francisco | Seattle | New York | Boston |
| Architects | San Jose | San Francisco | Sacramento | San Diego | Boston |
| Aerospace engineers | San Francisco | San Jose | Boulder | Baltimore | Washington DC |
| Biomedical engineers | Phoenix | San Francisco | San Jose | Cincinnati | Boston |
| Chemical engineers | Houston | Baton Rouge | Los Angeles | Washington DC | Kennewick |
| Civil engineers | San Jose | San Francisco | Sacramento | Redding | Vallejo |
| Electrical engineers | San Jose | San Francisco | Albuquerque | Manchester-Nashua | Austin |
| Electronics engineers | San Jose | Santa Rosa | Austin | Raleigh | San Francisco |
| Industrial engineers | Midland TX | San Jose | Albuquerque | San Francisco | Fort Collins |
| Mechanical engineers | San Jose | San Francisco | Baton Rouge | Augusta | Peoria |
| Other engineers | San Jose | Lexington Park MD | Albuquerque | San Francisco | Huntsville |
| Sales engineers | San Jose | Durham-Chapel Hill | Seattle | Washington DC | San Francisco |
Albuquerque is third for engineering managers, electrical engineers, industrial engineers and other engineers. That is four third places for a metro a long way from California, and it beats San Francisco in two of them. Those two are industrial engineers and other engineers, where San Francisco comes fourth.Its electrical engineers earn a median of $163,700, which is $2,300 behind San Francisco.
If you are an electrical engineer who wants something close to Bay Area pay somewhere else, that is a short list with Albuquerque near the top of it. If you are planning engineering hiring in Albuquerque, it means your competition for electrical engineers is roughly the San Francisco offer, which is a strange thing to budget for in New Mexico but is what the data says.
Austin is a different case. Its electronics engineers earn $163,000, which is $31,400 under San Jose. It is also the highest-paying metro for electronics engineers outside California, so a San Jose employer opening a second site for that kind of work might reasonably look at engineering hiring in Austin first and keep most of that gap.
What you might do with it
If you are setting pay for an engineering role, first place is mostly useful for knowing what you will not match. The runner-up is closer to the offer you are actually competing with, so it is the one worth pricing against. The engineering salary guide covers the rest of the country by occupation.
If you are an engineer, the useful places are the ones that pay near the top without being San Jose. For electrical engineers who would rather leave the Bay Area altogether that is Albuquerque. For the other engineers category it is Lexington Park in Maryland. For sales engineers it is Durham, provided you can get one of the few hundred jobs there.
The next thing worth checking is what those medians buy once rent and local prices are counted, which is what the engineering salary buying power comparison does. A San Jose salary that tops the ranking may look rather different after that, and so might Albuquerque’s.
