Which Programming Languages and Engineer Roles Earn the Most in 2022?

Average annual salary only rose 0.8%

Overall, the United States remains the highest‑paying country for software engineers, followed by the United Kingdom and Canada.

Canada showed the strongest salary growth at 9.2%, with the UK at 2.7% and the US at 0.8%.

In the United States, the top‑paying regions are the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and New York, followed by Boston, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, Washington DC, San Diego, and Chicago.

The same three regions—San Francisco Bay, Seattle, and New York—ranked in the top three for two consecutive years.

Salary varies by engineering specialty. The top three highest‑paying roles are security engineers, R&D engineers, and natural‑language‑processing (NLP) engineers.

The top‑10 also include mobile engineers, machine‑learning engineers, AR/VR engineers, database engineers, blockchain engineers, and data engineers.

In the hot AI field, NLP engineers earn $160,227 and machine‑learning engineers $158,307; NLP salaries fell by about $4,000 year‑over‑year, while ML salaries rose by $7,000.

Despite the hype, AR/VR engineers slipped to sixth place, with average salaries dropping from $170,000 to $158,000.

Security engineers saw a 7.59% increase, reaching $165,505 and taking the top spot.

Overall, engineers with specialized skills—security, mobile, NLP, AR/VR—continue to command high salaries.

Go demand highest, Python most popular

Choosing a programming language that the market urgently needs can dramatically boost interview opportunities; for example, Go can increase chances by 1.8×.

Hired’s CTO Dave Walters notes that major companies such as Uber, Twitch, and Slack are increasingly adopting Go.

React, a leading front‑end JavaScript library, also enjoys high demand across startups and established firms.

According to Hired’s survey, the top‑10 favorite programming languages among software engineers are: Python, JavaScript, Java, TypeScript, C#, Go, HTML, C++, Ruby, and C.

Reasons for preference: 64% cite ecosystem (libraries, tooling), 61% value learning and development resources, 46% appreciate community support, 63% feel proficient, 57% find it fun, 46% note high demand, 34% follow big‑company usage, and 26% simply learned it first.

Full‑stack engineers most popular

Market demand rankings place full‑stack engineers first, followed by backend and frontend engineers.

Full‑stack engineers saw a 2.1% increase in interview invitations in 2021, reflecting their ability to boost team efficiency and reduce redundancy.

Other highly demanded roles include data engineers, security engineers, NLP engineers, embedded engineers, blockchain engineers, game engineers, and computer‑vision engineers.

Supply‑side analysis shows backend, full‑stack, and frontend engineers are abundant, while NLP and blockchain engineers face shortages; mobile and machine‑learning engineers appear oversupplied.

More than half of surveyed engineers consider AI, machine learning, and big data the most promising areas, while over 30% are optimistic about cybersecurity, fintech, and Web3.

Metaverse and AR/VR remain of interest to 34.1% despite salary declines.

Open‑source, no‑code/low‑code solutions attract over 20% of respondents, whereas only 17.1% view computer vision as a future hot topic.