Why Zig Became 2024’s Highest‑Paying Programming Language

Recent Stack Overflow data covering 89,184 developers from 185 countries reveals that Zig now tops the list of highest‑paying programming languages in 2024, with an average annual salary of $103,000.

Only 0.83% of respondents claim to be proficient in Zig, highlighting its scarcity, while the rising demand for high‑performance system programming pushes salaries upward.

Previously, Clojure held the top spot since 2022 but saw a 10% salary decline, losing its crown; meanwhile, Dart and SAS experienced median salary growth of over 20% in 2023.

What Is Zig?

Andrew Kelley, chief developer and president of the Zig Software Foundation, describes Zig as a general‑purpose programming language and toolchain designed for building robust, optimized, and reusable software.

As a low‑level language, Zig is ideal for developers who prioritize speed and binary size, often touted as a successor to C with fewer keywords and a safer platform.

The language includes a powerful C preprocessor, but Zig aims to offer a better alternative that avoids the preprocessor’s drawbacks, such as turning a language into two partially overlapping dialects.

Operating as a non‑profit, Zig boasts an active contributor community that encourages open‑source personal projects to address real‑world problems.

One of Zig’s major strengths is its consistent memory management, featuring compile‑time memory tracking and automatic memory release.

Because Zig is compatible with existing C codebases, it integrates easily into current projects, making it an excellent choice for system programming, embedded systems, game development, and scripting.

Although Zig was launched in 2015 and remains in early development, its learning curve can be steep and time‑consuming.

Kelley remains optimistic, noting that Zig also provides an alternative to libc, allowing developers to design new APIs without repeating mistakes from the 1970s.

Developer Perspective

Despite lucrative salaries, many programmers are still unaware of Zig. In the Stack Overflow survey, Zig’s overall ranking fell to 41st, 40th among professional developers, 37th among those learning to code, and 36th among hobbyist or former professionals.

Finding an organization that values and rewards Zig expertise can lead to substantial compensation. Kelley publicly shares the foundation’s financials; his pre‑tax income of $108,000 is slightly above the average of the 259 surveyed Zig users.

While Zig’s adoption is expected to grow, those whose primary goal is higher pay might consider other high‑earning technologies.

According to Indeed, the top‑earning tech skill in 2024 is General AI (GenAI) with an average salary of $174,727, followed by chip system engineering ($174,564), deep learning ($108,939), Torch ($169,874), PyTorch ($168,636), computer vision ($166,873), SystemVerilog ($165,832), Mesos ($165,788), Rust ($165,637), and Elixir ($165,245).

Is Zig still worth pursuing for a high salary, or should you focus on these other in‑demand skills?