Software Developers salary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

About 26,150 Software Developers worked in the Philadelphia metro in 2024, making it one of the larger tech employment hubs on the East Coast outside of New York.

The median annual wage here was $130,670, which is $6,930 above the Pennsylvania median of $123,740, a roughly 6% gap. Philadelphia consistently pays above the state figure, and that gap reflects how much of Pennsylvania's software development employment concentrates in this metro. The national median, at $138,520, still sits about $7,850 higher than Philadelphia, so the metro trails the US figure by around 6% as well.

The spread between top and bottom earners is wide. The 10th percentile came in at $81,500 in 2024, while the 90th percentile reached $174,980. Top earners here make about twice what entry-level peers do, which points to significant variation by experience and sub-specialty within the local market. The mean wage of $131,820 tracks very closely to the median, which means a small group of high earners is not pulling the average far above what most developers actually take home. That makes the median a reliable read on what a typical Software Developer in Philadelphia earned last year.

For anyone using the national median as a reference point, Philadelphia lands in a middle tier: above most smaller metros and above the state as a whole, but below the figures BLS records for tech-heavy markets like San Francisco or Seattle.