North America · United States
Austin
The primary US relocation destination for technology employers seeking lower costs without losing scale.
- Hub score
- 76
- Cost of living
- 103
- Median rent
- $1,780
- Internet speed
- 212 Mbps
Composite of talent, capital, output
100 = US national average
Per month
Austin absorbed a decade of corporate relocations and now has genuine depth in semiconductors, enterprise software and infrastructure. Costs have risen materially, narrowing but not erasing the gap with coastal markets.
Strengths
- No state income tax
- Strong semiconductor and hardware base
- Central US time zone
- Costs below coastal markets
Watch-outs
- Talent depth thins at staff and principal levels
- Housing costs rose faster than compensation
- Summer heat affects office attendance patterns
- Population
- 980,000
- Timezone
- UTC−6 / −5
- Currency
- USD
- Talent pool
- 165,000 technology workers
Compensation
What tech roles pay in Austin
Median base salary by role, adjusted for the Austin market.
| Role | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | $165k | $210k |
| Product Manager | $156k | $197k |
| Data Scientist | $150k | $186k |
| Data Engineer | $157k | $196k |
| Analytics Engineer | $137k | $169k |
| Machine Learning Engineer | $196k | $251k |
| Product Designer | $137k | $171k |
| UX Researcher | $129k | $160k |
| DevOps Engineer | $164k | $206k |
| Security Engineer | $173k | $218k |
| Engineering Manager | $209k | $260k |
| Technical Program Manager | $165k | $207k |
| Account Executive | $100k | $130k |
| Customer Success Manager | $92k | $117k |
Employers
Notable companies in Austin
Airtable
Relational database with a spreadsheet interface, used to build internal operational apps.
Canva
Visual design platform aimed at non-designers, scaled into enterprise brand management.
Cloudflare
Global edge network combining performance, security and developer compute.
Atlassian
Software team tooling anchored by Jira and Confluence, sold with minimal sales touch.
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