The 10 Top Job Skills Needed For The Highest-Paying Jobs

The highest-paying jobs in the United States are looking for coding skills, with many jobs paying well into the six-figures. Here’s a look at which coding and programming languages are the most lucrative.

Cashing In On Coding

More jobs look for proficiency with coding languages than any other type of hard skill, vastly exceeding the demand for foreign languages, design software or marketing software, according to a research project commissioned by Minneapolis-based talent innovation firm SHL. The SHL analysis considered more than one million job advertisements appearing on LinkedIn on April 30, 2020.

To gain a better understand of the types of jobs appearing for each hard skill, SHL said it also analyzed the average salaries of the jobs matching its keywords on Adzuna, a search engine focused on job sites. The salaries listed represent the average pay offered by a job advertisement on Adzuna requiring that skill.

The highest-paying jobs in the United States are looking for coding skills, and many coding jobs in North America pay sums well into the six-figures depending on which language an applicant is proficient in. This slideshow also pulls from Stack Overflow’s annual Developer Survey, which features the perspective of nearly 90,000 developers on everything from their favorite technologies to their job preferences.

Here’s a look at which coding skills unlock the door to the highest paying jobs.

10. Java

Average Salary: $125,122

The average salary for jobs in the United States that require Java coding skills is up 6 percent from $118,000 in 2019, according to Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey results. Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems – now part of Oracle - in 1995, and is class-based, object-oriented, and designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible.

Java is the fifth most popular programming language, with more that 41 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the 10th most dreaded programming language, with nearly 47 percent of developers working with Java today expressing no interest in continuing to do so, according to Stack Overflow.

However, Java is also the ninth most wanted programming language, with more than 8 percent of developers who don’t use Java today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. Java is most closely connected to the Android platform, Android Studio, Eclipse and IntelliJ integrated development environments (IDEs), and Spring framework, according to Stack Overflow.

9. Ruby

Average Salary: $125,283

The median salary for positions in the United States requiring Ruby coding skills is up nearly 4 percent from $121,000 in 2019, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey found. Ruby was created by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto in 1995, achieved mass acceptance in 2006, and is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity that’s natural to read and easy to write.

Ruby is the 12th most popular programming language, with more than 8 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the seventh most dreaded programming language, with nearly half of developers working with Ruby today expressing no interest in continuing to do so, according to Stack Overflow.

Ruby is also the 10th least wanted programming language, with only 4 percent of developers who don’t use Ruby today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. Ruby is most closely connected to the RubyMine integrated development environment (IDE) and the Ruby on Rails framework, according to Stack Overflow.

8. TypeScript

Average Salary: $126,204

The average salary for jobs in the United States that require TypeScript coding skills is up nearly 10 percent from $115,000 in 2019, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey found. TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that has been developed and maintained by Microsoft since 2012 and is designed for the development of large JavaScript applications for client-side and server-side execution.

TypeScript is the 10th most popular programming language, with more than 21 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the third most loved programming language, with more than 73 percent of developers working with TypeScript today expressing interest in continuing to develop with it, according to Stack Overflow.

TypeScript is also the fourth most wanted programming language, with nearly 15 percent of developers who don’t use TypeScript today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. TypeScript is most closely connected to the JavaScript programming language, Visual Studio Code integrated development environment (IDE) and Node.js and Angular.js frameworks, according to Stack Overflow.

7. C++

Average Salary: $128,252

The median salary for positions in the United States requiring C++ coding skills is up nearly 7 percent from $120,000 in 2019, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey found. C++ was developed by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs in 1979 as an extension of the C language that’s efficient and flexible but also provides high-level features for program organization.

C++ is the ninth most popular programming language, with nearly 24 percent of Stack Overflow respondents indicating they commonly use it. At the same time, it’s the ninth most dreaded programming language, with 48 percent of developers working with C++ today expressing no interest in continuing to do so, according to Stack Overflow.

However, C++ is also the seventh most wanted programming language, with more than 9 percent of developers who don’t use C++ today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. C++ is most closely connected to the C and Assembly programming languages, according to Stack Overflow.

6. Python

Average Salary: $128,823

The average salary for jobs in the United States that require Python coding skills is up more than 11 percent from $116,000 in 2019, according to Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey results. Python was created by Guido van Rossum in 1991, emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace and aims to help programmers write clear, logical code for small and large-scale projects.

Python is the fourth most popular programming language, with nearly 42 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the second most loved programming language, with more than 73 percent of developers working with Python today expressing interest in continuing to develop with it, according to Stack Overflow.

Python is also the single most wanted programming language for the third year in a row, with nearly 26 percent of developers who don’t use Python today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. Python is closely connected to the Linux platform, the Jupyter and PyCharm integrated development environments (IDEs), and the Django and Pandas frameworks, according to Stack Overflow.

5. C

Average Salary: $132,261

The median salary for positions in the United States requiring C coding skills is up more than 10 percent from $120,000 in 2019, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey found. C was developed by American computer scientist Dennis Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix, and has found lasting use in applications previously coded in assembly language such as operating systems.

C is the 11th most popular programming language, with nearly 21 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the fourth most dreaded programming language, with nearly 58 percent of developers working with C today expressing no interest in continuing to do so, according to Stack Overflow.

C is also the 12th least wanted programming language, with only 5 percent of developers who don’t use C today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. C is most closely connected to the C++ and Assembly programming languages, according to Stack Overflow.

4. R

Average Salary: $132,500

The average salary for jobs in the United States that require R coding skills is up nearly 23 percent from $108,000 in 2019, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey found. R was created by John Chambers in 1976 while at Bell Labs, is widely used among statisticians and data miners for developing statistical software and data analysis and can easily produce publication-quality plots, including mathematical symbols.

R is the ninth least popular major programming language, with less than 6 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the eighth most dreaded programming language, with more than 48 percent of developers working with R today expressing no interest in continuing to do so, according to Stack Overflow.

R is also the 11th least wanted programming language, with less than 5 percent of developers who don’t use R today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. R is most closely connected to the RStudio integrated development environment (IDE), according to Stack Overflow.

3. Objective-C

Average Salary: $137,475

The median salary for positions in the United States requiring Objective-C coding skills is up more than 4 percent from $132,000 in 2019, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey found. Objective-C was created by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, and was the main programming language supported by Apple for macOS, iOS and their application programming interfaces until the introduction of Swift in 2014.

Objective-C is the seventh least popular major programming language, with less than 5 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the second most dreaded programming language, with nearly 69 percent of developers working with Objective-C today expressing no interest in continuing to do so, according to Stack Overflow.

Objective-C is most closely connected to the iOS platform, the Swift programming language and the Xcode integrated development environment (IDE), according to Stack Overflow.

2. Scala

Average Salary: $143,211

The average salary for jobs in the United States that require Scala coding skills is up 0.1 percent from $143,000 in 2019, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey found. Scala was designed by German computer scientist Martin Odersky, released in 2004 on the Java platform and designed to build high-performance systems with easy access to huge ecosystems of libraries while avoiding bugs in complex applications.

Scala is the sixth least popular major programming language, with less than 4 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the 11th most dreaded programming language, with nearly 42 percent of developers working with Scala today expressing no interest in continuing to do so, according to Stack Overflow.

Scala is also the ninth least wanted programming language, with just 4 percent of developers who don’t use Scala today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. Scala is most closely connected to the Apache Spark and Hadoop frameworks, according to Stack Overflow.

1. Golang

Average Salary: $151,069

The median salary for positions in the United States requiring Golang coding skills – known officially as Go – is up more than 11 percent from $136,000 in 2019, Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey found. It was designed at Google in 2009 by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson, and was intended to improve programming productivity in an era of multicore, networked machines and large codebases.

Golang is the 13th most popular programming language, with more than 8 percent of Stack Overflow survey respondents indicating they commonly use it. It is the ninth most loved programming language, with nearly 68 percent of developers working with Go expressing interest in continuing to develop with it, according to Stack Overflow.

Golang is also the third most wanted programming language, with 15 percent of developers who don’t use Go today saying they wish to learn it, Stack Overflow found. Go is used by big-name brands such as Google and Twitter for large-scale network programming, according to SHL.