Ever wondered what you could earn as a software engineer if you wanted to work in a different part of the world?

If you’re after the big bucks, there’s only one place to be – the United States of America.

According to research from Startup Genome, which annually releases a top 20 of the most successful start-up ecosystems globally, the US accounted for the top 7 salaries of software engineers.

The salaries ranged from US$76,000 in Chicago to US$112,000 in Silicon Valley.

Software engineers in Sydney, Australia, earned the highest salaries of anywhere outside the US, coming in at US$64,000. Melbourne, which fell outside of the top 20, matched Sydney software engineer salaries, also on US$64,000.

The global average salary of a software engineer is US$49,000.

Startup Genome, which has been reporting on global start-ups since 2012, said Silicon Valley had lost its top spot on the available talent front– to Singapore.

The average software engineer in Singapore makes just a fraction of their Silicon Valley counterparts on US$35,000. Access to talent, as well as cost and quality were all factored in to the score.

“Silicon Valley has lost the edge it had when, five to fifteen years ago, it enjoyed a quasi-monopoly on very experienced back-end engineers, which were the indispensable foundation of a start-up’s engineering team,” found the Deep Dives into Top 20 Global Startup Ecosystems’ report.

“What matters, then, is talent access, as start-ups compete with large tech companies on quality hires. With this new context Silicon Valley is seeing its top position challenged.”

European powerhouses Berlin, London and Paris had relatively lower salaries for software engineers, all coming in between US$45,000 and US$55,000.

The figures reflect the average salary for an engineer, based on figures from Glassdoor, Salary.com and PayScale.

What a software engineer earns around the world*

CITY

SALARY

1

Silicon Valley, USA

$112,000

2

Seattle, USA

$100,000

3

New York, USA

$97,000

4

Boston, USA

$95,000

5

Los Angeles, USA

$84,000

6

Austin, USA

$82,000

7

Chicago, USA

$76,000

8

Sydney, Australia

$64,000

9

Tel Aviv, Israel

$63,000

10

Toronto-Waterloo, Canada

$56,000

11

Berlin, Germany

$55,000

12

Stockholm, Sweden

$55,000

13

Vancouver, Canada

$55,000

14

London, UK

$52,000

15

Paris, France

$46,000

16

Amsterdam-Start-up Delta, The Netherlands

$45,000

17

Singapore

$35,000

18

Beijing, China

$25,000

19

Shanghai, China

$22,000

20

Bangalore, India

$8,600

GLOBAL AVERAGE

$49,000

*All amounts in US dollars