Top 5 US cities for college grads to score jobs in tech

27 Jul 2017

There are 50 states (plus one federal district) and 3,035 cities with a population above 10,000 in the United States. That’s a lot of places where a fresh college grad can start a career.

For tech grads, while it’s great to know there is an insane number of computing jobs in the market, that’s not much use if they can’t pinpoint the most strategic location to jumpstart their first entry-level job.

Luckily for us, ZipRecruiter surveyed seven million jobs in the US to find out which city has the best ratio of open entry-level jobs to the number of applicants and the overall availability of graduate jobs in each city.

So, here you go, the five best cities in the US where tech is the biggest industry (find the full list here!):

1. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington

.@amazon takes office space in Hines’ T3 (Timber, Transit and Technology) building in Minneapolis’ North Loop https://t.co/KA9q9EsqAb

— Cees de Jager (@WoodMarketing) January 14, 2017

If you’re looking for a software engineering position, head to Minneapolis. It’s the top job on offer at this Midwest city, where giants like Amazon have a local technology development office.

2. Portland–Vancouver–Beaverton

Portland's tech community grows more diverse, slowly https://t.co/FSFC8grlst

— Silicon Forest blog (@siliconforest) July 20, 2017

In Portland, a cluster of high-tech companies located in its metropolitan area has earned the nickname “Silicon Forest”, a play on the name of the more famous Silicon Valley. Companies like McAfee, Airbnb and eBay fuel the thriving the city’s tech ecosystem.

3. Indianapolis–Carmel

Welcome to the Silicon Prairie! Women are making waves in the Midwest tech industry:https://t.co/R6wH2Ctk2d pic.twitter.com/alB7nGLwJv

— Rootstalk Prairie Journal (@GrinnellPrairie) July 21, 2017

Indianapolis is fourth on Smart Asset’s list of Best Cities for Women in Tech and boasts a 102.2 percent gender pay gap. If that’s not reason enough, the city is also home to offices of large tech employers such as Cerner, Garmin and Sprint.

4. Salt Lake City

Cloud computing next big thing in technology: Utah's 'Silicon Slopes' Became Cloud Computing's New Capital @forbes https://t.co/x8FtBKlUg0

— Abdul Abdi (@RealAbdulAbdi) July 26, 2017

It’s known as “Cloud Computing’s New Capital” and hosts companies like Qualtrics, Domo and Pluralsight, all of which are listed on Forbes’ Cloud 100 which compiles the top private tech companies in cloud computing.

5. San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont

Pandora Women hosted 15 girls from Girls Inc. for a networking and mini-mentoring workshop at our Oakland, HQ! #lifeatpandora 😍#pandoragives pic.twitter.com/KiDuxP4fE0

— Life At SiriusXM (@siriusxmlife) July 21, 2017

No surprises here. San Francisco is home to Silicon Valley, where 39 businesses in the Fortune 1000 and thousands of startup companies call home – plenty of places to send those resumes to.