Seeing healthy dollar signs when you're considering a job is always a plus, but it's not the only gauge of how much money you'll make. You should also consider cost of living factors, like Glassdoor just did, to find the 25 best paying cities for software engineers.
The analysis identified the "real adjusted salary" in U.S. cities by examining the ratio of the city's local median software engineer base salary and its official cost of living figures from the federal government. Housing costs, transportation, food and recreation are four of the main contributors to the cost of living factor.
Atlanta was No. 10 on the list, with a median base salary of $85,000 for software engineers and a real adjusted salary of $89,286. That's 4.8 percent below the national average cost of living, which helps make Atlanta an attractive option to job seekers.
When the survey was completed in late June, Glassdoor had more than 1,300 software engineer job openings listed for the metro Atlanta area.
The top city in the survey was Seattle, Washington, with a real adjusted salary of $105,735 – even though that's 7.1 percent above the national average cost of living. Seattle also had far more software engineer jobs, with more than 4,200 listed at Glassdoor at the time of the survey.
San Francisco and San Jose, California; Madison, Wisconsin; and Raleigh, North Carolina, rounded out the top five cities on the Glassdoor list. Huntsville, Alabama, finished the list at no. 25 with its real adjusted salary of $83,242.
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