In today’s competitive job market, attracting and retaining top IT talent requires hiring managers to keep up with salary benchmarks, industry trends, and evolving skill demands.
To stay competitive, it's essential not just to understand these insights but to apply them strategically. Motion Recruitment's Tech Salary Guide offers an in-depth look at these factors, but leveraging the data effectively is what will truly elevate your hiring strategy.
Here’s how you can get the most out of the guide to refine your hiring practices and make informed decisions to secure top tech talent.
1. Stay Competitive with Salary Benchmarking
Understanding competitive salary benchmarks is essential for attracting the right talent. Up-to-date data on compensation trends will ensure your offers remain competitive, preventing top candidates from going to competitors offering better packages.
With accurate salary data, you can tailor job offers to specific markets and ensure that compensation aligns with your location, role, and the demands of each position. This approach helps prevent both underpaying and overpaying. While both can impact your budget, in today's market, competitive salary offers are critical to not only attracting tech talent but also being viewed as an employer of choice that values their skills and is attuned to market conditions.
The guide includes IT salary ranges for top North American regions for over 100 specific tech roles, ranging from in-demand fields like AI and cybersecurity to essential software development positions. Use these starting salaries as a baseline for job offers, but also recognize how specific role requirements can influence what makes a competitive salary.
.png?width=1200&height=627&name=US_Launch%201%20(2).png)
2. Leverage Market Trends to Shape Your Hiring Strategy
The tech landscape evolves rapidly. Demand for specialized skills shifts frequently, as seen in the current high demand for cybersecurity, cloud and AI-driven positions. Insights from Motion's Salary Guide reveals which roles are experiencing rapid growth, enabling you to proactively align your recruitment strategies with market trends.
For instance, if you are hiring for AI-specific roles, you can adjust your approach to position your organization as an attractive option for professionals in high demand and short supply.
This knowledge enables you to be strategic and agile, making your roles more appealing by emphasizing growth potential, project impact, and innovation.
Additionally, these market trends help you forecast salary budgets accurately and allocate resources more effectively. This enables you to position yourself well in making strategic hiring decisions while staying within your financial constraints.
3. Tailor Offers by Skill Level and Experience
This year's Tech Salary Guide links compensation to specific skillsets like cybersecurity, software and UI/UX to ensure that salaries reflect the true value of a candidate's skill set, attracting high-caliber talent.
Hiring managers should differentiate roles not just by title but also by the expertise and responsibilities involved. While this guide covers the most in-demand skills usually seen in mid-to-senior roles, consulting with a market expert can further refine compensation strategies at all levels with skills-based hiring.
- Mid-level professionals (typically 3-5 years of experience) are skilled independent contributors who may require moderate guidance.
- Senior-level employees (5+ years) often manage complex projects and contribute to mentoring junior staff.
- Lead roles often involve overseeing projects or teams to ensure that technical requirements and deadlines are met.
- Principal roles are the most senior technical roles, focusing on strategic initiatives and setting technical direction without direct management duties.
Understanding these distinctions helps you avoid hiring mismatches. For example, if you're seeking a Senior Software Engineer but expect them to lead initiatives and manage a team, a Lead or Principal role (and a commensurate salary) may be more appropriate. By accurately defining and compensating each level, you can better meet employee expectations and reduce turnover.
By clearly defining the responsibilities and expectations for each role level, you can better align your hiring needs with the right compensation strategy and avoid hiring mismatches that could lead to dissatisfaction or high turnover.
4. Plan for Upskilling and Retention
Knowing the market rate for roles helps you identify when current employees might be underpaid, allowing you to adjust salaries proactively. This minimizes turnover and fosters employee loyalty in a highly competitive tech environment.
According to this year's guide, while improving AI skills is a top priority for both tech workers and company leaders, only 25% of workers are completing their AI training.
Leaders should look to offer upskilling opportunities, but need to make sure what they're investing in has value for employees. Upskilling programs that employees find valuable and make an effort to complete not only enhance retention but also create a robust in-house talent pipeline, reducing reliance on costly external hires. For hiring managers, this underscores the importance of allocating budget toward training and development to address both current and future tech demands.
5. Understand Regional Impact on Salaries
Location has a significant impact on salary expectations, especially in high-demand tech hubs. However, remote work options open up the possibility of hiring from areas with lower average salaries. The guide details salary variances across North American regions, so hiring managers can leverage these insights to create competitive packages for remote or hybrid roles.
Tech salaries across major U.S. cities exhibit significant variance, with ranges extending from 20% below to 24% above the national average. The latest edition of Motion's Tech Salary Guide delivers granular, city-specific compensation data for tech roles, empowering business leaders to benchmark positions, like comparing software developers across markets like Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago and beyond.
Conclusion
The insights in Motion's Tech Salary Guide offer far more than a standard reference sheet. When applied thoughtfully, these data points help hiring managers build a resilient hiring strategy that keeps pace with industry demands, regional shifts, and emerging skills. By using this guide to fill positions, negotiate with confidence and craft a forward-looking recruitment and retention plan, you can position your company as a tech employer of choice in a fast-paced and competitive landscape.
With these strategies, your hiring practices can evolve alongside industry trends, ensuring you’re meeting current demands and setting the foundation for a sustainable future in tech.
(NOTE: This article was updated in October 2025 to reflect the current state of the IT industry.)
