Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers
What the pay figures show
- A job board will not tell you this about this job. The best headline number is California, at $128,740. State taxes differ, so Washington leaves you more. Prices differ too, so New Mexico leaves you better off again — $95,659 once levelled out. Moving for the biggest salary can leave you worse off.
- Wage data for software quality assurance analysts and testers places California first at $128,740. That position is not robust: state income tax alone reorders it to Washington, and regional price parity reorders it again to New Mexico at $95,659. Because published comparisons almost universally stop at the nominal median, the state that appears best for this occupation is routinely not the state where a worker's income goes furthest.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$104,300
People doing it
186,740
Highest paid
$128,740
CA
Best off, really
$95,659
NM, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$61,440
Highest tenth
$167,010
Lowest, really
$56,002
WV
States with data
46
National average
$111,490
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.39%
NM, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $56,002 to $95,659.
- About 186,740 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $104,300. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 46 jurisdictions, averaging $104,300 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. California leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in software quality assurance analysts and testers is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $56,002 to $95,659 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- With 186,740 workers, software quality assurance analysts and testers sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for software quality assurance analysts and testers runs to 46 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $61,440 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $104,300 |
| Top tenth earn over | $167,010 |
| This salary | $104,300 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers
The national median for this job
$104,300around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $61,440 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $104,300 |
| Top tenth | $167,010 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers, state by state
The national median for this job
46states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $62,300 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $128,740 |
| Spread | $66,440 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $101,850 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $104,811 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| NM | $116,580 | $86,463 | $95,659 |
| WA | $128,480 | $99,082 | $91,268 |
| CO | $123,690 | $91,074 | $89,833 |
| VA | $121,590 | $88,138 | $87,483 |
| MT | $103,930 | $77,434 | $85,805 |
| AL | $101,500 | $76,000 | $84,473 |
| TX | $101,850 | $80,481 | $82,821 |
| OH | $98,000 | $75,794 | $82,554 |
| MA | $122,210 | $89,006 | $82,232 |
| NE | $98,010 | $74,024 | $81,907 |
| NY | $121,240 | $87,855 | $81,630 |
| CA | $128,740 | $91,379 | $81,167 |
| NC | $100,390 | $75,958 | $80,687 |
| NJ | $119,470 | $87,457 | $80,322 |
| NH | $107,100 | $84,175 | $79,904 |
| GA | $103,040 | $76,776 | $79,397 |
| MI | $98,720 | $74,335 | $78,925 |
| MD | $111,100 | $81,984 | $78,857 |
| TN | $91,040 | $72,877 | $78,773 |
| SC | $97,500 | $73,308 | $78,676 |
| IL | $104,910 | $77,586 | $78,485 |
| DE | $106,060 | $77,674 | $78,259 |
| KS | $94,490 | $70,320 | $78,163 |
| IA | $88,590 | $68,398 | $77,054 |
| FL | $100,210 | $79,328 | $76,681 |
| AZ | $100,650 | $77,524 | $76,676 |
| ND | $83,920 | $67,490 | $76,198 |
| MN | $101,700 | $74,984 | $76,190 |
| RI | $101,790 | $76,957 | $75,885 |
| PA | $93,030 | $71,421 | $73,252 |
| IN | $87,020 | $67,511 | $73,235 |
| WI | $89,400 | $67,870 | $72,903 |
| OR | $108,440 | $76,179 | $72,745 |
| MO | $85,530 | $65,918 | $71,836 |
| MS | $79,890 | $61,929 | $70,945 |
| CT | $97,740 | $72,964 | $70,368 |
| HI | $102,930 | $74,862 | $68,928 |
| OK | $77,700 | $60,496 | $68,523 |
| KY | $79,100 | $61,826 | $68,340 |
| DC | $103,340 | $75,714 | $68,332 |
| ME | $86,050 | $64,856 | $66,795 |
| UT | $82,100 | $62,934 | $66,245 |
| SD | $68,120 | $56,752 | $64,422 |
| VT | $76,580 | $59,760 | $61,841 |
| LA | $66,810 | $54,213 | $61,365 |
| WV | $62,300 | $50,274 | $56,002 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $104,300.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Washington keeps the most at $99,082.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $56,002. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for software quality assurance analysts and testers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $104,300, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- The household modeled for software quality assurance analysts and testers is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Washington retains the most, $99,082. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for software quality assurance analysts and testers deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.