The Best Cities for Finding IT Jobs in 2012

Three national staffing firms—Modis, Robert Half Technology and Technisource—shared with CIO.com their lists of the best U.S. cities for finding IT jobs. To develop credible rosters, they based their choices of the best cities on a number of criteria, including open positions they need to fill or have filled in each city so far this year, the importance of the positions that need to be filled, the cities in which they see the biggest increases in job orders, salaries in those cities, and national hiring surveys. Here are the top 8 picks.

Graphic Design by Terri Haas

The nation’s capital and its environs (and McLean, Va. in particular) top CIO.com’s list of the best cities for finding IT jobs. The federal government may not be creating many jobs, but the systems integrators, defense contractors (hence the picture of the Pentagon), and professional services firms servicing the government are making up for it, according to staffing industry execs. Banking companies in the area are also hiring tech workers, as well as rising tech startups.

These companies are primarily looking to hire developers (especially JAVA and .NET), says Matt Colarusso, a regional manager with Technisource’s parent company Randstad. Modis notes that business analysts, information security professionals, project managers, and database administrators and architects are also in demand.

It should come as no surprise that oil and gas companies are major catalysts for tech hiring in Houston. Notably, the healthcare industry is beginning to rival the energy industry as a top tech employer in the area. Houston has “a massive healthcare and medical presence,” says John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology. This presence includes M.D. Anderson Clinical Care Center, CHRISTUS St. John Hospital and Bayshore Medical Center. All of those organization (and more) need IT professionals who can help them meet deadlines for compliance with new Federal regulations.

Some of the most sought-after IT skills in Houston include network engineers, project managers, business analysts, and JAVA and .NET developers, according to Modis CEO Jack Cullen.

Robert Half’s Reed says that his firm sees the most employment activity in NYC and the surrounding area because of the high concentration of large companies based there. The two industries for which the Big Apple is known—financial services and media (and in particular, digital media)—are creating jobs for JAVA, SharePoint, .NET, PHP and mobile application developers, as well as for project managers, business analysts, business intelligence analysts and quality assurance testers, according to Modis.