Software engineer salary in Australia
Software engineer pay can move sharply with seniority, technical speciality, product responsibility and the type of company doing the hiring.
84,585 people reported under the ATO occupation “Computing professional - software engineer” for 2023-24. The published median salary or wage income was $132,758.
What this page measures
The observed median on this page uses the specific ATO occupation 261313, Computing professional - software engineer. State, full-time and trend comparisons are only published for the broader Software and applications programmer group and are labelled accordingly.
The ATO count includes everyone who reported this classification. Its public table does not publish the exact non-zero-income population used to calculate the median.
Related titles in the source data
- Analyst programmer
- Applications programmer
- Software tester
- Cyber security engineer
- DevOps engineer
A modelled pay guide
- Lower guide
- $90,800
- Modelled low
- $108,800
- ATO median
- $132,758
- Modelled high
- $162,100
Only the median is a published statistic for this occupation. The lower and upper markers are a guide created by applying earnings-distribution ratios for professionals as a whole to that median. The upper guide is $201,300. These are not observed percentiles for this occupation.
Why individual salaries vary
- Seniority and responsibility for systems or teams
- Technical speciality and scarcity of the required skills
- Employer type, industry and product scale
- Cash bonus, equity and other remuneration outside base salary
What full-time work pays
The tax-return median above can include part-year and part-time workers with non-zero salary or wage income. The ABS full-time benchmark is published for the broader occupation group “Software and applications programmer”. It covers full-time, non-managerial employees paid at the adult rate and puts them at $2,537 a week, or about $131,900 a year (May 2025), over roughly 41 hours. 6% of people in this occupation work part-time.
Modelled software engineer pay by state
These guides apply each published state-to-national ratio for the Software and applications programmer group to the observed national median above. They are not observed state medians for the specific software engineer occupation.
| State | State-adjusted guide | vs national |
|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | $142,700 | +7% |
| Victoria | $131,700 | −1% |
| Queensland | $126,800 | −4% |
| Western Australia | $125,800 | −5% |
| South Australia | $109,000 | −18% |
| Tasmania | $109,100 | −18% |
| Australian Capital Territory | $133,200 | 0% |
| Northern Territory | $112,100 | −16% |
How the broader pay measure has moved
Average salary income for the “Software and applications programmer” occupation group went from $79,596 in 2010-11 to $129,376 in 2023-24 - 3.8% a year over 13 years. That is an average rather than a median, and it moves with hours worked and who is in the occupation as well as with pay.
Turn the benchmark into a decision
Estimate take-home pay from the observed median, or compare a live job advertisement with the broader occupation evidence before applying.
To search another title or change the state, return to the Australian Salary Search.
Sources: ATO Table 15, ATO Table 14B, ABS Employee Earnings and Hours and Jobs and Skills Australia occupation data. Data retrieved 17 August 2026. Page reviewed . Full method on the methodology page.
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