Top H1B Sponsors for Software Developers: Salaries & Employer Data

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is paying its H1B software developers an average of $212,232 per year, the highest average wage in this entire dataset, beating Google, Meta, and even Nvidia. A company that spent years in a regulatory crossfire over national security concerns is now one of the most aggressive recruiters of foreign-born software talent in the country. That one fact tells you a lot about how this job category works in 2026.

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Why Software Developer Is the Defining H1B Job Title in 2026

No other occupation dominates the H1B program the way software development does. Microsoft alone filed over 23,000 petitions across its two software developer categories in this dataset. Amazon, counting all three of its entities that appear here, contributed more than 28,000. These are not niche filings from specialty teams. These are companies running industrial-scale sponsorship operations to staff engineering organizations that could not function without international talent.

The SOC categories split between “Software Developers” and “Software Developers, Applications,” and several major employers appear under both. That distinction matters less than the combined picture: when you add up all the filings in this dataset, you are looking at well over 130,000 petitions from roughly 40 employers alone. Software development is not one of many H1B job categories. It is the H1B job category.

What the Numbers Show

The following employers are ranked by total filings across FY2024 and FY2025, covering both the “Software Developers” and “Software Developers, Applications” SOC titles where applicable. Average prevailing wage reflects what employers reported to the Department of Labor.

• Microsoft Corporation — 23,592 combined filings, avg salary $161,900. The largest single sponsor in this dataset when both SOC categories are combined.
• Amazon.com Services LLC — 21,974 combined filings, avg salary $151,700. Amazon’s main entity alone accounts for over 17,700 filings under the core Software Developers title.
• Google LLC — 24,521 combined filings, avg salary $173,500. When both categories are combined, Google actually edges out everyone else in total volume.
• Meta Platforms, Inc. — 11,513 combined filings, avg salary $196,600. The highest average wage of any FAANG company in this data, and it shows in compensation.
• Wal-Mart Associates, Inc. — 9,051 combined filings, avg salary $137,300. Walmart’s tech division is a serious H1B employer, a fact that surprises many candidates who overlook it.
• Apple Inc. — 6,800 filings, avg salary $182,524. Apple files exclusively under the core Software Developers category here.
• Amazon Web Services, Inc. — 6,478 filings, avg salary $155,532. A separate legal entity from Amazon.com Services, with its own sponsorship pipeline.
• JPMorgan Chase & Co. — 8,414 combined filings, avg salary $149,000. The largest bank in this dataset by filing volume, spanning both developer categories.
• Capgemini America Inc — 6,962 combined filings, avg salary $118,900. A major IT consulting sponsor with wages well below the big tech median.
• Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc. — 4,619 filings, avg salary $152,756. The third Amazon entity in this data, focused on development center operations.
• Deloitte Consulting LLP — 6,450 combined filings, avg salary $127,000. One of the Big Four accounting firms running a significant tech sponsorship operation.
• Ernst & Young U.S. LLP — 4,382 filings, avg salary $162,624. Higher average wages than Deloitte despite fewer total filings.
• Compunnel Software Group, Inc — 3,545 filings, avg salary $115,945. A staffing firm with wages at the lower end of this dataset.
• Salesforce, Inc. — 3,351 filings, avg salary $196,577. Near the top of the wage chart, competitive with Meta.
• Fidelity Technology Group, LLC — 4,988 combined filings (across two legal entities), avg salary roughly $122,000. Fidelity appears twice under slightly different entity names.
• Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. — 2,552 filings, avg salary $132,858.
• Intel Corporation — 2,284 filings, avg salary $132,763.
• Oracle America, Inc. — 2,109 filings, avg salary $139,090.
• LinkedIn Corporation — 2,043 filings, avg salary $170,159.
• LTIMindTree Limited — 2,005 filings, avg salary $112,338. An Indian IT services firm with wages among the lowest in this set.
• PayPal, Inc. — 1,688 filings, avg salary $167,678.
• Nvidia Corporation — 1,570 filings, avg salary $184,085. Relatively modest filing volume for a company now worth over $3 trillion.
• Citibank, N.A. — 1,555 filings, avg salary $157,432.
• Uber Technologies, Inc. — 1,439 filings, avg salary $193,446.
• ByteDance Inc. — 1,413 filings, avg salary $212,232. Highest average wage in the entire dataset.
• Mastech Digital Technologies, Inc. — 1,401 filings, avg salary $103,124. Lowest average wage in this dataset.
• CGI Technologies and Solutions Inc. — 1,343 filings, avg salary $117,135.
• Cisco Systems, Inc. — 1,314 filings, avg salary $149,961.
• Kforce Inc. — 1,641 filings, avg salary $119,396. A staffing firm with filing volume that exceeds several named tech companies.
• U.S. Bank National Association — 1,573 filings, avg salary $131,194.
• Tata Consultancy Services Limited — 1,753 filings, avg salary $118,787.

The Wage Gap Nobody Talks About Enough

The spread between the top and bottom of this wage table is almost $110,000 per year. Mastech Digital Technologies reports an average prevailing wage of $103,124. ByteDance reports $212,232. Both are sponsoring software developers under the same H1B program, in the same job market, in the same fiscal years. That gap does not reflect a difference in job duties alone. It reflects the difference between a staffing firm placing contractors at client sites and a product company hiring engineers to build its own platform.

IT consulting and staffing firms, including Capgemini, Deloitte, Compunnel, LTIMindTree, Mastech, CGI, and Kforce, cluster in the $103,000 to $131,000 range. Product companies at the top of the prestige ladder, Google, Meta, Salesforce, Uber, Nvidia, sit between $173,000 and $212,000. The firms in the middle, JPMorgan, Citibank, PayPal, LinkedIn, fall in the $150,000 to $170,000 range. This is a cleaner segmentation than most candidates realize, and it maps almost perfectly onto the type of employer rather than geography or team size.

Walmart’s presence here at 9,000-plus combined filings and a $137,000 average wage deserves attention. It sits in an awkward middle zone, above the consulting firms but well below the pure tech companies. Walmart has been aggressively building out its tech organization in Hoboken and Sunnyvale, and the filing volume confirms it is not a marginal player in this space. Candidates who filter by “tech company only” are walking past a serious sponsor.

Nvidia is the most interesting outlier by the inverse logic. The company is arguably the hottest employer in the AI industry right now, and yet it filed just 1,570 H1B petitions here, less than Kforce, a staffing firm. Nvidia is selective in ways that the raw filing numbers reflect. Getting an H1B through Nvidia is not primarily a volume game.

The Standouts

The two strongest sponsors for software developers, based on a combination of filing volume, wage levels, and institutional stability, are Google and Meta. Google’s combined 24,500-plus filings make it the highest-volume sponsor when both SOC categories are counted, and its $173,500 average wage is comfortably above the dataset median. Meta files fewer petitions but pays more, averaging nearly $197,000 across its combined categories. Both companies have long track records of sponsoring H1B workers through green card processes, which matters enormously for long-term immigration planning, not just the initial visa.

ByteDance warrants a separate mention, but with a clear caveat. Its $212,232 average wage is the highest in this entire dataset, and 1,413 filings is not a trivial number. The risk is regulatory and political. The company has faced credible legislative threats to its US operations since 2020, and that uncertainty does not disappear because the filings are strong. Candidates who receive a ByteDance offer should think carefully about what a forced divestiture or operational disruption would mean for their visa status mid-petition or mid-green card process.

What This Means If You Are Job Hunting Right Now

The filing volume at the top of this list reflects companies that have built H1B sponsorship into their standard hiring process. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are not making exceptions when they sponsor you. They have legal teams, established PERM pipelines, and institutional knowledge of how to move engineers through the system. For someone early in their H1B journey, that infrastructure matters as much as the salary offer.

If you are targeting mid-tier employers in the $130,000 to $160,000 range, banks and financial services firms like JPMorgan, Citibank, and U.S. Bank are filing in meaningful numbers and tend to be stable long-term employers. They are often overlooked in favor of pure tech companies, but their sponsorship pipelines are real and their attrition risk is lower than a startup.

Avoid anchoring your job search to prevailing wage numbers as a proxy for your actual offer. The wages in this dataset are what employers reported to the DOL as the prevailing wage for the role, not necessarily the total compensation. At companies like Google, Meta, and Nvidia, stock compensation can dwarf the base salary. The $184,000 Nvidia figure in this data does not include RSUs.

What This Data Does Not Tell You

This dataset does not include approval and denial rates by employer. Without that, you cannot assess which sponsors are having petitions returned or denied at higher rates, which is meaningful information for anyone choosing between offers. USCIS publishes employer-level approval data separately, and it is worth cross-referencing before you make a decision.

The data also does not capture how many of these petitions were for new hires versus renewals or transfers. A company with 17,000 filings may be renewing existing employees at scale rather than actively hiring at that volume. The numbers tell you that a company participates heavily in the program. They do not tell you how many open roles exist right now.

Finally, several employers appear under multiple legal entities. Amazon shows up as three separate companies in this data. Fidelity appears twice. The filing counts are not consolidated in the raw data, and candidates researching a specific employer should check under all entity names before drawing conclusions about that company’s total sponsorship activity.

Software development is the engine of the H1B program, and this data makes that plain. The employers at the top of this list are not occasional sponsors. They have built their engineering organizations around international talent, and they will continue doing so regardless of political noise around the program. For candidates with the skills to compete, the opportunity is large. The key is knowing which employers are running real pipelines, what they actually pay, and what the long-term immigration path looks like once you get in the door.