Let’s level for a moment: We think journalism can have a huge impact on connecting a city’s workforce with growing, innovative companies.

Hopefully you’ve seen our increased focus on content about opportunities and career growth, such as our This Week in Jobs newsletter, our growing local tech jobs board, or this month’s editorial focus on how you can get hired.

We also think that journalism helps us as an organization be smarter about how we deliver info about things we’re promoting — like by taking a deep dive into the data behind the scenes of our tech jobs fair NET/WORK, which goes down tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb. 26 at The Fillmore Philadelphia in Fishtown.

Will there be a job there for you? That data says yes, emphatically.

Each year, we poll our attending companies about the roles they’ll have open at NET/WORK. This year, we heard from 51 of the exhibiting companies.

Here’s a look at the type of work, experience levels and salary expectations of the open roles that companies will be promoting tomorrow at the event.

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What industry categories/verticals best align with your organization?

We asked companies to define the industries they’re in. In some cases, companies had multiple answers, if for example it was a digital agency in the healthcare space.

• Software: 43%
• Data and Analytics: 29%
• Digital Agency or Web Development Firm: 24%
• Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning: 18%
• eCommerce / Retail: 16%
• Financial Services: 16%
• Cloud Computing: 14%
• Open Source: 12%
• Healthcare: 12%
• Marketing: 12%
• Design: 12%
• Sciences: 10%
• FinTech: 6%
• Consumer: 4%
• Cybersecurity: 4%
• University or Government: 4%
• Networking or Infrastructure: 4%
• Media: 4%
• Open Data: 2%
• Tech Training / Digital Access: 2%

How many positions are you looking to fill right now?

• 8 companies said 1-2 jobs 
• 16 companies said 3-5 jobs 
• 12 companies said 6-10 jobs 
• 2 companies said 11-15 jobs 
• 5 companies said 16-20 jobs 
• 8 companies said more than 20 jobs 

That puts the range between 398 open positions and more than 500 open positions, based on conservative math. Dang.

When looking at the data year-over-year, we’re seeing more big companies getting involved in the tech community (the number currently hiring more than 20 roles has doubled), and a lot of growth in the companies that are trying to fill between 3 and 10 open positions (the number of companies in that range have nearly tripled).

What roles are you hiring for?

As expected, those involved with developing product in the tech space are the most sought after at NET/WORK. Open engineering and software development roles make up 39 percent of the total roles, backed by UX/Design positions at 13 percent. But tech companies need all kinds of talent: In this case, 48 percent of the jobs at NET/WORK are focused on operations, business development, marketing and other crucial positions.

• Engineering/Development: 277 jobs, or 39% of total roles available
• UX/Design: 96 jobs, or 13% of total roles available
• Operations/Project Management: 88 jobs, or 12% of total roles available
• Sales/Business Development: 70 jobs, or 10% of total roles available
• Marketing/Social: 61 jobs, or 9% of total roles available
• Other: 123 jobs, or 17% of total roles available

On average, how many years of experience are expected for the positions you are looking to fill?

We asked companies to tell us for each role (i.e., engineering or marketing) how many years of experience they’re expecting of their incoming candidates. We then took a weighted average of those answers to give a general range for each area.

Entry-level candidates, don’t be discouraged: Plenty of the roles available fall into the one-to-three-years-of-experience range, but the more senior roles affected the averages.

• Engineering/Development: 3.9 years to 4.8 years
• UX/Design: 3.4 years to 4.3 years
• Operations/Project Management: 4.1 years to 4.9 years
• Sales/Business Development: 3.5 years to 4.3 years
• Marketing/Social: 3.4 years to 4.2 years

What do salaries look like?

As an optional question, we asked companies to share what their starting salaries were for the positions the have open, and heard from 15 of the participating companies. Although it’s not a big enough sample size, we thought it would be interesting to share what we saw. Keep in mind, a “starting salary” in this case refers to what the salary is for a person that starts in that specific role, whether or not they are entry-level or require more than 5 years experience.

• Engineering/Development: Between $98,000 and $108,000
• UX/Design: Between $83,000 and $93,000
• Operations/Project Management: Between $89,000 and $100,000
• Sales/Business Development: Between $73,000 and $83,000
• Marketing/Social: Between $75,000 and $85,000
• Other: Between $59,000 and $68,000

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Get your ticket for NET/WORK Philly at the door tomorrow (Feb. 26) or RSVP now.

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