The Most Diverse Tech Jobs

Technology offers a wide range of better-than-average paying jobs, with huge growth potential.

Unfortunately, for many workers barriers remain in place that prevent or discourage them from STEM jobs. We used our curated demographics data to find the jobs in tech with the highest percentage of workers of color– and which ones fit the stereotype of being full of mini-Mark Zuckerbergs.

Key Findings

The most diverse tech job is Java Developer, where 56.5% of workers in this career are people of color.

62% of all high-tech employees are White, compared to only 7% being Black.

75% of all high-tech employees are male, compared to only 25% being female.

There are only 12 tech careers where people of color constitute at least 50% of the workforce or more.

Most Diverse Tech Jobs

How We Determined This

Using a range of sources, including demographic and resume data, we estimated the share of POC workers. Workers of color were defined as non-white workers. The higher the percentage of non-white workers, the more diverse the job.

We did not take into account other factors such as gender, background, neuro-diversity, or other aspects that make for a well-rounded, representative workplace.

Most Diverse Tech Jobs FAQ

How diverse is the tech industry?

The tech industry is not very diverse. Big tech drastically favors white and Asian men when it comes to their hiring and their salary offers. This has been a well-known problem since the inception of the industry itself.

It wasn’t until 2014 that several influential tech companies started to acknowledge the lacking diversity in their staff and vowed to change this in the future. Yearly, they release diversity reports to show the public how far they’ve come.

In the past six years, most of these companies and the tech industry as a whole haven’t completely delivered on their promises of increased inclusion. While there has been some positive progress regarding the diversity in big tech, it’s moving at a glacial pace.
Why is diversity in tech important?

Diversity in tech is important because it’s crucial in every facet of life – it allows for inclusivity and strengthens the environment as a whole.

It is limiting to formulate a team almost entirely made up of people from one gender and one racial or ethnic background. It limits the perspectives of the team, and in turn, hurts the tech industry’s progress as a whole.
Is the tech industry worse than other industries in terms of diversity?

The tech industry is worse than other industries in terms of diversity. Tech and computer science have the lowest rates of women and Black, Latinx, and Native American participants out of all the STEM-focused. Although women make up 57% of the workforce in the United States, 26% of technology positions are held by women.

This situation is even more dire for women of color, who only represent 4% of tech roles even though they account for 16% of the population. When looking at leadership and executive roles, these percentages are spread even thinner to near nonexistence.

While many other industries have a less than stellar record of diversity and inclusion, big tech is a major offender. In addition to that, the effort to correct this imbalance has been minimal.
What are underrepresented minorities in tech?

Underrepresented minorities in tech include Black, Latino and Hispanic, Native American, and female employees. White workers make up a whopping 62% of the high-tech industry, Asian employees make up 20%, Hispanic and Latino workers account for 8%, and Black employees make up 7%.

(Asian employees aren’t considered to be underrepresented in tech because they only make up 6% of the entire U.S. workforce, which means a 20% representation in the tech industry is quite high.)

In addition, men hold 75% of all tech jobs, as opposed to the 46.8% of the U.S. workforce as a whole that they make up. Women also only hold 5% of the leadership positions and own 5% of startups in this industry.

While big tech companies are recognizing these discrepancies as a problem and are beginning to work to fix them, they are still there and need to continue to be addressed.

Diversity matters

In general, workers, particularly young workers, see and enjoy the benefits of a diverse workplace.

Not just racial diversity, but gender, background differences, and ability differences can all contribute to a productive workplace, rich in viewpoints and perspectives.

Author

Kathy Morris

Kathy is the head of content at Zippia with a knack for engaging audiences. Prior to joining Zippia, Kathy worked at Gateway Blend growing audiences across diverse brands. She graduated from Troy University with a degree in Social Science Education.

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