Software engineering is a new field, with tons of growth and demand for talent. Today, companies are looking to fill over half a million software engineering roles. This guide covers what that looks like for compensation and how you can become a software engineer.

Through 21 pages, we’ve built a guide that covers what software engineering really is, what skills you need to become a software engineer, what the job market looks like, the day-to-day, and average salary figures across a variety of variables. Finally, we wrap up with an analysis of who are the top employers for software engineers and how to succeed in the interview -- and how Springboard can help you become a software engineer.

This guide is for people who want to become software engineers, and want to learn what salaries they can expect, how to optimize for the best salary, and how they can succeed in breaking into a new career path and becoming software engineers.

If you’re interested in being mentored 1:1 by software engineering professionals and the first coding bootcamp with deferred tuition and a job guarantee as well as career coaching, Springboard offers the Software Engineering Career Track -- a flexible, online self-paced bootcamp that will help you become a software engineer -- or you get your money back.

Your day-to-day might look like Elie Schoppik's. Elie is a web developer by trade, as well as the co-founder and lead instructor at Rithm School, a full-stack web development program.

7/8 am: Wake up, eat breakfast, exercise, prepare for the day, and head to work.

9-10:30 am: Arrive at work. Typically, a team standup occurs closer to midday, as software engineers have flexible schedules. Mornings can be a good time to focus, pick up on coding work from yesterday and prepare notes and questions for colleagues on problems to be solved. You can also fit in at least one hour of focussed coding work.

10:30 am: Read emails from the previous day and handle any miscellaneous requests from your team that can be done quickly. Or, you have a meeting with your manager or other team members.

11 am: Prepare for a team standup before lunch. Usually, this involves 7-8 people who reiterate the main tasks your team is working on. Standups normally last 15-30 minutes, although they can take up to 60 minutes if there's a big launch on the way.

12 - 1 pm: Lunch, typically with the team, to build relationships with coworkers.

1pm - 3 pm: Focus on deep work for a coding project. For example, this could be building a new feature or working on a platform integration.

3pm - 3:30 pm: Participate in an ad hoc whiteboard design session. This is typically when a few engineers discuss how something should work or how a problem could be solved.

4 pm - 5 pm: Work on maintenance and support, such as bugs to fix or answering questions about how things work from another team or even a customer.