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10 smaller US cities with booming tech scenes

10 smaller US cities with booming tech scenes

Jordan Pandy

Fayetteville, Arkansas.Michael Warren/Getty Images

Tech companies are expanding their workforces, breeding new tech hubs across the country.
Many are emerging in mid-size cities, like Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Rochester, New York.

A new crop of mid-size cities across the country are attracting in-demand tech talent.

Usual suspects like San Francisco and Seattle tend to lead the way when it comes to the concentration of advanced tech talent within the city, but according to a study from research firm the Burning Glass Institute cited in the Wall Street Journal, mid-size cities are gaining ground.

"Some of these frontier skills that are growing the fastest and are commanding the highest value show up in places where you wouldn't have seen them in the past," Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, told the Journal.

Tech workers with the most in-demand and well-paid skills, like those related to cloud and serverless computing, machine learning, and cybersecurity operations, are moving to cities like Provo, Utah, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, the study found.

Burning Glass analyzed tech skills associated with a higher market demand and those that command higher pay. From that list, it then ranked cities by their share of tech workers with at least one of the in-demand tech skills previously identified. It defined mid-size cities as those with between 5,000 and 24,999 tech workers.

Cities with more to offer than just a robust tech scene scored high in where advanced tech talent is concentrating. Places like Boise City, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, Utah, both known for outdoor activities first, are attracting tech talent as well. Utah's tech industry is steadily developing, although it is still experiencing growing pains.

Fayetteville, Arkansas, which ranked as the mid-size city with the second-highest concentration of advanced tech talent, has attracted tech workers seeking a more laid-back lifestyle than larger cities with a high concentration of tech talent, like Austin, Texas.

Here are the top 10 mid-size cities ranked by their concentration of advanced tech workers, according to the Burning Glass Institute.