Michigan

Feeny lists about 886 open tech roles in Michigan from roughly 166 companies. Each one comes from an employer's own careers page and gets refreshed, so you are looking at live openings rather than months-old reposts. A good share of them tie back to the auto industry rebuilding itself around software.

Detroit and Ann Arbor hold most of the tech work, with Novi adding to the suburban cluster in between. Detroit is where the mobility and autonomy money lands, while Ann Arbor leans on the University of Michigan for a broader startup layer. The openings cover 5 Michigan cities, but those two do the bulk of the hiring.

The autonomy and mobility names are the ones to know: May Mobility, Torc, and Applied Intuition all hire here as the car industry pivots toward self-driving software. Ann Arbor's university-fed startup scene adds a second layer beyond cars. If you have never thought of Michigan as a software state, the shift from mechanical engineering to autonomous-vehicle code is exactly what changed that.

Autonomous vehicles and embedded systems lead, which follows directly from who is hiring. Expect a lot of C++, sensor and perception work, and the kind of low-level engineering that consumer-app markets rarely need. Enterprise software fills out the rest, much of it around the auto supply chain. It is a market that rewards engineers who like working close to hardware.

Cost of living runs about 9% below the national average, which is a real draw when you compare a Detroit or Ann Arbor salary against coastal rents. The scene is smaller than the Bay Area or Boston, so you trade breadth of employers for a much lower cost base and a market where autonomy talent is genuinely scarce and valued. Ann Arbor in particular has the college-town texture that makes it easy to live in. The honest downside is depth: if the mobility bet cools, the number of alternative employers is thinner than in a bigger hub.