Best Places to Work in IT 2025

What makes a company a great place to work for IT professionals? Top salaries and benefits certainly help, but those are just table stakes. Tech workers are looking for challenging projects, growth opportunities, and continuous learning in a supportive workplace.

For the 31^st year, Computerworld publisher Foundry surveyed large, midsize, and small organizations to find the top IT employers. Read our special report to see which companies made our list and what makes them such desirable places to work.

To read the Best Places to Work in IT 2025 report in PDF format, download it below (no registration required).

In this report:

• Cover story: Building a collaborative IT culture
• Profiles of three Best Places companies: Total Quality Logistics, OCLC, and Tokio Marine North America Services
• The Best Places to Work in IT 2025: Rankings by company size
• Metholodology: How we chose the best places to work

Building a collaborative IT culture

The ongoing quest for technical talent in an uncertain economic environment has caused many organizations to turn their attention inward, taking steps to keep their existing IT workforce engaged and invested in the overall business charter. The goal: build a collaborative IT culture defined by continuous learning, meaningful work, and positive contributions to the business.

Companies participating in Computerworld’s 31^st annual “Best Places to Work in IT” survey show a strong commitment to in-house IT talent, even as they cast a wider net for IT candidates to build a more diverse workforce that fosters creativity and innovation. A heightened emphasis on training is designed to enrich technical skills — especially in artificial intelligence (AI), analytics, and the cloud — as well as soft skill sets that align with broader business objectives.

“We are steadfast in our technology investments and continue to modernize our skill sets, technologies, and processes at the same speed as ever — or even faster,” says Deepa Soni, chief information and operations officer at The Hartford, ranked No. 2 overall and No. 4 in the career development/training category among large companies in this year’s survey. “We think about three things to make IT the best destination for internal and external folks: Leveraging cutting-edge technology and solutions, creating business impact, and building a culture that fosters creativity while being inclusive and diverse.”

Precision hiring addresses critical skills gaps

Our survey found that the relentless pace of new hiring over the past two years remains robust. Among the surveyed companies, 79% have increased the total number of IT employees over the last three years, on average by 36%. This is down from a high of 86% in the 2024 survey but surpasses the 72% of companies reporting three-year IT workforce gains in 2023.

But although IT hiring is picking up steam again after a brief lull, survey respondents indicated that another cooling-off period may lie ahead. Just half of this year’s respondents plan to increase the number of IT hires over the next fiscal year, down significantly from the previous two years (71% and 72%, respectively). Nearly half of the organizations (46%) expect the size of their IT workforce to remain the same, with larger firms more likely to face hiring slowdowns. Conversely, 70% of smaller companies plan to add IT talent, with an average increase of 10%.

Top 10: IT Growth

VyStar Credit Union, ranked third overall among midsize company respondents, is being very intentional about its IT hiring strategy while it moves to fill key openings. The plan is to slowly augment its 271-person IT staff with several critical positions, including a high-level AI thought leader and champion, several data architects, and engineers versed in software development life cycle skills such as DevOps automation.

“We are focused on how to make the best use of AI for our organization and are on a relentless journey to automate and streamline processes,” says Lisa Cochran, CIO of VyStar. “We are a heavily regulated organization, so we must have consistent ways of documenting changes. If we can capture and create artifacts without a human, then developers can spend less time on documentation.”

Like VyStar, many other companies are mapping the smaller number of external hires to highly coveted emerging skills categories — many of which are in short supply in the general marketplace. Among this year’s respondents, most new open IT-related positions fall into critical skills groups such as AI/machine learning (86%), data science/analytics (78%), cloud/multicloud (76%), and IT/cybersecurity (67%). In each of these competency areas, companies have dialed up hiring over last year’s, most significantly in the AI/machine learning (ML) area, which saw a 12-point year-over-year hike.

To address the need for more traditional IT skills, companies are relying more heavily on contract workers. In this year’s survey, the number of temporary or contract workers increased 10% on average across all respondents, compared with an average 7% decrease in contract workers hired over the prior 12 months.

Career development opportunities on the rise

While casting an eye toward external talent, organizations continue to promote from within to hold onto existing talent. This year’s survey found that 13% of IT employees across all companies advanced to new positions in the last fiscal year, much as in the last two years (15% in the 2024 survey and 14% in 2023). Similarly, salary bumps remain in line with last year’s findings, with 90% of IT employees the beneficiaries of a raise. Salary cuts or wage freezes don’t appear to be on the table — the vast majority (96%) of this year’s respondents said no such plans were in the works, now or in the foreseeable future.

This year’s survey indicates that IT professionals have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of internal programs to boost their career. Respondent companies are upleveling training programs with new curriculum that burnishes both technical and business skills, going deeper on high-demand technologies such as AI and cloud engineering while also providing education on soft skills such as change management and communications, to accommodate the increasing influence of digital technologies across the business.

Top 10: Career Development

As part of the emphasis on internal employee development, companies are putting structures in place to help IT professionals actively chart a career course. New mentorship, apprenticeship, and job rotation programs deliver exposure to emerging technology domains as well as full immersion in the business. Defined learning paths and formalized skills assessments help IT workers be more intentional about identifying and addressing critical skills gaps when mapping out their next career move.

These efforts continue to move the needle on internal mobility: Approximately 35% of IT vacancies are now being filled through company insiders, equal to last year’s percentage and down slightly from the 38% reported in the 2023 survey.

At Amerisure Mutual Insurance, which ranked fourth overall among small companies and sixth for career development and training, communities of practice meet monthly or quarterly, providing cross-functional IT groups and business professionals with demonstrations, tutorials, and training to build expertise in areas such as agile, DevOps, and product architecture. In addition, all IT staffers now participate in a proprietary skills assessment that spells out current skills and targets key areas for improvement.

“Development plans can be too broad and not actionable,” notes Amjed Al-Zoubi, Amerisure’s CIO. “This isn’t a checklist but, rather, a very clear conversation and development plan highlighting the skills they need to grow into specific jobs.”

Amerisure also bolsters internal IT development practices by increasing the emphasis on business outcomes. Historically, Amerisure assigned people to projects from a central IT talent pool, reassigning them when work was complete. Today, IT teams are aligned with eight different business groups.

“There were inefficiencies in our old process, and IT was limited in their ability to learn the business,” Al-Zoubi explains. “Now the IT underwriting team is aligned with the business underwriting team, and they work together to solve underwriting problems. We bring our best, and they bring their best, and it results in higher-performing teams.”

Training courses offered by survey respondents run the gamut and are available to all IT employees, regardless of where they work. Technical training, technical certifications, and management training are the most prevalent forms of instruction, but there is also a heavy emphasis on professional career development, building business and soft skills, and even health and wellness.

The Hartford is continuing to uplevel its skills development programs to stay abreast of the latest technology trends and leadership skills. For example, the firm has doubled training hours available for cloud, agile development, data science, and cybersecurity. The company’s HartCode Academy Bootcamp provides an avenue for non-IT people to learn software engineering and business data analysis skills, and there are numerous executive-level programs devoted to cultivating leadership skills.

“We are helping IT leaders get really comfortable with change and how they lead teams,” Soni says. “We are training folks to be the CIOs of the future.”

Top 10: Benefits & Compensation

Given the emphasis on continuous learning, training budgets remain flush, with 39% of this year’s respondents increasing their training budget from the previous year and 59% reporting no change to their allocations. The number of companies increasing their training budget has fallen over the past two years, down from 62% in 2023 and 49% last year.

Most companies don’t set caps on training: 77% give employees the latitude to participate in as many programs as they desire. Those that do restrict employees limit them to seven days, on average, of in-person or remote training annually.

To spark engagement, companies are courting employees with a variety of tactics, including hosting employee appreciation events (98%), doling out bonuses or other high-value items to reward high performers (92%), and building clear career paths with attainable milestones (88%). Free career development services are also offered by 82% of the respondents. Mentoring programs remain a consistent and widely prevalent vehicle for upskilling existing IT workers, offered by 76% of the responding companies, which is similar to last year.

DEI remains a priority, with mixed results

Companies continue to dedicate time and money to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, confident that greater workforce diversity is an important element of company culture as well as a factor in upleveling innovation and diversity of thought. Overall DEI efforts have made an impact, but they’ve been slower to reshape the makeup of the traditional IT workforce, particularly when it comes to women, who made up 27% of the IT workforce among respondents this year, down slightly from 29% in 2024 and 28% in 2023.

On the other hand, minority hires are on the rise. Among this year’s respondents, the number of people in IT identifying as part of a minority group jumped to 36%, compared to 33% in the 2024 survey. Minority groups accounted for 29% of the IT managers and 37% of the nonmanagers.

The percentage of companies with a formal DEI strategy fell this year to 88%, down six points from 2024. Large firms were more likely to have a formal strategy, at 94%. Companies were also less likely to have a dedicated role in place to promote DEI (54% this year, compared to 62% in 2024), although most respondents (92%) maintain either a person or a team in place to champion DEI policies and awareness.

The Hartford has been steadfast in its commitment to diversity, to the point where DEI is infused into company culture instead of serving as a stand-alone program, says Soni. “DEI is baked into the fabric of how we do business quite uniquely,” she says. “We view it as a business necessity — we have to represent the society that we live in in the workplaces we have.”

To encourage greater understanding of DEI and its potential impacts, organizations such as The Hartford are serving up a smorgasbord of DEI training, including curriculum focused on preventing discrimination and harassment (96%) and creating an inclusive workspace (92%).

Much of the DEI activity is consistent with last year’s survey, with one notable exception: providing targeted internships for women and minorities, at 50% this year, compared to 60% in the 2024 survey.

Top 10: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

The most popular steps for promoting DEI include celebration of employee differences (96%), recruitment strategies aimed at attracting diverse employees (94%), and diversity and inclusion training (93%). Creating corporate enterprise resource groups (ERGs) based on common goals, interests, and identity affiliations is another way organizations are fostering and empowering like-minded communities. Respondents are forming ERGs to support women, people of color, and LGBTQ populations as well as those aimed at niche areas such as caregivers, veterans, and even video gamers.

One of The Hartford’s unique DEI efforts is its reverse mentoring program, where an employee with a diverse background is paired with a senior executive to help that person learn what it’s like to work in the firm as a diverse hire. “It’s about putting our executives in their shoes,” Soni says. The program, which started as an experiment, has been well received by executives as well as mentees, she says.

Organizations are shoring up DEI efforts in part through leader accountability. Among the respondents, 33% evaluate IT leaders based on their progress on meeting specific DEI goals, up slightly from last year, 31%. At the same time, DEI progress and outcomes are having an impact on IT leader compensation: 22% this year, compared to 19% in 2024.

OCLC, ranked second overall for midsize companies and first in the DEI category, has deployed many of these initiatives and is enjoying success in cultivating a more diverse IT workforce. The company, a nonprofit organization providing technology and services to the library community, has expanded recruiting efforts into diverse talent pools, including technology boot camps aimed at underrepresented communities, while forging partnerships with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

Another lever for change: creating new job classes that remove the requirement for a four-year technical degree in tandem with instituting a local outreach coding program.

“This produces staff with some level of familiarity with development, but not a degree,” says Bart Murphy, chief technology and information officer of OCLC. “We do a checkpoint every month to ensure the staffer is progressing and getting what they need to move up into an engineering role here or another organization. It’s helped build a diverse pipeline.”

The DEI efforts are having an impact. OCLC has shown steady increases in BIPOC and female representation for the last 15 years. Currently the IT department boasts 29.5% female representation, better than the industry average, Murphy says.

Hybrid work settles in

Well past the height of the pandemic, hybrid work models continue to be the norm, including in IT departments. Much like last year, most respondents (92%) to this year’s survey have established a formal policy on flexible work, although there is no one-size-fits-all model. The breakdown of employee work patterns has remained consistent with last year’s: On average, 13% of IT employees are reporting to the office on a daily basis; 31% are fully remote; and 56% work in some sort of hybrid model, splitting time in and out of the office.

Top 10: Remote / Hybrid Work

Most companies (71%) give employees a moderate level of autonomy to choose where they work, but often the arrangement needs to be approved by the company or meet certain parameters. That’s a notable change from last year, when 62% enjoyed moderate levels of autonomy and 35% could choose where they wanted to work on any given day. Midsize companies are more likely to leave the decision of where to work to employees, at 34%.

Companies now have well-established policies to ensure hybrid work success, including provisioning a full slate of technology equipment, formalizing use of collaboration platforms, and training employees and managers on tools and communications best practices.

VyStar’s flexible work program lets employees choose the days they work in-office or remotely. Individuals select eight days a month to be in the office, and managers and leaders choose 12 days. All employees can work remotely in July, a perk the company touts as creating better flexibility and work/life balance.

“Remote July was created for people who want their kids to visit with grandparents or to see another country,” Cochran says, adding that once a request is made, the IT department provisions the proper secure technology to support the arrangements. “It’s a great benefit, and we get a lot of positive feedback.”

Meaningful work drives overall satisfaction

Whether they’re recruiting new talent or developing the skills of their in-house teams, the leaders in this year’s “Best Places to Work in IT” study offer a variety of benefits to promote satisfaction and loyalty among the IT workforce. Programs range from comprehensive wellness plans and spot bonuses to financial wellness coaching and even pet insurance.

Top 10: Retention & Engagement

Perhaps the most consequential factor influencing how IT professionals feel about their job is carving out opportunities for meaningful work and continuous professional development. At Tokio Marine North America Services, ranked second overall among small companies and first in both career development/training and DEI, this mindset translates into a culture that emphasizes leading-edge technologies in the context of driving business goals while providing individual advancement opportunities along the way.

“Flexible work arrangements and fair compensation make it easier to get people in the door,” says Bob Pick, the company’s executive vice president and CIO. “To keep them here, we train the daylights out of everyone and ensure diagonal and horizontal career mobility. We retain great institutional knowledge, and people get a new career path. It’s a win-win.”— Beth Stackpole

Profiles of three Best Places companies

• Total Quality Logistics: Building a ‘talent destination’ through employee engagement
• OCLC: Technology with a purpose drives workplace diversity
• Tokio Marine: Continuous learning — and many hats

The Best Places to Work in IT 2025

See the top workplaces for tech pros at large, midsize, and small organizations.

Large organization rankings

5,000 or more employees

Midsize organization rankings

1,001–4,999 employees

Small organization rankings

1,000 or fewer employees

How we chose the best places to work

Computerworld publisher Foundry conducted its 31st annual survey to identify the best places for IT professionals to work. In April 2024, Computerworld started accepting nominations from organizations that had a minimum of 100 total employees and five IT employees.

Participants were asked to provide contact information for a person at their organization who is familiar with or has access to employment statistics and financial data as well as benefits policies and programs for the IT department and the entire organization.

Beginning in mid-April 2024, contacts at the nominated organizations received a 58-question company survey across six categories:

• DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) practices
• IT turnover, promotions, and growth
• IT retention and engagement programs
• Remote/hybrid working
• Benefits and perks (such as eldercare and childcare, flextime, and reimbursement for college tuition)
• Training and career development opportunities

In addition to receiving scores based on answers to closed-ended questions, the survey entries (including numerous open-ended responses) were reviewed and evaluated by a panel of industry experts.

The nomination and company surveys were conducted online. Responses to the company survey were collected and tabulated by a third-party research vendor. The research was closed in July 2024.

Top 10 lists

Our top 10 lists show the best of the best — the organizations that excel in each of the six categories covered. To determine each list, we considered the following factors:

• DEI: DEI strategies and practices, the existence of dedicated role(s) promoting workplace diversity and inclusion, inclusion of women and minority groups within the IT workforce and IT management, leadership accountability for DEI, DEI training opportunities
• Employee retention and engagement: Frequency of employee satisfaction surveys, promotions, salary increases, actions taken to boost employee morale
• Remote/hybrid work: Employee autonomy over work location, percentage of remote and hybrid employees, policies regarding flexible work, actions taken to support flexible work, actions taken to ensure employee safety and well-being
• Benefits: The range of benefits and perks offered, including sabbaticals, eldercare and childcare, paid time off, and (within the U.S.) family leave and healthcare benefits
• IT career development and training: Mentoring programs, training budget, promotions within IT, accessibility of training to remote employees, unique training programs
• IT growth: Changes in IT head count over the past three years, IT turnover and anticipated growth, new skills companies are planning to hire this year, outsourcing plans, the company’s revenue growth over the past three years

For scoring the responses from the company surveys, results were weighted against averages and benchmarks calculated within each company size group.

The survey process was managed by Jen Garofalo, research director in Foundry’s Global Services group, working with independent firm Research Results, Inc.

About our judges

Amy Bennett is Editor-in-Chief for Foundry’s five enterprise brands. She is a veteran editor with more than 20 years of experience in B2B tech publishing and considers herself lucky to have had a front-row seat to IT’s business strategy evolution.

Rob O’Regan is founder and principal of 822 Media, a technology marketing consultancy. He is a veteran journalist and content marketer with a passion for great storytelling.

Valerie Potter is managing editor, features, at Computerworld. She has worked in technology journalism for more than 20 years.

Anne Taylor is director of content strategy at Foundry. She has served as a news reporter, editor, and freelance writer covering the tech industry for 20+ years.

Read more about the Best Places to Work in IT 2025:

• Total Quality Logistics: Building a ‘talent destination’ through employee engagement
• OCLC: Technology with a purpose drives workplace diversity
• Tokio Marine: Continuous learning — and many hats
• About the Best Places to Work in IT program