Why Austin & Dallas are outpacing the coasts

I run our technology practice from San Francisco. So when I tell you that Texas has, in real terms, become a serious destination for senior US tech and finance talent, you should know I’m saying that against my own short-term commercial interest. Every senior placement we make in Austin or Dallas is, mechanically, one we didn’t make in San Francisco or New York. But the data doesn’t care about commercial interest, and the data is unambiguous: Texas absorbed more senior US talent in 2025 than any state outside California, and the trajectory looks set to continue.

This piece is built on 64 senior placements we made in Texas between January 2025 and the first week of April 2026, across our Austin office at 500 W 2nd Street and our Dallas operations. Of those 64, the breakdown was 38 in Austin, 18 in Dallas-Fort Worth, and 8 in Houston. Every package below comes from a real signed offer letter for a real candidate now doing the job in Texas.

The story that follows is not the romantic version of Texas migration you may have read in 2021. That version — everyone was leaving California, the tech industry was moving wholesale, Austin would replace Silicon Valley — was largely wishful thinking. The actual story is more nuanced and, in our view, more interesting. Texas didn’t replace anything. It built something new alongside the existing US tech and finance hubs, and that new thing has now matured enough to compete on its own terms.

The 2025 numbers, in one chart

Three numbers that frame the rest of this piece.

The 14.2% year-over-year growth in Texas senior-hire postings outpaces every other major US state. For reference, New York grew 4.1% over the same period, California grew 2.8%, and Florida grew 9.6%. Texas is, by this measure, the single fastest-growing senior labor market in the United States.

The candidate-side number is at least as important. In 2022, roughly 30% of the senior candidates in our active searches said they would consider a Texas-based role. By late 2025, that number was 52%. For candidates with school-age children or in dual-career households where both spouses work, the openness rate is even higher — we’ve had candidates in 2025 who proactively asked us to focus their search on Texas opportunities specifically, which would have been unusual three years ago.

This didn’t happen overnight

The popular narrative that Texas "exploded" in 2020–2021 because of COVID is incomplete and partly wrong. The seeds were planted earlier, and the current trajectory has roots that go back to 2017 or earlier.

The 2017 federal tax reform mattered. The cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, set at $10,000, increased the effective after-tax cost of living in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California. For a senior professional earning $1M+, the cap meant losing $50K to $80K of previously-deductible taxes — a meaningful change to disposable income. By 2018–2019, a handful of senior US financial-services and tech executives were already establishing Florida or Texas residency for tax purposes, even while still working primarily in New York or San Francisco.

COVID accelerated what was underway. With remote work proven feasible at scale, the question of where to physically live became disentangled from where to professionally work. Texas had warm weather, sophisticated cultural infrastructure (museums, restaurants, schools, multiple Tier-1 universities), proximity to other Southern hubs, and zero state income tax. The relocation thesis went from a tax optimization story to a quality-of-life story.

Specific corporate decisions catalyzed the next wave. Tesla’s 2021 headquarters relocation from Palo Alto to Austin, Oracle’s 2020 move from Redwood Shores to Austin, Apple’s ongoing campus expansion in Austin, Toyota’s long-established North American HQ in Plano, and Charles Schwab’s relocation from San Francisco to Westlake (Dallas-Fort Worth) created a base of senior leadership demand that hadn’t existed at scale before. Each of these moves seeded a network of executives who then began recruiting their former colleagues.

The capital allocation followed the executives. By 2023, major venture-capital firms had opened Austin offices: Founders Fund, a16z, Greylock, and several others. The corporate development teams of major acquirers (Salesforce, Microsoft, Cisco) began holding regular Austin-based meetings. The Austin Convention Center became a default venue for senior tech industry events that, three years prior, would have happened in San Francisco. Capital, once dispersed across geographies, found a meaningful Texas concentration.

Austin: the technology pivot

Austin is the heart of the story. 38 of our 64 2025 Texas placements were in the Austin metropolitan area — up from 26 in 2024 and from just 11 in 2022. The composition has shifted decisively toward technology and tech-adjacent roles, even as the city has retained its broader sector diversity.

The most interesting sub-trend in this dataset, in my view: hardware-adjacent roles are growing faster in Austin than pure software. The combination of Tesla’s gigafactory, Samsung’s Austin fabrication facility, Applied Materials, NXP Semiconductors, and a deepening semiconductor ecosystem has created demand for hardware engineering leadership that simply didn’t exist in Austin five years ago. We placed 6 senior hardware leaders in 2025 — in 2020, that number was zero. The CHIPS Act and the broader US semiconductor reshoring effort have made Austin one of the two or three most active US hardware-engineering hiring markets, alongside Phoenix (Intel/TSMC) and the Bay Area (still the largest by volume).

The software/SaaS sector remains the largest pool of Austin placements at 14 of our 38. The composition has changed though. Three years ago, Austin software placements were mostly mid-market SaaS companies serving B2B customers nationally. Today, they include a meaningful share of late-stage private companies with valuations in the $1B+ range, a fact that would have been unusual in 2020. The maturation of the Austin VC ecosystem — with Founders Fund, Greylock, and a16z all running active Austin operations — has supported larger funding rounds for Austin-headquartered companies, which in turn has supported senior compensation that competes (within 20%) with Bay Area equivalents.

One specific story worth telling: in 2025 we ran a VPE search for an Austin-headquartered AI infrastructure company at the Series C stage. The total comp package signed was $1.2 million — 14% below what we estimated the equivalent Bay Area company would have paid for the same candidate, but with no state income tax, dramatically lower housing costs, and a candidate who explicitly preferred Austin over San Francisco for family reasons. The negotiation was straightforward; the candidate moved from Mountain View; the company has since grown its Austin engineering team from 35 to 75 people. The story is, in our experience, increasingly typical.

Dallas: the financial-services magnet

Dallas-Fort Worth is a different story than Austin. The Texas financial-services capital has long hosted major banks (Comerica, Texas Capital), insurance headquarters (Liberty Mutual, McKesson, USAA via San Antonio nearby), and asset managers, but the 2020–2024 wave of Wall Street relocations has materially shifted the equation. The most visible move was Goldman Sachs’ massive new campus under construction in Uptown Dallas, scheduled to house 5,000 employees by 2027. The Goldman campus is symbolic but understates the breadth of the migration: Charles Schwab, Toyota Financial Services, Bank of America’s growing campus, and a handful of hedge funds and asset managers have all materially scaled DFW operations.

Of our 18 DFW placements in 2025, 14 were in financial services or financial services-adjacent roles. The remaining 4 spanned healthcare, industrials, and consumer. The financial-services concentration is unusually high for any single US metropolitan area outside New York — and the median CFO total comp in Dallas of $785,000 (across the 9 DFW CFO placements we made in 2025) reflects this concentration.

To put that number in context: Dallas CFO compensation is meaningfully below New York’s $1.04M median (which we cover in detail in our New York CFO compensation report) — but above what the same role would have paid in DFW five years ago. The compression of the geography premium for senior finance talent is one of the more consequential pricing developments of the past 5 years.

The other interesting structural feature of DFW: back-office concentration creates senior demand. Many of the financial-services firms with DFW operations have located their technology infrastructure, operations, and shared-services functions there, while keeping client-facing and trading functions in New York. This means there is concentrated demand for senior Operations, Technology, and Internal-Audit leadership in DFW — roles that would historically have been in New York or Chicago. We placed 5 senior Operations and Technology leaders at financial services firms in DFW in 2025; in 2022, that number was 1.

Houston: energy meets technology

Our smallest Texas dataset in 2025 (8 placements) and the most stable. Houston remains primarily an energy and healthcare market, with limited but growing exposure to technology. Median compensation for senior energy-sector roles in Houston tracks within 5% of national medians for equivalent roles — meaning Houston pays competitively for senior energy talent without the geography premium that NYC and SF carry. The Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, continues to drive senior healthcare administration and clinical-leadership demand.

The change in Houston is more subtle than the change in Austin or Dallas: energy companies are increasingly looking for executives with technology backgrounds. Three of our 8 Houston placements in 2025 were technology executives moving into traditional energy companies focused on digitization, AI-enabled operations, and energy-trading analytics. This is a meaningful shift for a city where executive résumés were historically dominated by upstream oil-and-gas operating experience. The candidates we placed were typically from California or the Northeast, with backgrounds in industrial SaaS, data analytics platforms, or enterprise infrastructure — not traditional energy career paths.

One candidate dynamic worth noting: Houston relocations in our 2025 dataset disproportionately involved candidates with family ties to Texas (grew up there, family still there) or with dual-career households where the spouse’s career was based in Texas. The "blank slate relocation" candidates — senior professionals choosing Houston based purely on professional opportunity — are still rare. The city is competing primarily within an existing network, not attracting net-new senior talent the way Austin is.

Compensation comparison: TX vs. the coasts

The most useful framing for candidates evaluating Texas opportunities is a direct comparison of the same role profile across major US markets. We’ve assembled the 2025 numbers from our active practice across all nine office cities.

For VP Engineering at a $1B–$5B SaaS company, 2025 median total compensation by market:

The Texas-vs-SF compensation gap is real and material on a gross basis. The Austin VPE makes roughly 71% of what the San Francisco VPE makes for the same job. That’s a meaningful number, and most published benchmarks stop there. But the gross gap is only the start of the actual calculation.

Two things flip the picture quickly when you do the net math. First, the Texas markets have zero state income tax, while California has the highest top marginal rate in the country at 13.3%. Second, housing in Austin and Dallas is dramatically less expensive than San Francisco housing — particularly for the family-size homes that senior executives typically buy. The combination means the net disposable income for the Austin VPE is closer to the San Francisco VPE’s net than the gross numbers suggest.

For broader context on how senior compensation varies across US markets and sectors, see our 2026 Executive Compensation Report, which puts the geographic story in context with sector dynamics.

The cost-of-living math

Headline compensation numbers obscure the actual disposable-income calculation, and the disposable-income calculation is where the Texas pitch actually wins (or loses). The relevant math for a senior US professional considering an Austin move from San Francisco:

Two important things to notice. First, in the home-ownership scenario, the Austin VPE comes out $64,000 per year ahead of the San Francisco VPE in disposable income terms — despite earning $240,000 less in gross compensation. The math flips entirely because the cost of housing in San Francisco is so high that it consumes the gross compensation advantage. Second, in the renting scenario, San Francisco still wins, but by less than people expect — only $36,000 per year, and that gap shrinks further when commuting time, longer working hours, and other quality-of-life factors are considered.

The owning-scenario flip is the single most important fact about the Austin-vs-SF math for most senior executives. Senior executives in their 40s and 50s typically own rather than rent. The Austin advantage in disposable income is meaningful precisely for the demographic most likely to be considering a senior US relocation.

For dual-income households the math becomes even more favorable to Texas. Both spouses’ incomes avoid state income tax in Texas. Housing costs are paid once but disposable income is earned twice. A dual-VPE household in Austin nets out significantly ahead of the same household in San Francisco, even though gross compensation is lower.

Who is actually moving

The narrative of "Texas migration" obscures the fact that the actual migration is highly demographic-specific. Three patterns from our 2025 Texas relocation placements (where we tracked the candidate’s prior location):

Family-stage executives are over-represented. Of our 47 interstate relocations to Texas in 2025, 32 candidates had school-age children. The school-age cohort over-indexes on Texas relocations because the housing-cost differential is especially powerful when buying a home large enough for a family with multiple children, and because the public-school options in suburban Austin (Westlake, Eanes, Lake Travis) and DFW (Plano, Frisco, Highland Park) are nationally competitive at price points San Francisco and New York cannot match.

Dual-career households are over-represented. 28 of the 47 relocations involved dual-career households where both spouses had professional careers. The Texas tax advantage applies to both incomes, and the depth of the Austin and Dallas job markets is now sufficient to support both spouses’ careers in a way it wasn’t five years ago. We’ve placed several candidates where the move was contingent on the spouse also finding a role — in 2022, this was a deal-breaker for most Texas opportunities; in 2025, it’s almost always achievable.

Late-career executives are growing as a segment. A segment that didn’t exist in our 2022 data has emerged: senior executives in their late 50s or 60s relocating to Texas for what may be their final 5- to 10-year career chapter. The dynamics: lower cost of living means lower required compensation, the role is often advisory or operating-partner work rather than CEO/CFO, and the late-career executive is in a position to optimize for quality-of-life rather than maximum compensation. We placed 6 senior executives in this profile in 2025. None in 2022.

The growing talent-pool problem

The flip side of demand outpacing supply: Texas is now short on senior talent for the most in-demand roles. The migration that helped employers in 2021–2023 is mostly complete; the easy candidates have already moved. For the most competitive roles — AI engineering leadership, FinTech CFOs, biotech R&D — we’re increasingly running multi-state searches because the local Texas talent pool is genuinely thin.

This is creating a secondary effect: signing bonuses for cross-state relocations are growing. Our 2025 Texas placements that involved out-of-state relocation had median sign-on bonuses of $185,000, compared to $90,000 for placements where the candidate was already Texas-based. Companies are willing to pay for the inconvenience because the supply isn’t there. Multiple Austin technology companies we worked with in 2025 explicitly built sign-on bonus budgets of $250K+ into senior offers for out-of-state candidates as a competitive necessity.

A related dynamic: cross-Texas competition for senior talent is intensifying. Three years ago, Austin and Dallas operated in functionally separate labor markets — an Austin tech executive rarely considered Dallas opportunities, and a Dallas finance executive rarely considered Austin. In 2025, we placed 4 Austin-based candidates in Dallas roles and 3 Dallas-based candidates in Austin roles. The state of Texas is becoming a more integrated senior labor market than it was, which is good for candidates with mobility but adds complexity to companies trying to retain senior people.

Specialization within Texas

Texas is too large to think of as a single market. The relevant question for a senior US professional considering Texas is which sub-market within Texas matches their professional and personal needs. A high-level mapping based on our 2025 placement data:

If you’re in software or SaaS leadership: Austin is the strongest market. The VC ecosystem, the late-stage private company concentration, and the depth of senior tech executive networks all favor Austin. Specific neighborhoods worth knowing about: Westlake (executive residential), Domain (corporate campuses), East Austin (younger startups), South Congress (creative tech).

If you’re in financial services or asset management: Dallas-Fort Worth is the only serious option. The Goldman, Schwab, BoA, and Toyota Financial Services concentration creates a financial-services peer network that doesn’t exist elsewhere in Texas. Specific neighborhoods: Highland Park and University Park for residential, Uptown and Downtown Dallas for corporate offices.

If you’re in energy or healthcare: Houston, by default. The energy supermajors and the Texas Medical Center create unique professional infrastructure that Austin and Dallas cannot match.

If you’re in hardware or semiconductor: Austin remains strongest because of the Samsung, Applied Materials, Tesla, and NXP concentration. But Dallas-Fort Worth has emerging strength in specific sub-segments (telecom, defense electronics).

If you’re in FinTech or LatAm-focused finance: Austin and Dallas are both options, with Austin slightly preferred for FinTech-startup roles and Dallas preferred for traditional financial services adopting FinTech approaches.

What happens next

Three trends we expect to continue through 2026 and into 2027, based on the searches we’re currently running and the conversations we’re having with both candidates and clients.

The Austin tech market will continue maturing. Faster maturation than most observers expect — we’re seeing executive teams at Austin-headquartered companies that resemble Bay Area teams in scope and seniority, with the same compensation expectations relative to local cost of living. The companies that benefited most from Austin’s lower-cost talent base in 2020–2022 are now paying compensation that competes within 15-20% of Bay Area equivalents. The "Austin discount" is shrinking.

Dallas will become a serious competitor for NYC financial-services talent. The Goldman campus opening in 2027 will be a catalyst. We expect 12–18 months after that opening to see meaningful churn from NYC financial-services senior roles to Dallas, particularly for back-office, technology, and operations leadership. The front-office trading and M&A advisory functions will remain New York-anchored for the foreseeable future, but the broader financial-services labor market will continue rebalancing toward Dallas.

Houston will start drawing technology-native executives in larger numbers. The energy industry’s digital transformation is creating roles that previously didn’t exist there, and Houston’s cost of living relative to Austin makes it attractive for executives looking for a Texas base without Austin’s tech-bubble pricing. This is a secondary trend in our data but accelerating.

Practical guidance if you’re considering Texas

Three concrete recommendations based on what we’ve seen work and not work over the past four years of Texas placements.

Start with the math before the narrative. Use realistic numbers for your specific situation: your actual gross compensation, your actual housing situation, your actual tax bracket, your actual family configuration. Generic "Texas saves you money" narratives are wrong in specific cases. We’ve worked with candidates for whom Texas was a worse financial outcome than staying in NYC because of specific tax situations or unique housing needs. Run the math before you run the search.

Don’t assume "Texas" means "Austin." The three major Texas markets are functionally different. The wrong choice between Austin, Dallas, and Houston can leave you with a professional network mismatch that takes years to recover from. We’ve had candidates accept Austin roles thinking they’d find Dallas-equivalent finance opportunities later, only to discover that the Austin finance market is too thin to support that pivot.

Network before you move. The senior US technology and finance communities in Texas are real but younger than their coastal equivalents. Building professional relationships before relocation makes the move significantly smoother. We routinely connect candidates considering Texas with our 2025 placements who’ve recently made the move — the candor of those conversations is more useful than any reading we can provide.

For candidates currently evaluating Texas opportunities or considering whether a Texas-based search makes sense for their situation, I’m happy to discuss specifics confidentially. daniel.okafor@crimsontalent.com. The conversation is confidential, free, and useful whether or not you’re actively in market.

Methodology & caveats

This report is built from 64 verified, signed-and-accepted offer letters from Texas senior-level placements made by Crimson Talent between January 2025 and the first week of April 2026. We exclude offers that were extended but rejected, withdrawn, or never finalized.

"Texas" includes all three major metropolitan areas: Austin (38 placements), Dallas-Fort Worth (18 placements), and Houston (8 placements). We exclude smaller Texas metros (San Antonio, El Paso, Corpus Christi) where our 2025 placement volume was too small to be statistically meaningful.

All compensation figures are gross (pre-tax), in nominal US dollars. Cost-of-living and disposable-income calculations use representative current-year housing costs from Zillow and Redfin for the specific metropolitan area; federal tax calculations use 2025 brackets and 2025 standard deduction. State tax calculations use 2025 state-specific rates and brackets. The illustrative comparison in the cost-of-living section assumes married-filing-jointly status with two dependents.

This report does not constitute financial planning, tax, or relocation advice. Individual outcomes vary based on personal tax circumstances, family configuration, and specific real-estate decisions. Consult a tax advisor and financial planner before making relocation decisions based on this analysis.

This piece is authored by Daniel Okafor, Managing Partner of Crimson Talent, with data assembly and review by our Austin office team and the broader Crimson Talent research function. Daniel co-founded Crimson Talent in 2021 and leads our technology practice from our San Francisco office. Direct contact: daniel.okafor@crimsontalent.com. For our broader US compensation analysis, see the 2026 Executive Compensation Report. For coverage of a parallel migration story in Florida, see our piece on Miami’s rise as a US finance hub.