Breaking into software engineering is easier when you’re in a city with a deep bench of tech employers. Chicago offers exactly that, with opportunities spanning public safety software, fintech, cloud computing, consulting and quantitative trading. The following companies are actively hiring early-career software engineers from their Windy City offices to build production systems while learning on the job working alongside seasoned development teams.
Top Companies Hiring Early-Career Software Engineers in Chicago
- Motorola Solutions
- IBM
- Morningstar
- Akuna Capital
- Cisco
Top Companies Hiring Early-Career Software Engineers in Chicago
Industry: Cloud Networking, Cybersecurity
What they do: The Chicago office for Cisco focuses on its Meraki division, where engineers manage networking equipment on the cloud as well as security hardware. Early-career developers there write backend services, full-stack dashboard features and network telemetry software in Scala, Ruby on Rails, C++ and Python.
Industry: Software Consulting
What they do: Chicago serves as a major U.S. base for Thoughtworks, a consulting firm that specializes in custom software development and reworking legacy codebases. Before joining client-facing roles, its entry-level developers must complete an intensive, one-year onboarding program, covering things like test-driven development and continuous delivery across various tech stacks.
Industry: Financial Technology
What they do: Morningstar is headquartered in Chicago, where software engineers develop the investment research platforms covering more than 40,000 public companies and five million privately-held ones. Associate software engineers build customer-facing applications and financial data pipelines using C#/.NET, TypeScript and AWS.
Industry: Public Safety, Enterprise Software
What they do: Headquartered in Chicago, Motorola Solutions develops software for 911 dispatch platforms, emergency response routing and public safety video management. Its entry-level software engineers help build cloud services and real-time mobile applications while also improving the edge video processing technology used by first responders.
Industry: Proprietary Trading
What they do: Old Mission Capital is a quantitative trading firm headquartered in Chicago that builds low-latency market-making software. The firm’s development program places junior software engineers into core infrastructure roles writing production C++ and Python for exchange connectivity, network hardware acceleration and real-time data analysis.
Industry: Software Engineering, Technology Consulting
What they do: PwC helps many of the world’s largest organizations modernize their legacy systems by migrating to the cloud and building custom business software. With hundreds of thousands of clients in more than 130 countries, its early-career software engineering associates write full-stack code using Java, Python, React, as well as cloud platforms AWS and Azure for custom SaaS applications, automated financial workflows and AI integrations.
Industry: Proprietary Trading
What they do: Akuna Capital operates its global options market-making business out of its Chicago headquarters. Founded in 2011, the homegrown firm recruits new graduates directly into dedicated C++ and Python tracks, where early-career engineers build low-latency trading engines, concurrent data ingestion pipelines, exchange connectivity systems and algorithmic execution models.
Industry: Insurance Technology
What they do: Applied Systems makes cloud software designed to process policy and claims workflows for the global insurance industry. Their associate software engineer program places new hires — with as little as zero-to-two years of experience — onto teams tasked with revamping core SaaS platforms using C#, .NET, React and Google Cloud Platform.
Industry: Enterprise Software, Cloud Infrastructure
What they do: More than 90 percent of the Fortune 500 use IBM’s technology in some capacity, from AI software to hybrid cloud infrastructure. Its team of Chicago-based software engineers contribute to products like Red Hat OpenShift and Watsonx, where entry-level hires help build the backend systems and developer tools behind those platforms.
Industry: Financial Technology, Online Lending
What they do: Based in Chicago, Enova International builds data-driven financial platforms that provide online credit and financing to consumers and small businesses. The company regularly hires software engineers into full-stack and backend roles, where early-career developers write production code using Java, Python, Go and React while supporting microservices, API integrations and analytics engines.
