How much did Washington software engineers donate in FEC filings?

Donors listing occupation SOFTWARE ENGINEER with a Washington address reported $7,632,268 in itemized individual contributions, from 1,275 donors and 35,832 receipts. That is about 12% of the $64,582,668 recorded nationally under the same string. The total is not a count of every software engineer in Washington.

Is this only donors who work at Washington tech companies?

No. The join uses occupation text and contributor state, not employer headquarters. A Washington-addressed donor listing SOFTWARE ENGINEER may work remotely for an out-of-state firm, and an on-site employee may live in another state and fall outside this slice. Employer, when present, is on the underlying receipt, not in these two aggregates.

How does Washington compare with the national Software Engineer total?

Washington is about 12% of dollars ($7,632,268 of $64,582,668), about 10% of contributions (35,832 of 353,424), and about 12% of donors (1,275 of 10,853). The shares are close to one another. Most of the occupation’s money is still attributed to other states.

Are engineer, developer, and software engineer combined?

They are not combined on this page. Only the exact SOFTWARE ENGINEER occupation aggregate is used: $64,582,668 nationally and $7,632,268 in Washington. Other spellings have separate occupation pages. Adding them would be a research choice, not something this join does.

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Software Engineer political contributions from Washington

Washington State donors listing occupation SOFTWARE ENGINEER reported $7,632,268 in itemized individual contributions to FEC-registered committees. The join includes 35,832 contributions from 1,275 donors. Nationwide, SOFTWARE ENGINEER totals $64,582,668 from 10,853 donors and 353,424 gifts. Washington’s share of dollars, donors, and receipts all sit near 11–12%, a geographically thick slice of a high-volume technical title, not a monopoly.

Key figures

Washington SOFTWARE ENGINEER donors reported $7,632,268 in 35,832 FEC contributions from 1,275 donors.
The national occupation total is $64,582,668 from 10,853 donors and 353,424 gifts.
Washington is about 12% of occupation dollars and donors and about 10% of contributions.
Average itemized gift in the Washington join is about $213.
Donor state and occupation are filer-entered fields, not an industry employment survey.

The join: SOFTWARE ENGINEER × Washington

Occupation and contributor state are independent columns on FEC individual receipts. This page keeps only rows where occupation is SOFTWARE ENGINEER and state is WA. The surviving dollars are $7,632,268. That is about 12% of the occupation’s $64,582,668. Washington’s 35,832 contributions are about 10% of 353,424 nationally. Its 1,275 donors are about 12% of 10,853. The three ratios lining up is a sign the Washington slice is a scaled-down version of the national series, not a dollar spike from a tiny donor set.

The join is not an employment census of Washington’s software industry. It is the subset of itemized federal political contributions where someone typed this occupation and a Washington address. People in the same jobs who wrote engineer, developer, or a company-specific title are in other occupation buckets. People in Washington who listed a different occupation are on the state hub, not here.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER as filed nationwide

The occupation string SOFTWARE ENGINEER accounts for $64,582,668, 353,424 contributions, and 10,853 donors across all states. Contribution count is high relative to donor count (353,424 gifts from 10,853 people), so repeat itemization is the rule. That can reflect giving across many committees, payroll-like recurring contributions, or both; the aggregate does not distinguish.

Title spelling matters. Software Engineer, SWE, programmer, and software developer are not automatically combined. LobbyVault’s occupations list keeps those strings apart so a researcher can see which label actually appears on receipts. This Washington page inherits only the SOFTWARE ENGINEER bucket.

Washington’s slice in numbers

Inside the join, $7,632,268 across 35,832 contributions averages about $213 per itemized gift. Across 1,275 donors the implied receipts-per-donor figure is high, matching the national pattern of many small-to-moderate repeat gifts rather than a few large ones. Washington’s campaign-finance page puts this occupation beside every other WA occupation total so SOFTWARE ENGINEER can be sized against the rest of the state’s itemized giving.

About 88% of SOFTWARE ENGINEER dollars (the $64,582,668 minus $7,632,268 remainder) are attributed to states other than Washington. The occupation is geographically spread even if Washington is a well-known tech employer location. The receipts do not prove that Washington tech employment caused the contributions; they show where filers said they lived and what job word they used.

Payroll-style recurring contributions can inflate the 35,832 Washington receipts without inflating unique people. The average gift of about $213 is consistent with that pattern. Large one-off checks would have pulled the average up and the contribution share down. That did not happen here. The join is a high-volume, moderate-size slice, and it should be read that way rather than as a few headline donations.

Caveats on occupation and geography

Remote work and second addresses complicate donor state. The FEC field is the state on the contribution record, which may be a home, a mailing address, or whatever the committee entered. It is not a workplace geocode. Occupation is likewise unvalidated. A donor can list SOFTWARE ENGINEER while employed in another role, or leave employer blank.

The page does not assign party, score influence, or claim that software engineers as a class funded a ticket. $7,632,268 is a filter result. Compare it with other occupation–state ties and with the raw occupation and state hubs before drawing a story that the table does not support.

FEC pages that complete the picture

Use Software Engineer donations for the $64,582,668 national series, Washington campaign finance for all WA occupations, the occupations index for neighboring technical titles, and all FEC ties for other joins. Source: FEC.gov individual contribution aggregates; occupation labels are filer-entered.

Tech employment and donor state are different maps

Washington’s reputation as a software-employment center is not a substitute for this join. The $7,632,268 is the subset of itemized federal gifts where someone typed SOFTWARE ENGINEER and a WA address. People in the same metro who wrote developer, engineer, or a company rank title are missing. People who work at Washington employers and live in Oregon or Idaho are missing unless the receipt says WA. The 1,275 donors are an address-and-string filter, not a headcount of the state’s tech workforce.

Massachusetts has a separate SOFTWARE ENGINEER join on the same $64,582,668 national total. Comparing the two cells (Washington $7,632,268 from 1,275 donors; Massachusetts $5,037,286 from 842 donors) shows two regional cuts of one label. Adding them is optional research, not something this page does. Together they still leave most of 10,853 national donors in other states.

Questions

How much did Washington software engineers donate in FEC filings?: Donors listing occupation SOFTWARE ENGINEER with a Washington address reported $7,632,268 in itemized individual contributions, from 1,275 donors and 35,832 receipts. That is about 12% of the $64,582,668 recorded nationally under the same string. The total is not a count of every software engineer in Washington.
Is this only donors who work at Washington tech companies?: No. The join uses occupation text and contributor state, not employer headquarters. A Washington-addressed donor listing SOFTWARE ENGINEER may work remotely for an out-of-state firm, and an on-site employee may live in another state and fall outside this slice. Employer, when present, is on the underlying receipt, not in these two aggregates.
How does Washington compare with the national Software Engineer total?: Washington is about 12% of dollars ($7,632,268 of $64,582,668), about 10% of contributions (35,832 of 353,424), and about 12% of donors (1,275 of 10,853). The shares are close to one another. Most of the occupation’s money is still attributed to other states.
Are engineer, developer, and software engineer combined?: They are not combined on this page. Only the exact SOFTWARE ENGINEER occupation aggregate is used: $64,582,668 nationally and $7,632,268 in Washington. Other spellings have separate occupation pages. Adding them would be a research choice, not something this join does.

FEC.gov individual contribution aggregates by self-reported occupation and donor state. Occupation labels are filer-entered.