Thousands of people in Boise are unemployed and looking for work. But for high-tech workers with the right skills, work is looking for them.

They have the skills companies want for the booming fields of social media, mobile software and cloud computing. They can find multiple job opportunities in the Treasure Valley among a flourishing market of software startups and other tech companies.

“I’ve never had to worry about whether there was an opportunity or not” in the Valley, said Dave Nagoda, 36, a software developer at Boise’s Clearwater Analytics, which sells a system for tracking large investment portfolios. “I’ve never had to scramble.”

The tech job market nationwide hasn’t been this overheated since the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s. In the Treasure Valley, startups such as Clearwater, Balihoo and Cradlepoint are competing with the giants — Micron and Hewlett-Packard — for increasingly rare talent: senior software engineers, data analysts, Web designers and application developers.

“There’s a feeding frenzy for those guys,” said Dave Boren, founder of Clearwater Analytics.

And it’s not just two or three companies, said Jay Larsen, CEO of the Idaho Technology Council.

“Many software engineers and developers can have two to three offers on the table, especially in Boise,” said Steven Guadagno, area director of Adecco Engineering and Technical, which has placed about 500 high-tech workers in Valley companies. “It’s similar to bigger-city markets, just on a smaller scale.”

Average pay for senior software engineers in the Valley is about $85,000 per year, Guadagno said. Web designers and application developers make from $65,000 to $75,000.

Boren plans to hire 24 engineers and a few other positions in the next 12 months. Cradlepoint, a wireless router maker, has said it will hire 30 more people this year, mostly in sales and engineering, with salaries between $80,000 and $100,000 a year. Balihoo, a marketing technology and services company, also is trolling for new hires.

Clearwater searches nationwide for talent and visits about a dozen university campuses each year. Boren said he’s willing to pay in the $60,000s and $70,000s for new graduates, but they have to be the right fit for the company’s culture.

“We’re looking for really talented people,” he said. “We are very thorough in the interview process.”

It’s not hard selling the benefits of relocating to Boise, Guadagno said. What it comes down to is a comprehensive job offer from a stable, secure company.

“Software engineers and developers are not just looking for bigger paychecks,” he said. “They are looking for a thriving, supportive environment on a long-term basis offering growth and stability.”

Clearwater software developer Gary Johnson, 45, agrees.

He has worked for large tech companies in Boca Raton, Fla., and Belgium.

“I did not want to work for a large corporation again,” he said. “I was not interested in the work they did. There was no stability.”

Johnson and Nagoda, who also worked for big corporations in Tucson, Ariz., and elsewhere, said big companies have big hierarchies that make all the decisions and divvy up solutions to the software developers to execute. More-numerous tech workers also are dispensable at the larger companies, Nagoda said.

In contrast, tech workers at smaller companies are involved in product decisions, implementation and problem-solving, he said.

“I work with super-smart people, and we all contribute to the bottom line,” Nagoda said. “That makes the job so much more interesting.”

Johnson said he made a lot of money in Florida but couldn’t afford to buy a house, as he has in Meridian.

Nagoda and Johnson said their salaries are comparable to what they’ve made in other markets.

“Money is a satisfier. It’s not a motivator as long as it’s good enough,” Johnson said.

Guadagno said he has recently seen a shift in companies’ hiring practices. In the past, they favored the temp-to-hire process, trying out a person for three to four months before offering a permanent position.

“Now, because of increased demand and competition locally and regionally, my clients are not wasting time,” Guadagno said. “They’re coming to the table with complete, comprehensive offers before the candidate accepts another position.”

Several trends are driving the increased competition: a rapid growth in mobile computing; open-source software, which is free and makes it much easier to launch a startup; and the accumulation of mountains of data that companies are discovering can be turned into new products.

“Locally, many companies are launching new products, services and/or enhancements to existing products, which is driving the demand for these specialized positions,” Guadagno said. “This trend will most definitely continue into 2012.”

Sandra Forester: 377-6464