Who runs The Spatial Net
One person, in the open. Here's who, why, and how the site stays accountable.
The Spatial Net is built and run by one person: me, Ian Shiland. I've spent twelve years in geospatial and held several of the job titles whose pay this site maps: cartographer, GIS developer, software engineer. If you want the longer version, it's on GitHub and ian.shi.land. This site operates under my company, Carto Concepts, LLC.
Why this exists
The GIS community has argued about pay for as long as I've been part of it, and the data has never been good enough to settle anything. The industry's authoritative salary survey went seven years between full editions (2017 to 2024), and the geographic detail sits behind a paywall. The free alternatives don't verify their numbers. Glassdoor and the big salary sites don't even have an occupation code for what we do. So every few months the same thread starts again, and it runs on anecdotes.
I wanted the boring version that actually works: official BLS numbers as a free baseline, on a map, with a verified community layer on top for the things government data can't see, like total comp and toolchain.
How it's funded
The community side is free and has no ads. That's permanent. Revenue comes from the hiring side, where employers and recruiters pay for tools. Paid tools never change what the public sees and never override anyone's consent. There are no investors. The whole thing runs on deliberately small infrastructure so it can keep running for a long time.
Your data
Salary contributions only ever appear as aggregates, with a minimum count behind every published number. No individual salary and no named employer, ever. Where there's too little data to protect people, we show nothing instead of something misleading. You can delete anything you've contributed, yourself, at any time. The full methodology is public: Trust Center and salary methodology.
Reach me
Contact form, email me directly at [email protected], or find me on GitHub.