Texas technical recruiting and hiring rules
Texas holds the office of Recruiters Workforce and four of its metro markets.
Austin has the Army's Transformation and Training Command, Camp Mabry and a semiconductor and software base; San Antonio has Joint Base San Antonio, Sixteenth Air Force and NSA Texas; Dallas-Fort Worth has the F-35 line at Air Force Plant 4, Bell, Raytheon and L3Harris; Houston has Johnson Space Center, the Houston Spaceport and the Texas Medical Center. Cleared and non-cleared technical requisitions are worked across all four from the Austin office.
Texas sets few statutory hurdles at the posting stage, which makes the clearance line and the labor category the terms that decide most searches. The rules below are the ones an employer should know before writing a Texas requisition, each with its source.
Hiring rules in Texas that matter to employers
Summaries are general information current at the time of writing and are no substitute for counsel.
- Pay transparency in job postings
- Texas has no statewide law requiring a salary range or wage information in job postings, and no state law requiring pay ranges to be disclosed to applicants. A 2025 bill that would have required ranges for public-sector positions was not enacted. Employers hiring across state lines should note that a posting aimed at candidates in Colorado, California or Maryland must meet those states' rules regardless of where the employer sits.
- Salary history
- No Texas statute prohibits an employer from asking about or using an applicant's prior pay, and a state bill that would have barred wage history inquiries did not become law. Multi-state employers commonly apply a single no-inquiry policy anyway.
- Fair-chance hiring
- Texas has no statewide ban-the-box law. The City of Austin's Fair Chance Hiring Ordinance took effect on April 4, 2016 and restricts most private employers with 15 or more employees from asking about criminal history until a conditional offer has been made, with complaints to the city's Civil Rights Division within 100 calendar days; the ordinance's status has been contested under the state's 2023 Regulatory Consistency Act, with litigation still pending at the time of writing. San Antonio, Dallas County, Travis County and Harris County apply ban-the-box policies to their own public hiring.
- Non-compete agreements
- Under Business and Commerce Code Section 15.50, a covenant not to compete is enforceable if it is ancillary to an otherwise enforceable agreement and contains reasonable limits on time, geographic area and scope of activity that impose no greater restraint than necessary to protect the employer's business interest. Senate Bill 1318, effective September 1, 2025, tightened the rules for physicians, capping the buyout at the physician's annual salary, the term at one year and the radius at five miles, and extended limits to dentists, nurses and physician assistants.
- At-will employment
- The Texas Workforce Commission's guidebook for employers states that Texas is an employment-at-will state and that all employment is presumed at will unless the employer has done or said something tangible that modifies the relationship.
- Verification and background rules
- State agencies must use E-Verify for newly hired state employees under Government Code Chapter 673, and Executive Order RP-80 requires E-Verify as a condition of state services contracts that use contract employees. Business and Commerce Code Section 20.05 bars consumer reporting agencies from reporting criminal records whose disposition predates the report by more than seven years, except for positions with an expected annual salary of 75,000 dollars or more.
Metro markets in Texas
Each metro page names the installations, agencies and employers that shape hiring there.
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Austin, TX
The Army's Transformation and Training Command, Camp Mabry, Applied Research Laboratories and a semiconductor and software base, worked from the firm's own office.
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San Antonio, TX
Joint Base San Antonio, Sixteenth Air Force, NSA Texas, Port San Antonio's cyber campus and Southwest Research Institute.
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Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
The F-35 line at Air Force Plant 4, NAS JRB Fort Worth, Bell, Raytheon's North Texas sites, L3Harris in Greenville and Texas Instruments.
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Houston, TX
Johnson Space Center, Ellington Field and the Houston Spaceport, the Texas Medical Center and the port, with civil space and health IT hiring.
Industries hiring in Texas
Specialties in demand in Texas
Questions about hiring in Texas
Does a Texas employer need to post a salary range for a remote position?
Texas requires no range. If the posting is aimed at candidates in a state with a pay transparency law, that state's rule can apply to the posting; Colorado, California and Maryland each say so on their agency pages. Many employers with remote requisitions therefore include the range on every posting, and the requisition builder on this site asks for the range so that the summary is ready for any state.
Which Texas metro has the most cleared hiring?
San Antonio, on the strength of Joint Base San Antonio, Sixteenth Air Force and NSA Texas, followed by Dallas-Fort Worth for aerospace programs that require a Secret eligibility. Austin's cleared work centers on the Army command, Camp Mabry and the Applied Research Laboratories, and Houston's on Johnson Space Center and its contractors. The San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth pages describe each market.