In a survey of 20,000 American workers, several technology and life science companies as well as other employers with strong North Carolina connections crack the top ranks of “Forbes’ “America’s Best Employers” list.

Among them: Quintiles, SAS, Citrix, Google, Apple as well as three health systems and two universities.

Quintiles, the world’s largest life science services provider which calls Durham home, came in at No. 30. Among biotechnology-related companies, Quintiles placed third. Quintiles is receiving more recognition in employment surveys over recent years.

SAS, which has been a regular top performer in such surveys for more than a decade, came in at No. 31. The world’s largest privately held software firm is based in Cary.

Google, which operates a big data center in western North Carolina and a software operation in Chapel Hill, topped the list of 500 firms.

The UNC Healthcare system came in at No. 50,

Citrix, which has a big and growing operation in Raleigh, ranks No. 55.

Apple is No. 55. The tech giant maintains a big data center in western N.C.

UNC-Chapel Hill and Carolina Health cracked the top 100 at 95 and 89 respectively.

N.C. State ranks No. 125.

Novant Health came in at 127.

Biogen, another big RTP operator, ranks No. 146. It ranks sixth among biotechs.

Lexis Nexis, which has a significant operation in Raleigh, came in at 174.

ABB ranks No. 210. it has big operations in Cary and at NCSU’s Centennial Campus.

Read the full list: http://www.forbes.com/best-employers/list/#tab:rank

How the survey was conducted:

“The Forbes ranking of top employers is drawn from an online survey of 20,000 American workers at large U.S. companies, nonprofit institutions such as hospitals, government agencies, and U.S. divisions of multinationals, asking them to provide their opinions on their employers and others in their industry with which they were familiar.

“Surveyed employees were asked, “On a scale of 1-10, how likely would you be to recommend your employer to someone else? How about other employers in your industry?”

“Forbes’ statistics partner, Statista, evaluated the data and identified 3,500 employers for whom there was a statistically relevant result. From that pool, the top 500 companies made the Forbes list. Those 500 were split up into 27 industry categories covering all aspects of the American economy.”