Since 2015, talent.io has been helping thousands of tech professionals worldwide find jobs that suit their needs. Using our expertise of the tech landscape, we have compiled our first Developer Salary Report.
Our data analysis is compiled from over 40,000 interview requests made by companies hiring on talent.io from January 2017 to December 2018.
We aim to provide comprehensive data for tech salaries by analysing how the below variables have an effect on earning potential:
- 📍 Location: talent.io is based in three of Europe’s largest tech hubs: France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. As such, we provide
(1) General analysis across the eight cities where talent.io operates in the current report, and
(2) Country-specific analysis for France, Germany, and the United Kingdom that will be available in the next installments. Each of these reports will give you a more detailed understanding of what salaries to expect as a tech candidate looking for work in that country. Scroll down for links to these individual articles. - 🧳 Years of Experience: Broken down into six separate ranges
(0–1; 1–2; 2–4; 4–6; 6+) to help you pinpoint your earning potential, regardless of your current experience. We use these same ranges on our platform so candidates and companies can determine if the opportunity is a good fit.
Using these baseline variables, we investigate the following factors that play an influence part in determining the next step to take to advance your career:
- 👔 Industry: Not all industries are created equal. We take a step back and investigate how much the average tech professional can expect to make when working in a particular industry.
- 🎯 Job Role: See how your career trajectory — and salary — changes based on your job title and responsibilities.
- 💻 Technology: Interested in learning a new technology? Find out which technical stacks are in the highest demand and how much you can expect to make based on your skillset.
- 📚 External factors: How does your education affect your earning potential? Does relocating to a new country have monetary benefits? We consider how various external factors may affect salary ranges.
(Note: External factors considered vary based on country-specific data. Therefore we do not provide these data in our general analysis.)
Our primary goal is to share valuable salary data and insights about the current developer hiring landscape.
If you are a tech professional interested in finding a new job, we hope these findings will give you a better understanding of how you can best position yourself for success.
And if you are a recruiter in need of quality tech candidates, we aim to accurately detail how rapidly developer salaries are changing based on the growing need for quality hires.
Overarching cross-border trends
👔 Industry
One of the first things that job seekers consider when looking for new job opportunities is the company or industry they want to work in.
Simultaneously, the demand for tech professionals far exceeds the supply. More often than not, tech candidates are bombarded by LinkedIn messages from headhunters looking to fill a position.
So when it comes to developer salaries, we started in reverse by asking, “Which industries do the majority of tech professionals work in?”
Regardless of whether you’re an entry level developer straight from university or an experienced professional having worked in the same industry for five years, it is valuable to know the types of companies that are in need of the greatest amount of engineers.
We aggregated our data to provide an overview of the top 10 industries where developers are in the highest demand:
- Enterprise Software (21.8%): creating computer software and business-oriented tools for organisations such as companies, government agencies, schools, etc.
- Fintech (13.1%): delivering end-to-end financial solutions which were previously cumbersome and less accessible to the general public, FinTech emerged as a competing industry to traditional finance services
- Big Data & Analytics (12.3%): aggregating large data sets and structuring them to reveal trends, correlations, and user insights which would not be possible to uncover otherwise
- Platform (10.7%): grouping of technologies that create large networks which facilitate exchanges or interactions between user groups
- eCommerce (9.8%): buying or selling of products/services online
- Finance/Insurance (8.2%): providing traditional financial and money management services for commercial and retail customers
- Media/Content (8.0%): publishing and sharing of information through mass media platforms
- Health and Wellness (6.9%): using technology to providing solutions for adopting healthier lifestyle habits and maintaining positive well-being
- Gaming (5.0%): developing video, computer, and mobile games
- Travel (4.2%): comprising of services for recreational, leisure or business travel, including transportation, hospitality, and entertainment
Nearly 50% of the companies where developers are in the highest demand stem from Enterprise Software, Fintech, and Big Data & Analytics industries. For an entry level developer who is pressed to find a job, we recommend looking within one of these industries.
Even so, finding work in an industry that you are passionate about matters. Regardless of your current experience, it is important to consider how the company and industry you choose will help you develop your skill set based on how you envision your career progressing over time.
🎯 Job Role
One of the most important things to consider when applying for a new job is the type of role you see yourself in.
The data show that the top four job roles that companies are looking to fill make up 75% of all tech roles on our platform.
- Full Stack Developer (30.7%): client- and server-side development
- Backend Developer (17.7%): server-side development
- Frontend Developer (14.2%): client-side development
- Lead Developer (11.8%): technical team leads with at least 2+ years of experience, responsible for managing people or projects
- Other (25.5%): comprising of more than 25 tech roles that fall under Development, Data, Infrastructure, Testing, Product/Design, and Executive/Leadership
💡 (If you are interested in knowing whether we help tech professionals with your specific experience and search criteria, we’d recommend signing up to talent.io directly. Your profile will then be reviewed by a Talent Advocate who will determine how we can help you.)
We narrowed down our analysis further to look specifically at the annual salaries of the above roles, all which fall under the category of web and software developers.
Because the average salary for Lead Developers only aggregates data for developers with 2+ years of experience, we segmented our findings by:
(1) Entry-level and junior developers: Full Stack, Backend, and Frontend Developers with experience ranging from 0–1 and 1–2 years
(2) Mid-level and senior developers: Full Stack, Backend, Frontend, and Lead Developers with experience ranging from 2–4, 4–6, and 6+ years
If we standardise currency data across all countries into euros, we find that developers in Berlin and the UK receive higher salary offers on average than developers in France.
For entry level and junior developers with 0–2 years of experience, we see that Backend Developers receive higher salary offers than Frontend Developers and even Full Stack Developers.
Meanwhile, if you are a senior developer, you may consider becoming a Lead Developer. Lead Devs typically receive job offers with average salaries 10%–20% greater than Backend, Frontend, or Full Stack developers. Otherwise, another option for senior developers may be to progress into a Software Architect role.
It is important to keep in mind that the above salaries do not take cost of living into account, which can have a substantial impact on your annual savings.
Education and supplemental experiences — personal projects, freelance work, internships, and apprenticeships — are additional factors that we were unable to standardise for in our cross-border analysis.
💻 Technology
Research from Stack Overflow’s 2018 Global Developer Hiring Landscape shows the two most important factors when considering a new position are:
Learning a particular technology can have a major impact on your starting salary and overall earning potential — especially for developers with more experience.
We wanted to understand the interaction between technology, job role, location, and experience level in order to provide a more complete picture of what technologies will help you increase your annual salary.
Similar to our analysis on Job Roles, we narrowed our focus to the most relevant technologies on our platform. In this context, relevant technologies refers to programming languages, frameworks, and libraries that companies need when they are looking to fill a specific job role.
For this reason, HTML and CSS are not included in the below data analysis. These are prerequisite technologies, not the dominating languages companies are seeking when hiring a new team member.
Programming Languages
In order to understand the interaction of salary expectations for the above languages, we segment the data into the below groups:
- C# — Java: both object-oriented programming languages with a similar syntax and interfaces derived from C and C++
- PHP — Python — Ruby: Python and Ruby are both high-level languages designed with simplicity in mind and which empower developers to program quickly through lightweight syntax. These languages have risen in popularity and are responsible for PHP’s decrease in market share
- JavaScript: JavaScript accounts for a significant portion of the most relevant languages. Below, we detail how developers apply JavaScript by breaking down the data and seeing how it stacks with a particular framework or technology
C# — Java
- C# (3.8%): general purpose, object-oriented programming language that can be used to write for web services, server code, and embedded systems
- Java (19.3%): general purpose, object-oriented programming language used across a wide range of application development, from web and desktop to Cloud Computing and Big Data
Our analysis show C# developers in France and Germany earn roughly the same salary at an average of €47K per year, while C# developers in the UK earn on average 11% more at €53K (£46K) annually.
In France, Java developers earn about the same salary as C# developers. However in Germany and the UK, Java developers earn 12% more and 8% more, respectively, than C# developers within their given countries. This may be due in part to the fact that many Java developers based in Germany and the UK found more jobs in FinTech and Finance/Insurance companies which pay higher salaries on average than other industries.
PHP — Python — Ruby
- PHP (13.2%): open-source, general purpose scripting language designed specifically for web application development and commonly used among Enterprise Software companies
→ Symfony is the most commonly used framework by PHP developers - Python (17.8%): general purpose, object-oriented, high-level programming language emphasising readability and code simplicity, with versatile applications such as web development, data science, and scripting
→ Django is the most commonly used framework by Python developers - Ruby (5.4%): general purpose, object-oriented programming language with succinct syntax that allows for greater coding flexibility, making it a popular web application language among startup
→ Ruby on Rails is the most commonly used framework by Ruby developers
The data above show that PHP developers earn less than Python and Ruby developers regardless of country, with France averaging €43K, UK €48K (£42K), and Germany €49K annually.
Ruby developers earn slightly more than PHP developers on average, while Python developers have the highest average salaries across each country. So no matter where you live, developers who want to increase their earning potential may want to consider learning Python.
JavaScript
JavaScript remains an essential programming language, acting as a prerequisite for Frontend development.
While it is true that JavaScript accounts for 40.4% of the most prominent programming languages on talent.io, we wanted to further understand how software developers were employing their knowledge of JavaScript from a practical standpoint.
First, we cross-analysed all JavaScript frameworks and libraries used by developers who received a job offer. Then, we categorised each technology based on the way the language is applied.
- Backend JS (33.3%): Node.js accounts for 99.99% of virtually all of the Backend JavaScript used by developers.
→ Node.js: a fast, lightweight JavaScript run-time environment that can be used to build backend components by executing JavaScript code outside of the browser - Desktop/Mobile JS (3.6%): React Native accounts for 95% of all Desktop/Mobile JavaScript used by developers.
→ React Native: Javascript, cross-platform framework used for iOS and Android mobile application development
For any developer who enjoys coding in JavaScript but is interested in backend development, Node.js is a great technology choice. For desktop and mobile development, React Native is the primary JavaScript technology used by developers in the field. While salary averages are not quite as high as those who chose Node.js for backend development, React Native is rising in popularity as a cross-platform mobile technology.
- Frontend JS (63.0%): accounts for nearly two-thirds of the JavaScript frameworks and libraries used by developers. This came as no surprise since all other major technologies used are Backend languages and frameworks. The major technologies contributing to this percentage are:
→ ReactJS
→ AngularJS
→ Vue.js
Refer below to the section “Frameworks + Libraries: Frontend” for detailed data analysis.
Frameworks + Libraries: Frontend
- ReactJS (79.8%): declarative, component-based JavaScript library for building fast, scalable user interfaces
- AngularJS (10.8%): structural JavaScript framework made for building dynamic web applications
- Vue.js (9.5%): simple, progressive, lightweight JavaScript framework designed for building user interfaces
ReactJS is the most prominent library used by developers for Frontend development, accounting for nearly 80% of the job offers made. Reasonably so, as the data show that developers who code in ReactJS earn higher salaries than developers who use AngularJS or Vue.js, ranging from annual salaries of €46.5K in France to €55K (£51.5K) in the UK.
For Frontend developers, ReactJS remains the most desirable technology by software engineers and companies alike.
Salary expectations by country
Within the coming weeks, you will be able to access specific breakdowns on salary data within our three major countries: France, Germany, and the UK. We recommend following us on Medium or LinkedIn to know when our next installment with be released.
All country-specific analysis will examine the same set of factors (Industry, Job Role, and Technology) included in our general findings. However, we will also provide conclusions which can only be drawn based on the dataset for that country. Also to be included in the country-specific data are External factors which vary by market.
If you have any questions about the dataset or analysis presented in this report, let us know in the comments section below or by emailing hello@talent.io
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