Machine learning specialists command the highest salaries among developers in the UK and Ireland, Stack Overflow’s Developer Hiring Landscape Report reveals. A machine learning specialist receives on average a £56,851 annual salary, 24% higher than the mean wage for developers in the British Isles.
Key findings include:
• Machine learning specialists command the highest salaries among developers
• Average developer salaries are 45% higher than the national average salary
• Web developers are the most common type of developer in UK and Ireland
Regardless of what language developers specialise in, they can continue to expect a generous pay packet. The UK national average salary for 2016/17 was £28,000, while on average developers earn 45% more, approximately £44,000.
94% of developers are at least partially self-taught, and just 43% of software engineers in the UK and Ireland have a Bachelor’s degree. These statistics would suggest that the rise of free online classes and coding crash courses are increasingly being used to offer a fast-track to a more lucrative career.
73% of respondents in the UK and Ireland identified as a Web Developer, making it the most common developer type. By contrast, only 2.4% of respondents identified as a Machine Learning specialist, their scarcity (and high demand from employers) contributing to their higher earnings.
Kevin Troy, Director of Insights at Stack Overflow, comments, ““This year’s Stack Overflow’s Developer Hiring Landscape Report is the most comprehensive survey of the developer workforce to date, with more than 4,700 responses from developers across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, and more than 64,000 responses globally.
Today’s developers can earn almost twice the national average salary, despite many of them being self-taught, with only a few years of coding under their belts. This data should incentivise more young people to take up the rewarding challenge of software development.”
Find the UK & Ireland Developer Hiring Landscape Report 2017 here.