The ManfredDeveloper Career Report
Our mission is clear: to bring transparency on the tech job market. And our vision is unique: we know what professionals want and what companies need. We know what are the most-used technologies, the salary offers, the most common ways of working, the pay gap... All based on real data rather than opinions.
What do developers want?
What are they looking for? What do they value? What do they demand? Here is our representation of the current state of the software industry.
The most-used programming languages and technologies
JavaScript predictably takes the lead over other widely-used languages such as Java or Python. As for the most-used technologies, there are some very central to Frontend development, such as CSS, React or HTML, interaction with databases or infrastructure.
The least favourite programming languages
At Manfred, candidates can also detail the technologies they would NOT like to work with. We found out that some, such as Java, AngularJS or Wordpress, do not rank highly in terms of popularity.
JavaScript, JAVA and Python are among the most widely used programming languages. Contradictorily, they are also at the bottom of the popularity ranking.
Preferred working model
After the impact of COVIDgeddon on our lives, the debate on the future of the remote working set up has intensified. There are two schools of thought: those who believe that this new working environment is here to stay and those who believe that it is impossible to maintain the same productivity and collaboration while teleworking.
Disclaimer: working preferences do not add up to 100% because when you register with Manfred you can express your availability to work either remotely or in a hybrid model. :-).
How much do developers make?
We have analysed the financial compensation schemes that employees demanded as a whole, as well as other job perks included in job offers made by companies.
Average salary by programming language or technology and years of experience
Programming languages with a greater shortage of profiles, such as Kotlin or AWS, or with a wider range of applications, such as Python, mean it is possible to demand a higher financial remuneration, which becomes all the more apparent after 2+ years of experience. At the tail end, we can find PHP.
Average salary per role
While most roles show an expected distribution - for example, in leadership positions the average salary is higher - there are also other cases that may come as a surprise. As a case in point: a higher average salary can be observed in Project and Delivery Management roles. Time to make a career change ? :P
| <20K | €20-30K | €31-40K | €41-50K | €51-60K | €61-80K | >80K | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backend Developer | 6.1% | 17.3% | 21.9% | 24.6% | 15.6% | 10.9% | 3.6% |
| Full-stack Developer | 7.2% | 22.5% | 23.3% | 22.3% | 13.3% | 8.8% | 2.6% |
| Frontend Developer | 12.0% | 28.8% | 22.8% | 17.5% | 10.4% | 6.6% | 1.9% |
| Mobile Developer | 8.0% | 19.2% | 22.7% | 18.3% | 15.2% | 12.2% | 4.4% |
| Software Architect | 1.7% | 6.0% | 9.6% | 21.7% | 25.0% | 25.3% | 10.8% |
| DevOps & Infrastructure & SRE | 2.9% | 10.4% | 15.4% | 23.2% | 21.5% | 19.4% | 7.2% |
| SysAdmin | 5.8% | 19.8% | 28.8% | 22.2% | 13.6% | 7.8% | 2.1% |
| Brand Design | 15.9% | 26.8% | 30.5% | 9.8% | 12.2% | 2.4% | 2.4% |
| Product Manager | 0.3% | 5.8% | 17.0% | 20.3% | 23.1% | 25.6% | 7.9% |
| Data Analysis & BI | 4.0% | 21.4% | 23.9% | 23.9% | 14.9% | 9.3% | 2.5% |
| QA & Testing Engineer | 6.6% | 23.1% | 21.4% | 20.9% | 15.9% | 9.9% | 2.2% |
| Project Manager & Delivery Manager | 0.0% | 6.8% | 12.4% | 22.9% | 24.2% | 27.0% | 6.7% |
| Data Scientist | 4.9% | 21.5% | 24.4% | 19.5% | 15.8% | 9.7% | 4.3% |
| Data Engineer | 2.3% | 13.6% | 21.3% | 21.0% | 20.8% | 16.7% | 4.4% |
| Engineering Management | 0.7% | 2.9% | 4.3% | 12.6% | 22.0% | 37.5% | 20.0% |
| Tech Lead | 0.4% | 1.5% | 7.5% | 19.9% | 26.6% | 29.9% | 14.2% |
The most-offered job perks
Among the most common job perks offered to employees, teambuilding events and dynamics stand out, followed by internal and external training and private health insurance. Do they coincide with the most in-demand ones?
Although this is not something we ask in our registration form, we did carry out a study on the subject some time ago where it came to light that companies are not far off the mark (we should note that flexitime and remote work setups are taken into account separately, so we do not include them as "other job perks" here). And we can't ignore the fact that "free coffee, fruit and snacks" is among the 9 most offered job perks 🥶.
Data Benchmark
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What is being offered?
The Developer Career Report is not only aimed at developers. To understand its context, it is also important to be aware of what the market is offering and demanding.
The most in-demand programming languages
There is a very clear match between the most-used languages and technologies and those most in demand by companies. As far as mismatches go, we find that Go and Ruby are listed among the requirements of many job offers out there, while they do not appear at the top of the ranking for most-used languages by tech professionals. In fact, Ruby appears at the bottom of the popularity ranking when it comes to developers. In terms of technologies, a clear example of strong demand vs. low literacy in the marketplace is AWS, which would explain why professionals with this skill set are so well paid. The same could be true for Kubernetes.
Working models on offer
It seems that companies have caught up with the remote demands of developers. According to our data, there is an overwhelming majority of job offers offering a 100% remote work model. Having said this, the pure onsite work model is still eating into the hybrid model preference.
While 32% of employees demand a hybrid working model, only 11% of job offers actually offer it.
Gender and Development
In an industry in which there is clearly an under-representation of women, it is even more interesting to understand how gender influences job roles and salaries.
Women vs. Men split by role
Female representation in the technical sector remains a pending issue. As the following graph shows, the presence of women is minimal when it comes to leadership and systems positions, while there seems to be a higher proportion in functions related to the creation of digital products. Even so, women remain under-represented in every single professional role.
While the average female representation in the sector is 20% (compared to 80% male), only the following roles exceed or come close to this figure:
Product Design
Product Management
QA & Testing
Project & Delivery Management
Target salary by gender and role
In almost all groups the average salary is higher for men than for women - except in mobile development. The smallest difference is observed in Data Engineering, although there is still a 4% pay gap between men and women.
Salary demand by gender and professional experience
The last section made us doubt whether the main factor causing the pay gaps could be the years of experience. So we decided to compare target salaries according to professional experience. Once again, men tend to aim for higher salaries for almost the same range of years of experience... Except for those people who are in the early phases of their working career. Does this indicate a trend change? Or is it evidence of a glass ceiling?
Methodology
How we approached and designed this analysis.
This report is based on Manfred's database of more than 19,000 professional profiles.
It is a first approach, an MVP. Our intention is to make it much more powerful in future editions. If you have a Manfred profile and want to do your part to make the data as accurate as possible, you can update it by logging in.
Years of Experience
Most Manfredites are Seniors, with many years of experience to their name. The proportion decreases the less professional experience there is.
Professional roles
Almost 50 professional roles were included in the analysis, which can all be found in Manfred’s taxonomy report.
Here you can see the 10 professional roles with the highest levels of representation.
Gender
At Manfred we don't ask about gender in the same way that we don't ask about age or race, because we believe that such data should never be relevant to whether or not you get a job. However, in order to be able to understand the impact of this variable in terms of job conditions, which we believe can help to make the existing situation visible, we have used an API that extracts the suggested gender based on the name of the person. According to this API, 77% of the study is represented by men, while 13% are women. The remaining 8% could not be extracted.
- Women
- Men
- Unknown
This analysis has been carried out with tools such as Airtable and Graphext.