Salary expectations python developer

[Heathcliffe1988]

Hi, I’ve been working as a python developer for 18 months now. Not based in London. I’m looking at other jobs due to inflation but not sure what my expectation should be. Salaries seem to vary quite widely. I’m currently on 46k (which includes bonus) and I’ve just had an offer for 45k from another company who weren’t aware of my current salary. I don’t think that includes any perks apart from private healthcare. I also have recruiters targeting me for jobs offering 60-65k though.

Can anyone give any insight to what my expectations should be? With inflation it seems everything is a bit uncertain and even the recruiters seem unsure of what we should be aiming at. Though I’m fairly new to this line of work I do have a very solid background in science and working with data, with a PhD etc.

£45 k with under 2 years experience sounds about right to me. £60k will be a shit hot senior dev or a short contract role.

Difficult to say really. If you're working exclusively with Python and not a full stack developer who can also work with other tech, this is a big limiter. Eighteen months' experience also isn't terribly long -- in a field where candidates hop around often, you're likely to be up against candidates with more experience and people will see you as the "cheap" option for a while.

£50k - £60k is probably more in line with expectations based on the scope of work and experience. That would go up quickly if you add a few more technologies!

I'd suggest £50K-£55K is about right from what I've seen - I don't think the Ph.D will count for much at the beginning to be honest (I have one and it's only really been useful 10+ years into my career). It's more about the experience you have in the language(s) you're developing in.

Salary bandings seem to have got wider in the last 12 months or so due to WFH from what I've seen. I'm currently recruiting for 3 roles and it seems to be that you can slightly lower the salary if you've got 100% flexibility in regards to where the person can work, and need to increase it if you've got an office requirement.

I'd have a minimum in your head and work out what else is really important to you - if it's money, aim high but it it's 'nice culture' / 'flexible working' then bear in mind - for me, I'd prefer a slightly lower salary and a really flexible working arrangement with nice people than working 60+ hours a week for £££££ but everyone is different....

Would you consider a remote role? My company is hiring python devs and with 18 months experience would love to talk to you, I can PM you if so.

As a guide, we would pay between £42k to £50,400.

We also have a length of service bonus so 10% of your annual salary on year two, 15% on year, plus you’d prob have moved up in job role in that time too - Quite good earning potential!

Be wary of recruiters selling you the dream, !!!! You need to look at actual company’s posting job ads to get a truer sense of the market.

I don't think the Ph.D will count for much at the beginning to be honest (I have one and it's only really been useful 10+ years into my career).

This is very true. The skills from the Ph.D will count far more than actually having the qualification -- this is very much a field where employers look at results rather than qualifications first.

15% on year three that should’ve said.

Sorry, I should have said that my current job title is data engineer (but working predominantly with python) but I do know SQL (inc apache spark), ETL pipelines, testing and deployment, creating dashboards and docker. My current role is more data engineering focused.

Thanks for the replies and help so far. I’m going to have a proper read through this evening.

That's a different role to being a python developer, but the salary expectations for ~18m experience are still pretty similar -- the bulk of the benchmarkable roles are around £50k, going upwards for senior roles.

I suspect it depends on the industry/company as to whether a PhD is helpful. A financial services company I used to work for pretty much only employed PhDs for data science and related roles ( some MScs by exception).