Current trend is — Permie salaries are up, Contract rates remain the same.
Perm:
Entry Level — £20–25k — More candidates than jobs & a degree is preferable to 3 month boot camp. You’ll get a job eventually, but it will take a while. (Please see entry level guide). 5 developers per 1 job.
Junior — £30–40k — 1 year commercial experience. Demand outstrips supply at a rate of 2 developers to every 3 jobs roughly.
Lower-Mid —£40–50k - 2 years good experience in a good team (or 3 years experience in a bad team) — 2 developers per 5 roles.
Upper Mid- £50–60k — 3 years commercial experience in a good team + talent or 4 years mediocre experience plus little talent. — 2 developers per 5 roles.
Lower Senior — £60–70k- 4 years experinece in good teams or 5–6 years low-quality experience. 1 developer per 5 roles.
Upper Senior — £70k-80k — 5 years quality experience. Many people who lack the talent will never get to the technical level where they can aquire these roles. 1 developer per 7 roles.
Hands on Tech-Lead (no prior experience) ‘ babbies first tech lead role’— £60k-£65k — ‘growing into the role’ — typically youngish startup. 1 developer per 3 roles
Hands on Tech-Lead (with Experience) — £70k-90k — typically more established teams or young startup with money. — 1 candidate per 7 roles.
Contract:
Lower Senior — £400 /day — 3 Developers per 5 roles.
Mid Senior — £500 /day — 3 Developers per 5 roles.
Senior Seniors — £600 /day — 1 developer per 1 role — but both are so infrequent that it can take a while to match them at this level. (Only 7.5% of Rubyists will ever get to this point)
Modifiers:
Remote — Take one of the above, minus £10k-£15k or -£100–150, half the number of roles and double the number of applicants, then remove the Entry & Junior roles.
‘A*’ Teams with Hype — minus £5k-10k but benefit from good mentoring, a great name on your CV, a pleasant company & working on interesting things you like.
‘C’ teams with troubles — Plus £5k-10k but suffer from 5 year old code bases with no documentation and none of the original developers around, management troubles etc
Outside of London — minus £5k-10k depending on the location — but you can be quids in depending on the cost of living differential.
Notes:
Quality of Experience: Are you surrounded by good people to learn from and learn good practices from? Have you been freelancing on your own for years and learning bad practices?
Natural Talent: Most people can get to a reasonable level of seniority, but only some people can hit the upper echelons of development. Also talented people progress faster.
Effort: Even not-amazing-talented-people can progress faster and further by putting the work in, contributing to projects etc.
About the author: Louis Goff-Beardsley is a scumbag recruiter who produces dank OC to trick developers into working with him. If you feel your career would benefit from speaking to an autist fixated on the Ruby jobs market, feel free to drop Louis a line on Louis@infinitiumglobal.com,+44 (0)7449324851, or 24/7 on Skype: LouisGB1. You can also add him on Linkedin or follow him on Twitter