Backend software developers, including database designers and administrators, not only out-earn on average those with other IT skills in general, but they also outpace their frontend and “full stack” peers as well.
“Software developers have one of the best-paid careers in South Africa. The average salary of a software developer is R55 914/month (from R24 000 at the graduate level to an average of R94 000 at the senior level). That’s more than twice as much as the average South African salary of R26 894,” said the OfferZen State of the Developer Nation report for 2024.
“Backend developers still earn significantly more than their frontend and full-stack counterparts.”
OfferZen data shows that when compared to frontend and full-stack engineers, backend developers, on average, out-earn their peers throughout their careers. The gap is smallest at the junior level (zero to two years of experience) where backend developers earn an average of R23 000/month, R2 000/month more than full-stack developers and R6 000/month more than frontend developers with similar experience.
At the intermediate level (two to four years of experience), the gap widens even more, with the average monthly earnings for backend developers rising to R37 000, R7 000 more than their full-stack peers and R9 000 more than frontend developers.
And as the years of experience grow towards the senior level, the earnings of frontend and full-stack developers tend to equalise, but the gap between the two groups widens again at the 10+ years level of experience. At this stage, full-stack developers earn an average of R85 000/month, R14 000/month more than their frontend peers. Backend developers at the same level of experience are on average outearning their frontend peers by R24 000/month and their full stack peers by R14 000/month, with an average monthly salary of R95 000.
Business IT skills
Data from PNet’s Job Market Trends Report for the fourth quarter of 2023 shows a similar trend, with database designers, developers and administrators – all backend functions – shown to have a monthly salary band of between R49 351 and R67 500, higher than the more general software developer category whose average monthly earnings are between R36 500 and R58 333, said the report.
But PNet data also shows that at the high end of the IT earnings bracket are those IT professionals/skills that have a strong business component attached to them. These include technical business architects and enterprise architecture specialists who, according to PNet’s report, have salaries that range from R50 659 to R75 000/month.
A closer look at OfferZen’s data for earnings by programming language specialty shows that how scarce a particular skill is plays a significant role in determining the amount that employers willing to pay to acquire and retain that skill. OfferZen data shows that PHP developers have the lowest lifetime earnings of all programming language specialties, peaking at R77 000 at the senior (10+ years of experience) level.
Go developers, on the other hand, outperform other programming language specialists throughout the career lifespan, with Ruby on Rails developers catching up as the years of experience increase. Of the 14 languages compared in the OfferZen report, Java specialists see the most relative improvement over the lifetime of their careers, placing 10th from an earnings point of view in the entry level category but eventually becoming the fifth highest-earning specialty at the senior level.
Read: Software developer salaries in South Africa are shrinking
“Over the past three years, Go, Ruby and Kotlin had the highest average salaries among South African developers. This is due, in part, to the difficulty of finding developers with experience coding in these languages. And they remain in short supply, which sees them retain their position as the best-paying languages in the country, said OfferZen. — (c) 2024 NewsCentral Media