The average salaries of senior software developers have increased by 19% since 2019, while less-experienced developers saw their wages increase by 7.4% during the same period.
OfferZen released its State of the Developer Nation report for 2022, which revealed that backend developers earn the highest salaries when it comes to both senior and junior developers.
When it comes to those with fewer years of experience, backend developers earn salaries 27% higher than their peers on the front end.
The gap widens for developers with more than ten years of experience. Senior backend developers earn an average of 33% more than their frontend counterparts.
OfferZen also found that while developers in Cape Town still earn more than those working elsewhere in the country, the gap is closing.
However, Capetonian developers have been the highest-paid for three years running.
Sectors that pay developers the most are the financial and cloud technology industries, followed by data and analytics, ecommerce, and consulting.
Developers working in ecommerce or telecommunications have seen the most significant year-on-year salary growth, at an average of 9%.
Comparatively, software-as-service developers only saw their salaries grow by 2% — the lowest year-on-year growth reported.
According to OfferZen, developers who code in Kotlin, Go, or Ruby earn the highest salaries, followed by TypeScript and C++.
OfferZen’s report also revealed that male software developers earn an average of 17% more than females with the same qualifications.
The gap between average male and female software developer salaries increased by 2% over last year.
Comparatively, the gap between average male and female salaries for those with six to ten years of experience increased from 3.5% in 2021 to 15.5% in 2022.
It found that JavaScript remains the most used programming language, followed by C# and TypeScript, and that Go is climbing the ranks of the most desired programming languages.
However, Python remains the most desired programming language among South African developers.
OfferZen also reported that cryptocurrency is gaining ground when it comes to the most exciting industries according to developers, and could be one of the most promising sectors in 2022.
When it comes to cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS) dominates in South Africa. AWS is used for 43.2% of cloud platforms in the country.
The next-highest is Microsoft Azure with 29.6%, followed by Google Cloud Platform with 14.4%.
OfferZen also found that whether it be in a hybrid format that includes sessions at the office, or a complete work-from-home set up, around 92% of South African developers work remotely.
More specifically, 51% of developers work in a remote-only set-up, followed by 41% who split their time between the office and home.
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