Germany is home to Europe’s third and fourth largest tech hubs, Berlin and Munich. This makes it one of the best countries for software developers. Here, we’ll take a look at average salaries for backend developers at each stage of their careers and how they compare to front end developers, full stack developers, and DevOps engineers.
Average junior backend developer salary trends
The average backend engineer salary starts at €38 731 for engineers with fewer than two years of experience. At this stage of their careers, they earn 5.9% and 10.8% more than their frontend and full stack counterparts, respectively. They also earn 8.1% more than the average entry-level DevOps engineer in Germany.
Once they’ve been in the profession for at least two years, backend developers can expect a 14.7% pay increase. This puts the average junior backend developer salary at €44 411 per year. They now trail junior full stack developers by 12.2% and junior frontend developers by 2.4%.
Mid-level backend developers can expect an additional 22.6% increase after they pass the four-year mark. This gives them an average annual salary of €54 462. This is 9.9% more than the average frontend developer and 3.8% more than a DevOps engineer with comparable experience. They’ve also reduced the gap between themselves and their full stack counterparts to 6%.
Average Backend Developer Salaries by Experience
Average Salary by Years Experience, showing 25th and 75th percentiles
| Years of Experience | 25th Percentile | Average | 75th Percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-2 | €28,725 | €38,731 | €52,850 |
| 2-4 | €33,575 | €44,411 | €57,625 |
| 4-6 | €41,196 | €54,462 | €66,225 |
| 6-10 | €51,600 | €67,486 | €82,000 |
| 10-15 | €53,400 | €74,985 | €90,500 |
Average senior backend developer salary trends
Backend developers in Germany buck the trend of decreasing salary growth at higher levels of seniority. In fact, they receive the most significant pay rise of their careers once they pass the six-year mark.
Backend developers with at least six years of experience earn an average annual salary of €67 486. This is 15.8% more than their frontend counterparts, 14.5% more than the average for full stack developers and 9.4% more than senior DevOps engineers in this experience bracket.
The average senior backend engineer salary increases by an additional 11.1% once they pass the ten-year mark and gives them an average salary of €74 985. At this stage of their careers, they still outearn both their full stack and frontend counterparts by 9.4% and 11.6%, respectively.
Keep in mind
The data in this article is taken from StackOverflow’s 2022 Developer Survey’s open data. In this article, ‘salary’ refers to the gross annual salary (before tax) provided by 519 survey respondents from Germany who identified as backend developers.
We only included salary insights for experience levels with enough data points to ensure that the amounts represent backend developers in the country. That’s why we’ve omitted developers with more than fifteen years of experience from the article.
We also ran an outlier analysis to identify data points skewing the distribution of salaries. These points were removed from the final dataset to ensure that the amounts are representative of backend developers in Germany. We’ve also included the 25th and 75th percentiles to give you further information about the distribution of salary data.
Average salaries are single data points and only one part of a bigger story. Many respondents may earn significantly more or less than these averages. However, we hope to show underlying trends by mapping the average salaries for different experience levels.
These averages should not be used to estimate what your actual salary will or should be. Salaries depend on the company size, industry, individual, perks and nature of the work. These factors all influence the salary a company will offer to a prospective hire. In addition, most developers are “fluent” in several languages and work across multiple roles, which will also affect the final figures.
It’s also important to remember that every individual’s context is different. Salary is a personal conversation that should take place between employee and employer.
On OfferZen you can hire backend developers and find backend developer jobs.
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