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Go has emerged as a popular programming language for web and front-end development, network server applications and command-line scripting. It is well-known for its quick compilation and execution speed, portability, lightweight routines that support concurrency, and extensive built-in libraries. In this article, we’ll take a look at what Go developers in Germany can expect to earn throughout their careers and how they compare to average salaries for Java, Python and PHP developers.
Average junior Golang developer salary
Junior Go developers with two to four years of experience earn an average annual salary of €48 004. That’s 9.8% (€4 271) more than junior Java developers, 2% (€958) more than Python, and 22.1% (€8 690) more than PHP.
After four years on the job, the average salary increases by 11.6% (€5 584) to €53 588. At this level, it’s actually 1.3% (€683) less than what Java developers earn and 10% (€5 942) less than Python, but still 12.4% (€5 897) more than PHP.
Go developers don’t see the large salary increases typically seen among developers working with other programming languages. That might be due to their higher starting salaries at the junior level. Junior Go developers start out earning competitively and companies may not be prepared to offer the same increases that they would to “less expensive” developers earning lower salaries.
Average Golang Developer Salaries by Experience
Average Salary by Years Experience, showing 25th and 75th percentiles
| Years of Experience | 25th Percentile | Average | 75th Percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-4 | €38,400 | €48,004 | €59,400 |
| 4-6 | €42,400 | €53,588 | €67,000 |
| 6-10 | €51,700 | €66,312 | €79,800 |
| 10-15 | €61,250 | €79,020 | €89,750 |
Average senior Golang developer salary
With six years of experience under their belts, Go developers in Germany see the biggest salary jump of their careers, up 23.7% (€12 724) to €66 312. That puts them a comfortable 9.3% (€5 649) ahead of Java, 5.3% (€3 672) behind Python, and 16.4% (€9 321) ahead of PHP.
Senior Go developers are typically expected to be able to:
- Develop secure, well-architected, highly functional applications;
- Implement best practices for optimised code;
- Collaborate with quality assurance, user interface and product teams on features and improvements;
- Lead teams of junior developers
As a result of these competencies, highly experienced Go devs with at least a decade in the industry see another respectable increase of 19.2% (€12 708), bringing their annual remuneration to €79 020. Similarly experienced Java developers earn 9.1% (€6 599) less, Python a nominal 0.6% (€461) less, and PHP devs 23.7% (€15 163) less.
Keep in mind
The data in this article is taken from StackOverflow’s 2022 Developer Survey open data. In this article, ‘salary’ refers to the gross annual salary (before tax) provided by 600 survey respondents from Germany who identified as Go developers.
We only included salary insights for experience levels with enough data points to ensure that the amounts represent Go 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 Go 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 significantly 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 Golang developers and find Golang developer jobs.
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