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Relative newcomer Kotlin is fast becoming one of the most important languages for backend and mobile development in Europe and is now one of the official Android development languages. Here we’ll look at the average Kotlin developer salary and how it compares to those for Go, Java and Python.
Average junior Kotlin developer salary
The average salary for a junior Kotlin developer lies at €50 510 per year for developers with at least two years of experience. At this stage of their careers, they earn 15.5% more than the average Java developer with comparable experience. They also earn 7.4% and 5.2% more than their Python and Go counterparts, respectively.
Once they pass the four years of experience mark, mid-level Kotlin developers see their salaries rise by 16%. This gives them an average annual salary of €58 597, 8% more than the average for Java developers and 9.3% more than Go developers. However, they now find themselves trailing intermediate Python developers by 1.6%.
Average Kotlin Developer Salaries by Experience
Average Salary by Years Experience, showing 25th and 75th percentiles
| Years of Experience | 25th Percentile | Average | 75th Percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-4 | €45,900 | €50,510 | €61,250 |
| 4-6 | €45,600 | €58,597 | €67,000 |
| 6-10 | €53,850 | €66,605 | €78,250 |
| 10-15 | €63,250 | €75,740 | €86,500 |
Average senior Kotlin developer salary
Once they pass the six-year mark, salary growth for senior Kotlin developers begins to slow slightly. However, that’s not to say that there’s no growth at all.
The average senior Kotlin developer salary increases by 13.7% for developers with six to ten years of experience, giving them an average annual salary of €66 605. At this stage of their careers, the gap between themselves and their Python counterparts has widened to 4.8%.
Their advantage over the average Go developer has practically disappeared and only 0.4% separates developers working with each of these languages. However, senior Kotlin developers have extended their advantage over Java developers with comparable experience to 9.8%.
Once they pass the ten-year mark, Kotlin developers can look forward to an additional 13.7% pay rise for an average annual salary of €75 740. Despite this increase, they’ve been overtaken by their Go counterparts and continue to trail senior Python developers by approximately 3.6%. The gap between themselves and their Java counterparts has also narrowed to 4.6%.
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 220 survey respondents from Germany who identified as Kotlin developers.
We only included salary insights for experience levels with enough data points to ensure that the amounts represent Kotlin 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 Kotlin 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.
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