It’s your favorite time of the year: Honeypot’s official developer salary report. Want to negotiate a raise? Considering moving jobs, or even countries? As they say, knowledge is power. In our detailed breakdown of developer salaries in Austria, you can better understand the market you’re in and how much you’re worth.
In 2021, we found that while salaries stayed steady, interview invites and hires decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, we found salaries are increasing and so are interview invites. But there are also indications that Austria is a harder market for non-locals to break into.
The average salary for a developer in Austria in 2022 is €59,283 - up 3% from last year. But lots of variables play a role in your salary, including your experience, role, and even nationality and gender. In this report, we break it all down for you. Read on for the details.
Check out the 2023 developer salaries in Austria HERE!
How has this salary changed over the years? We took a look at the numbers since Honeypot’s launch.
2019 saw a massive dip in salaries, but this figure is on its way up, with rapid improvement, particularly as 2021 and 2022 saw a fresh hunger for developers. Companies have lost employees to COVID-19-related relocating and “The Great Resignation”, suggesting that the power to demand higher salaries is back on the employee’s side.
Mid-size companies come out on top
Last year we found that the bigger the company, the bigger the paycheck. But new data this year suggests that a mid-size company with 50-249 employees might be the sweet spot, offering more than both smaller and larger companies. Look out for a startup that has established itself without turning fully corporate yet - it might just be the best offer you get!
And what about where you are - how does a salary from the capital stack up against the rest of the country?
How does Vienna shape up against the rest of Austria?
In fact, the average offered salary in Vienna is only slightly higher than in the rest of the country. Austria is a small country, which means that the cost of living doesn’t fluctuate that much, a fact reflected in the average salaries as well. In particular, there are regions like Vorarlberg and cities like Graz, where the cost of living is even higher than in Vienna. That means that developers in Austria have the freedom to choose the city their heart desires.
A local’s game
Unlike Germany, where non-local and non-native speakers may even get higher salaries than their native counterparts. Data show that Austrian locals (and German speakers) tend to get interviewed, hired, and paid at greater rates.
The pay difference between local and non-local salaries may be smaller in junior roles, but it increases in senior roles
In some roles, a local, German-speaking developer may be paid up to 16% more than someone hired from another part of the world
We also found that local developers - both native and non-native speakers - are much more likely to receive interview invitations and job offers. However, hires for EU-based developers are up in 2022, suggesting that European movement might be more common again as we move out of the pandemic.
The fact remains that the demand for tech talents is only growing. When Honeypot launched in Austria in 2019, there were around 10k unfilled tech positions, three years later, that number has grown to 20-24k. So, companies need to understand that the competition is high and if they want to stay ahead of the curve they need to start accepting international talents. The companies that see ahead and decide to widen the pool of talents will be the ones to grow faster and stay ahead of a trend that is most definitely here to stay. And it’s only a matter of time before companies realise that the cost of unfilled positions is weighing on them and widen their scope.
The gender gap is still a problem
Female developers still get paid less than their male counterparts. Last year, we found the pay difference hovered around 4%. In 2022, the gender pay gap remained roughly the same.
What do you think you deserve?
Our data found that most Austria-based developers tend to overestimate their salary offer, even at senior levels. For example, the average expected salary for a senior frontend developer was €71,000: nearly 17% higher than the average offered salary. We could speculate about a lot of potential reasons for this, ranging from a negotiation tactic to a gradual dip in senior developer salaries country-wide. In general, it’s worth keeping in mind that you might not get the salary you’re hoping for.
Most in-demand technologies in Austria
Which were the most sought-after technologies in Austria for 2021 & 2022? Javascript leads the race in 2021 but falls in third place in 2022. Another surprise is Pyhton, which climbs from ninth to second place in 2022. While Java as a dev favourite remains in the top tier for both years.
A rise in the need for Java could translate into a higher need for backend developers in Austria. Java is a popular tech stack for older companies and corporates who are used to more traditional stacks like Java, C#, .NET.
Methodology
We used the salaries specified by hiring companies on the Honeypot platform as our key data source. To ensure data could be consistently compared, we removed interview invites with missing information (like position title or company location) as well as any unusually low or high salaries to avoid extreme outliers. We used an external library to determine gender based on the individual’s first name.
Ready for your raise?
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