Top paying tech jobs in South Africa

Engineering managers have been identified as the highest-earning technology-related position in South Africa out of those currently most in demand, with an average annual salary of R840,000.

This is according to a report by Quickbooks developer Intuit, which analysed 16,000 job listings on the employment website Indeed and ranked the most popular jobs by their average annual compensation.

The report noted several software developer positions closely followed engineering managers.

Senior Java developers came in second, earning an average of R813,831 per year.

Not too far behind were senior software engineers and senior software developers, tied in third position, with an average advertised yearly compensation of R798,534.

The fourth spot saw an R80,000 drop in earnings for data scientists, who were found to be paid an average of R717,867 per year.

Senior data engineers were placed fifth, earning an average of R613,00 annually, with non-senior positions in the same field ranked sixth at R462,536.

Sixth and seventh place fell to data scientists and business intelligence analysts, who were found to earn an annual average of R430,580 and R414,817, respectively.

Given that the report based its findings on job listings, it also took the location of these listings into account, ranking South Africa’s top cities by number of tech-related vacancies per capita (100,000 people) and total jobs available.

The report found that Cape Town had the most tech roles, 650, while Johannesburg placed second with 492 vacancies, with Durban coming in third at 84.

Stellenbosch had a total of 34 tech-related vacancies, and Midrand had 52.

However, Stellenbosch had the most tech-related vacancies per capita, 36.07, marginally beating Midrand’s 36.06.

Joburg’s tech role per capita was 24.28, while Durban’s came to 2.69.

The report also compared the number of tech roles involving artificial intelligence per city, with only Johannesburg and Cape Town having these specific vacancies.

Joburg had 19 AI roles, whereas Cape Town had 3.

Highest-paying programming languages

A similar report by OfferZen, a South African employment website specifically for software developers, ranked the highest-paying programming languages in the country.

OfferZen’s Software Developer Salary Benchmark report is based on a survey of more than 3,400 South African developers conducted between September and November 2024.

The salary information provided by respondents refers to gross monthly salary before tax. OfferZen also noted that most developers surveyed were fluent in multiple languages, which would have affected their final salary.

The report noted that Kotlin was the lowest-paying programming language for developers entering the job market, paying an average of R16,041 per month.

This is a significant decrease from OfferZen’s previous report, which saw entry-level developers using the language earn an average of R29,000 per month.

Ruby and PHP were the languages with the highest pay for developers with less than two years of experience, with earnings of R28,125 and R26,287, respectively.

Unlike Kotlin, PHP increased by an average of more than R10,000 per month for this experience bracket.

Ruby remains the highest-paying programming language for developers with four to six years of experience, with an average monthly salary of R57,500.

PHP was found to be the language that paid the least, with developers earning an average of R41,734 per month.

As developers grow in experience, those who specialise in languages like Go, Java, and Kotlin begin to earn more.

Java and Go are the two languages in which developers with six to ten years of experience are paid the most to program, earning an average of R79,408 and R78,676, respectively.

While PHP was one of the languages with the highest pay for those entering the job market, it is the lowest-paying language in this bracket.

Go was the highest-paying language for developers with more than ten years of experience, with an average monthly salary of R125,694.

Ruby and Kotlin were second and third, with developers earning monthly salaries of R121,818 and R111,937, respectively.

PHP was once again the lowest-paying language, with a salary of R87,005.