Good news for companies in South Africa recruiting software developers

South African software developers reaping the financial benefits of working for a foreign company while still living in the country is not as common as it may appear.

This is according to software development firm Entelect, which told MyBroadband that South Africans are primarily taking these foreign opportunities because of the financial benefits, as well as the ability to work remotely.

However, it does not believe that the trend is limiting the number of South African programmers applying to local firms.

“We aren’t particularly concerned — whilst this is happening, the scale at which this is occurring is quite overstated as we’ve only seen a handful of cases over the last few years,” Entelect said.

“There has been a shortage of development talent for as long as we can remember.”

The firm said that the risks involved and isolation from the foreign job market can be offputting for many South Africans.

“We have seen a few people take this route, only to find that their international (mostly US-based) startups’ funding dried up, leading them to re-enter the South African market,” Entelect highlighted.

Global software developer hiring platform CodeSubmit found that the United States has the highest average software developer salary annually at $110,140 or just over R2 million.

This is followed by Switzerland at R1.8 million and Israel at R1.3 million.

CodeSubmit points out that South Africa is on the other side of the spectrum.

Nigeria had the lowest average compensation for software developers, at R133,148, followed by India, the Philippines, and Brazil.

South Africa was placed fifth, with the average developer reportedly earning R351,471 annually, or just under R30,000 per month.

While this is the industry average, a recent report analysing 16,000 tech-related job listings in South Africa on Indeed found that senior developers earn quite a bit more.

Senior Java developers were listed as the second-highest earning tech-related job, earning an average of R813,831 per year.

Senior software engineers and senior software developers were tied in third position, with an average advertised yearly compensation of R798,534.

However, it is important to note that these figures only reflect job listings.

A recent survey by Analytico of more than 2,500 respondents working for large corporations in Gauteng and Cape Town can paint a different picture of what software developers in South Africa are earning.

According to the results, the average entry-level programming and software development employee earns R39,000 per month or R468,000 per year, the highest earning position in this experience bracket.

Experienced employees in the same field earn an average of R55,000 per month, whereas those with 5 to 10 years of experience can earn an average of R79,000.

Senior developers were found to earn a monthly average of R105,000, and high-end earners R150,000 per month.

OfferZen’s Software Developer Salary Benchmark report provides a different perspective as it compares the average salaries developers earn per programming language in South Africa.

This is similar to Analytico’s methodology as it uses survey responses of 3,400 developers reporting on their gross monthly salary before tax.

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.

On the other hand, 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.

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 in this experience bracket, with developers earning an average of R41,734 per month.

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.