Salary Guide 2024

Salary Guide 2024

Another year, another salary guide!

We’re back again to share the insights we’ve learned over the last 12 months, and what that could look like
for the year ahead.

As always, the below is a guide and is based on the salaries of those who are working in the industry in
Ireland today. 2023, unfortunately, saw a lot of layoffs in tech and not as much hiring, but salaries haven’t
changed too drastically thankfully. These figures are based on the salaries our clients offer, the salaries of
people we have helped get a new position and people we’ve spoken to, as well as wider salary bands of
companies hiring in Ireland.

ENGINEERING

The Market; 2023 (Not an awesome year!)

It was more of an employer's market in 2023, there was a huge pivot from remote working back to hybrid
post-Covid. The variety of EU remote roles has taken a massive downturn, with companies opting for a
return to office hybrid. This was a reaction to the Big Tech layoffs that occurred, companies could call the
shots again as there were more candidates on the market who were available immediately and without visa
or geographical restrictions. Companies didn't need to open the talent pool by hiring outside of country as
they had a stacked talent pool due to said layoffs.

2024 Outlook (Will be a more awesome year, hopefully!)

However, 2024 promises to be much busier. For example, the Web3, Blockchain and general Crypto space is
predicted to ramp up massively again. A lot of companies across all domains seem to be testing the job
market waters again which will address the balance of the employers market to being more of a candidate
driven market again.

Trends we’ve noticed

JavaScript/TypeScript still tends to be extremely popular. The traditional frontend engineer role has pivoted
slightly, you'll often see some form of backend work, even if it is quite a small ratio in their general day to day.
CI/CD components etc. From our perspective, 2023 threw up some interesting challenges, hiring managers
were looking for full stack engineers rather than purely UI. On average, React/Node/AWS were the more
common roles, especially within smaller scaling companies. Having end to end code ownership was definitely
more in demand and being able to demonstrate you could deal with the ever-changing landscapes of smaller
company product lifecycle.

However, we did see some movement in frontend engineering roles, and was good to see a lot of agnostic
hiring processes, so candidates with experience within any modern UI framework such as
React/Angular/Vue/Ember etc were considered for most of the frontend roles we had. So their high level
knowledge of modern UI concepts and core-JavaScript were assessed rather than the requisite experience
with a particular framework.

Lastly, we’ve seen multiple reports of IT job vacancies returning to pre-pandemic levels, so here’s to a positive
year ahead!
 We’ve noticed
Software Engineering salaries drop
Junior Engineer (1 to 3 Years) €45k to €60k
Mid-level Engineer (3 to 5 years) €65k - €75k We’ve noticed
Senior Engineer (5 to 7+ years) €80k + something
Staff Engineer (Years vary) €110k - €130k
We’ve noticed
salaries increase

Leadership
Principal Engineer (Years vary) €120k - €140k Influencing Factors
Engineering Manger (Years vary) €120k - €140k
Senior Eng. Manager (Years vary) €140k - €160k Hiring managers like when
Director of Engineering (Years vary) €160k - €200k people have been
exposed to different areas.
What we’re hearing is that principal positions are falling into Leadership, as opposed to Be it having experience
Staff level (this can depend on the company of course!) with DevOps or having
software engineers who
will be working in heavy
data and big data
environments.
Mobile Engineering
Junior Engineer (1 to 3 Years) €50 to 60k
Mid-level Engineer (3 to 5 years) €80k - €90k
Senior Engineer (5 to 7+ years) €100k - €120k
Manager (Years vary) €130k+ There has also been a big
push towards GCP, and
AWS would still dominate.
A lot of companies are
trying to become cloud-
FrontEnd Engineering agnostic.

Junior Engineer (1 to 3 Years) €40k to €60k

Mid-level Engineer (3 to 5 years) €60k - €75k
Senior Engineer (5 to 7+ years) €75k - €95k
Staff Engineer (Years vary) €100k - €120k
From a language
perspective, Golang is
being introduced where
applicable, but there are
Full Stack Engineering still more dominant
languages being used
Python, Java, .Net etc
Junior Engineer (1 to 3 Years) €40k to €60k
Mid-level Engineer (3 to 5 years) €60k - €80k
Senior Engineer (5 to 7+ years) €80k - €110k
Staff Engineer (Years vary) €110k - €130k

For more information, please feel free to get in touch with Dave, Ciaran or Andy:
David@ninedots.io, Ciaran@ninedots.io, Andy@ninedots.io
For Mobile, get in touch with Lee!
Lee@ninedots.io
 DESIGN

There haven’t been as many positions available within design throughout 2023. Similar to other positions, with
the number of layoffs happening, a lot of companies weren’t in a position to expand their design teams.

Having said that, salaries themselves haven’t declined because of this and seem to have stayed within the same
ranges..

Product Design
Product Designers work on the full lifespan of a product, from discovery to market launch. They are responsible
for a number of areas, including; UX, design, layout, typography, visual hierarchy and working with engineers
throughout the development process. While not coders, some product designers do have experience with some
of the basics of frontend development.

Influencing Factors
Junior to Mid-Weight Designer (1 to 5 Years) €45k to €75k Depending on the company,
Senior Designer (5 to 7+ years) €80k - €100k Leads/ Principals may also
Lead Designer (Years vary) €110k+ have management
Principal/ Design Manager (Years vary) €115k+ responsibilities, and
Design Director (Years vary) €130k+ sometimes mid-weight
designers can be
responsible for everything.
UX Design
Generally, the
UX Designers predominately focus on the backend of a product, mostly responsibilities differ
considering customer needs and ensuring a positive experience. They are depending on whether the
responsible for a number of things, from discovery and planning through research company has an existing
and strategy, persona creation, accessibility, IA, wire-framing, prototyping and design team, or one person
testing. UX Design is not a visual design position, so traditionally they do not get who is responsible for
involved on the the interface side, nor are they responsible for coding (although everything (along with the
will often work closely with engineers). size of the company and
what their budget allows)

Junior to Mid-Weight Designer (1 to 5 Years) €35k to €70k

Senior Designer (5 to 7+ years) €75k - €95k The responsibilities that
Lead Designer (Years vary) €100k + someone has had, paired
Principal/ Design Manager (Years vary) €110k+ with the projects they have
Design Director (Years vary) €125k + completed, would be a
stronger indication on
salary rather than the
amount of years they have
UX Research been working.

UX Research is a specialised vertical within the design process. Researchers dive deep to
understand the needs and wants of users, and collaborate closely with designers and
stakeholders to make sure that actionable insights can be drawn from the research.

Junior to Mid-Weight Researcher (1 to 4 Years) €35k to €60k

Senior Researcher (5 to 7+ years) €65k - €80k
Research Lead/ Manager (Years vary) €85k +

For more information, please feel free to get in touch with Aisling or Lee:
Aisling@ninedots.io, Lee@ninedots.io
 PRODUCT

Product Manager/ Product Owner

It’s tough sometimes to draw down exactly whats the difference between a PM and a PO as it can be really down
to the company or the actual product needs. PO’s can be used to to maximise the product with customer
feedback around behaviours etc., While the PM can handle end to end from vision to designing out and owning
the roadmap.

Junior Level (1 to 2 Years) €65k to €70k

Mid Level (3 to 5 Years) €80k - €95k Influencing Factors
Senior Level (5+ Years) €100k+
Manager Level (Years vary) €120k+
A lot of clients we have
"Head Of" Level (Years vary) €130k+
been working with have
been looking for Product
Managers who come from
a technical background.

Experience with APIs is

Scrum Master/ Agile Coach also becoming more in
demand.

A Scrum Master is usually considered the captain or coach of a team, which

would generally be around 8 people, pushing the team forward to meet the the
We’ve seen that a lot of
sprint goal. The Agile Coach, however, isn’t part of a specific team and would
people working in this
usually work independently so as to be more effective and transparent with
space who work fully
teams, with the aim of better outcomes.
remote seem to be on a
slightly lower salary, but
that may also be company
Junior Level (1 to 2 Years) €60k to €70k dependant.
Mid Level (3 to 5 Years) €80k - €90k
Senior Level (5+ Years) €95k+
Manager Level (Years vary) €100k+

For more information, please feel free to get in touch with Mick:
Mick@ninedots.io
 DATA

Data Analyst
Data analytics is the secret sauce! It's like the behind-the-scenes wizardry that helps
a business be its absolute best. Think of it as the superhero of smart decisions,
making sure everything runs like a well-oiled machine. It's all about turning raw data
into gold using cool tools and tricks – kind of like having a tech-savvy sidekick on
your team!

Junior Level (1 to 2 Years) €45k to €70k

Mid Level (3 to 5 Years) €70k - €85k
Senior Level (Years very) €90k+ Influencing Factors
Manager Level (Years vary) €100k+

Data specialists are in high

demand, posing
challenges for effective
Data Scientist management.

Small to
Data scientists identify crucial questions and locate relevant data sources. Armed
medium-sized enterprises
with business insight and analytical prowess, they excel in mining, cleaning, and
must invest in upskilling to
presenting data. Businesses leverage data scientists to handle vast amounts of
cope. Business users are
unstructured data, ensuring valuable insights for decision-making.
transforming
data analytics with no-
code/low-code tools.
Junior Level (1 to 2 Years) €50k to €70k
Mid Level (3 to 5 Years) €75k - €85k The surge in digital tech
Senior Level (5+ Years) €95k+ means more reliance on
Manager Level (Years vary) €120k+ large data networks,
creating career
opportunities.

This year, salaries are more variable than they were last year for junior positions Machine learning and AI
and the ranges are wider.
are revolutionizing

Data Engineer data analysis across

industries, offering
accurate insights. The
Data engineers operate in diverse environments, constructing systems that future of data analytics is
gather, oversee, and transform raw data into actionable insights. Their primary here, driven by ML and AI
objective is to ensure data accessibility, empowering organisations to assess and
enhance their performance.

Junior Level (1 to 2 Years) €55k - €65k

Mid Level (3 to 5 Years) €70k - €85k
Senior Level (5+ Years) €90k - €110k
Principal Level (Years vary) €115k +

For more information, please feel free to get in touch with Mande:
Mande@ninedots.io
 INFRASTRUCTURE

DevOps Engineers and Site Reliability Engineers

The realm of DevOps/SRE/Infrastructure continues to be confusing in job title and complex in job
description. Kubernetes is king - we barely see a Kubernetes-free spec these days.
Infrastructure as Code is practically mandatory across Ops jobs as companies automate everything in
sight. This trend is likely to continue as online infrastructures become more complex and customers
demand more and more from their internet experiences. No one wants to wait longer than a few
milliseconds for a website to load and we all rage when a service goes down for longer than 5 minutes!

In regards to cloud platforms, there’s now an interesting mix of cloud

Influencing Factors
providers. Whereas AWS used to be ubiquitous, there’s now many more
companies who are multi-cloud or have moved to a GCP/Azure cloud. We’ve
also seen a slight shift towards companies moving back to on-prem Ops has many factors
services. Like fashion and gaming genres, technology moves in cycles! that influence the
salary. The years of
experience is not a
direct reflection of
salary - it’s just a
guide. Ops in
We’re still seeing that the job title is less important than the duties so if particular is quite
you’re an Infrastructure person, don’t let the job title hold you back. Focus on varied in terms of
the day to day duties. salary. If you can’t
code at all, you might
DevOps is still about making things repeatable and automated. It's mostly struggle to get the top
focused on software or infrastructure (via IaC) delivery. of the salary band,
SRE is more about observability and performance. Usually, some SWE outside of niche Ops
background is required for the job along with some coding skills but the pay jobs. The stronger
is much better than DevOps. Historically, they're embedded in the SWE team. your coding skills, the
Platform/Production engineering, the newest hot thing. It boils down to more likely you are to
keeping the production lights on + it mostly overlap with SRE apart from the get that top salary.
fact that's usually a separate team. Salaries are on par or higher with SRE.
Salaries have stabilised
a bit in the last 12
months after the sharp
increase over the
As a very rough indication; SRE and Production Engineers might work on pandemic - there has
high availability services and/or highly customer focused products while not been a massive
DevOps/Operations work on production services / internal products. increase in base
Engineers in this area are expected to have strong knowledge of one or salaries.
more public cloud infrastructure, decent Infrastructure as Code abilities
(Python being the most common language), and an understanding of the We also find that salaries for
ins and outs of Production/deployment. most companies plateau
after around €130-140K on
the base. After that point,
Salaries coming up! unless you’re heading to
FAANG, doing something
niche, or entering
management level - it’s
tough to get that 20% bump
For more information, please feel free to get in touch with Rose: in salary when moving job.
Rose@ninedots.io
A final point - if your interview is going to involve coding, you really do need to practice. Like
a marathon is different to your daily jog, the interview is going to differ from your day to day
tooling. Excellent engineers can fail to get the job because they can’t bang out a FizzBuzz or
write something to identify a palindrome. The system isn’t ideal but it is what it is and if you
want those high base wages, it’s a necessary evil!

DevOps & SRE

Junior Infrastructure/ DevOps Engineer (1 to 3 Years) €40k to €55k

Junior SRE with software engineering skills €50k - €60k

Mid-level Infrastructure/ DevOps Engineer (3 to 6 years) €60k - €80k

Mid-level SRE with software engineering skills €70k - €90k

Senior Infrastructure/DevOps Engineer (Years vary) €80k - €100k

Senior SRE with software engineering skills €85k - €110k

Principal / Staff / Senior IC (Years vary) €100k - €140k

Principal SRE with software engineering skills €100k - €140k

Leadership (Years vary) €140k+

We’ve seen that the addition of engineering skills has an impact on salaries, and you
can generally expect that bit more when you’ve got that experience

Keep reading for more!

 System Administration
System Administrators, or SysAdmins, are responsible for managing and maintaining computer systems,
networks, and their applications. Their tasks include installing and troubleshooting hardware & software,
technical support, automation, virtualisation, backup & recovery, and maintaining security policies, among
others.

They should be comfortable working with a range of operating systems as well as various tools and
technologies. They are also expected to have strong analytical and communication skills, and to be involved in
user training and ensuring their adherence to best practices. Depending on the needs of the organisation, a
SysAdmin might also be expected to work with database administration, data centre management, and/or a
range of cloud technologies. Lead and Principal SysAdmins are definitely a thing in certain companies but they
are not commonplace. Generally a SysAdmin will either stay at Senior level or go on to a more specialised role
within IT.

Influencing Factors

SysAdmin
The responsibilities of a
System Administrator
Junior Admin (1 to 3 Years) €30k to €40k can differ greatly from
Mid-level Admin (3 to 6 years) €40k - €60k company to company.
Senior Admin (7+ Years) €60k - €80k+

To that effect, salaries

vary depending on the
complexity of the
technologies used and
the overall scope of the
Network Operations role.

Generally speaking,
SysAdmins can
Network Engineers are responsible for implementing and maintaining an command higher
organisation’s computer networks. They are expected to have a deep salaries if they have an
knowledge of routing protocols, network hardware such as routers and in-depth knowledge of
switches, and firewall installation and configuration. more advanced
computing concepts
Certification tends to be important for Network Engineers, usually coming such as cloud
from networking manufacturers like Cisco or Juniper. More advanced Network computing, coding and
Engineers may have experience with large scale networks, scripting, security practices.
automation, and advanced networking concepts such as software-defined
networking or cloud networking.
More recently and with
There is some overlap between Network Admins and SysAdmins, with Network a higher frequency,
Admins focusing more heavily on the management of network infrastructure. SysAdmins are expected
to have a good level of
cloud knowledge. AWS
and Azure are most in-
Network Engineer demand here. Container
management and IaC
Junior Engineer (1 to 3 Years) €30k to €40k can also be a
Mid-level Engineer (3 to 5 years) €40k - €60k requirement. This can
Senior Engineer (6+ Years) €65k - €80k see System
Manager (Years vary) €75k+ Administration overlap
significantly with
DevOps at times, which
makes this a common
career progression for
For more information, please feel free to get in touch with Ross: SysAdmins, along with
Ross@ninedots.io
Infosec
.
 Technical Support

Technical Support Engineers (or Analysts or Specialists etc.) are responsible for providing technical
assistance to customers and sometimes internal users who are experiencing issues with a product or
service. They are expected to be able to troubleshoot and document these issues and to then either resolve
or escalate them to a higher level of support or internal teams.

Influencing Factors
A mix of technical and communication skills are required and, depending on
the technical requirements of the company, technicians may have to be familiar Similarly to SysAdmin,
with a wide range of technical skills. Tech Support is divided into levels (L1, L2, salaries for Tech
etc.,), with higher level Engineers being expected to provide more advanced Support can differ
support, ranging from resolution of basic issues to more specialised support, quite a bit depending
and taking an active role in preventing recurrence of these issues. L3 on the complexity of
technicians generally provide the highest level of support and are responsible the role.
for root cause analysis and the resolution of previously unknown issues.
Some Tech Support
L4 support exists and is generally carried out by third-party vendors. Engineers may be
expected to be
familiar with scripting
(or being able to read
Tech Support code), databases and
cloud technologies.
Others, such as those
Junior to Mid-level Engineer (1 to 5 Years) €25k to €40k
in Product Support,
Senior Engineer (6+ Years) €45k - €60k
will need to be able to
Leadership/ Specialist (10+ Years) €60k+
assist in the
continuous
improvement of the
product or service
through proper
feedback and
Product Support
communication with
internal teams.
Junior to Mid-level Engineer (1 to 4 Years) €35k to €50k
Senior Engineer (5+ years) ~€60k Application Support
Leadership (8+ Years) €60k+ refers to support
provided on a specific
set of software or
applications.

The amount of time in

Application Support the job is less
important compared
to these factors – an
Junior to Mid-level Engineer (1 to 4 Years) €35k to €50k
Engineer with 5 years
Senior Engineer (5+ years) ~€60k
of experience in
Leadership (8+ Years) €60k+
certain Support roles
might earn more than
an Engineer with 20
years in others. For
this reason, savvy
Support Engineers
tend to look for roles
where they can get
their hands on more
in-demand tech to
For more information, please feel free to get in touch with Ross: greater develop their
Ross@ninedots.io
skillset.
 Software Testing

Quality Assurance and Software Testing in general is concerned with testing the functionality and quality
of products and code in the tech industry. While pure manual testers and jobs still exist and likely always
will, the market has shifted towards automation.

Testers can be expected to know a wide range of tools and technologies. Each company tends to have its
own unique ecosystem of tools. Cucumber is popular for Behaviour-Driven Testing, Postman for API
testing. Automation Engineers need to know some coding - Python, Java, JavaScript are all popular.

An attitude of “use the right tool for the job, and know when it is appropriate to use it.” is necessary. As
users and developers find new ways to break code, the QA Engineer needs to be flexible and innovative
to find these issues!

Software Engineering in Test is quite common now - these are engineers who use a great deal of
code for their testing. They can range from writing relatively complex code to assist with software
testing to writing full bespoke frameworks and tools. Some companies don’t use the SDET term,
opting for either QA or Software Engineer, so it can be hard to know what level of coding/testing are
required for a role – ask your friendly neighbourhood recruiter!

Influencing Factors

As with every job,

Quality Assurance Engineer years of experience
do not always match
100% with salary.
Junior Engineer (1 to 3 Years) Up to €50k
Mid-level Engineer (3 to 5 years) €50k - €65k The amount of coding
Senior Engineer (5 to 7 Years) €60k - €80k required for a QA job
Lead Engineer (7+ Years) €80k+ €100k+ can bring the salary
up, along with other
factors such as the
complexity of the
testing ecosystem,
availability of the
required tools on the
market, and the split
in duties between
automation and
manual testing.

Experience with
web/mobile and
SDET (Software Engineer in Testing) increasingly cloud
testing/microservices
is important
Junior Engineer (1 to 3 Years) Up to €50k
depending on the
Mid-level Engineer (3 to 7 years) €60k - €80k
product. More
Senior Engineer (7+ Years) €80k - €100k+
advanced testers will
also be comfortable
creating test
frameworks from
scratch which in turn
will attract a higher
salary.

For more information, please feel free to get in touch with Ross:
Ross@ninedots.io
 GAMING

The roles in gaming haven’t changed throughout 2023. We’ve seen some industry changes in terms of
acquisitions, some growth for smaller studios, and unfortunately a few studio closures too.

In comparison to 2022, more studios filled positions themselves rather than working with recruitment
agencies, so we don’t have enough data captured ourselves to be able to add a meaningful update here.

With that being said, we hope that after an unusual 2023 the gaming industry will be raring to go again in
2024.

Rather than omitting gaming from this guide, and also not wanting to provide data that we can’t stand
behind, we thought it best not to update this section until we have accurate information.

So for now.....

We’ll make sure to provide an update when we can, of course!

 And there we are for another year!

As mentioned throughout the document, there are a lot of factors that can influence
salaries, so what we have outlined here is very much a guide as opposed to hard
facts.

If you need any advice, just get in touch! There are individual emails mentioned
throughout the document, but we're also available on info@ninedots.io

ninedots.io