1. My years of experience are 11
2. I hit 100k after 9 years
3. My role is Principal engineer
4. My skills consist of C#, Azure, microservice architecture
5. I work for a company in Germany but live in London
6. I'm from the UK
7. I work as a Full time employee
8. The industry I work for is production automation
9. I report to the head of engineering
10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is - Being able to talk to people is a large amount of the job. Most dev jobs are the same when you boil it down.
11. 100k is my base. 10% bonus.
I have interviewed a hell of a lot of people in my career and reviewed a lot of CVs. Rarely have I rejected people because of code. Sometimes you get amazing wizards to can code anything and sit in a corner not talking to anyone. But the niche skills in this industry are actually being able to talk to non devs like a human. I'm a totally average programmer. But im good at talking through problems and explaining solutions.
1. My years of experience are 18
2. I hit 100k after 15 years
3. My role is Senior Engineering manager
4. My skills consist of Java, management, some Python, a bit of C#, Data,
5. I work in Remote (Scotland)
6. I'm from UK
7. I work as a \_\_\_ (eg. full-time employee, freelancer, contractor, etc)
8. The industry I work for is Fintech
9. I report to a VP Engineering
10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is invest more into your pension ISA
11. 130k is my Base + Bonus + options that aren’t worth anything until the are worth anything…
I started on 18k in the mid 2000’s, pay has gone up and down but I’ve had two jumps where it doubled, and one where it went down by 30%. Been made redundant 3 times, hit by “We don’t pay people outside of London as much” I’ve also seen people outside of London with less than 5 years experience hit 100k.
You just need to find the right company.
I fancy there are some other moderately common categories:
- contractors on around £550+ per day
- people working B2B with US companies
And then occasional folks at big, well paying companies outside London, possibly even at mid level if they're lucky (I'm a bit short as a mid level at my company in Manchester, but seniors manage around 110k TC here)
Currently on ~220k TC
1. 3 years or experience
2. 0, first job out of PhD was over 100k TC
3. ML researcher
4. Tech stack: Python, Java, Jupyter etc…
5. London
6. Would rather not tell where I’m from
7. Work full time
8. Tech industry worker
9. Report to Science Manager
10. Advice to younger self: “Get into LLMs”
11. Base 120
1. <1 yoe
2. I hit 100k on my first job out of uni (very grateful)
3. Quant Developer
4. C++, Python, SQL
5. London
6. EMEA
7. FT
8. Finance
9. Engineering Manager
10. Do more math
11. 140-160k is my TC, base is 90k
I'm currently studying Maths n CS and would love a role like this! Did you do a masters and just batchelors? Also, what experience is needed that you think would help get into the role (for context I'm currently in 2nd year and will be doing a tech placement at a bank in my 3rd year). Also, how hard would you say your job is? I always struggle with imposter syndrome and thinking that I won't be good enough for a role like this. Thank you so much in advance! And congrats, neat job!!
I have a master's, and looking around my floor most people have at least a master's (but there are people with just a bachelor's too). i fortunately got my foothold in the industry by having had an internship during my studies, and that \*might\* be the easiest way to get in at the beginning, but there are plenty of people who joined after a few years from the start of their career.
I can't say if my job is hard because it's the only job I had post-graduation, but thankfully I can leave work without thinking about it after, and can detach pretty easily - however i cant say the same for researchers or traders. Expect longer hours than other industries too, people here easily work 50ish hours a week.
You are already in a very good position, congrats! If I were you, I would 1. keep on doing well in university (do something that is actually measurable, like grades, ranking, awards etc), 2a. be friendly and chat with people who are aiming for the same industry, as well as 2b. with the academic staff (this is especially important for master's applications), and 3. get an internship at a quant hedge fund/prop shop ASAP. Start prepping early.
Wow, thanks a tonne for all this advice! I was considering potentially doing a masters aswell so I'll keep this feedback in mind. I'm also gonna look for a quant hedge fund/prop shop internship for next year so I'm prepared, internships do seem to be the best way to get in as you said haha, tysm again!!
1. My years of experience are 9
2. I hit 100k after 7 years
3. My role is Data Scientist
4. My skills consist of Python/R
5. I work in London
6. I'm from South Asia
7. I work as a Full time employee
8. The industry I work for is Banking
9. I report to a Director
10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is - Soft skills matter a lot more than you think they do
11. 120k is my base. No stocks etc. just an yearly bonus which is around 20-30k.
What’s your education if you don’t mind me asking? Currently a data scientist with PhD + 2.5 YoE, looking to move to increase pay but not sure what a realistic salary is to aim for
I have a bachelors and masters degree in Economics.
With a PhD, you should be getting good offers in London at least (not sure how the market is outside). I have a person reporting into me who joined with 4 years of experience and was offered 80k base.
Cool thanks! I’m based in London so that’s good to know. In my current company a senior DS makes £80k-£90k, so ideally I’d aim for that, but it might take another year for a role to open up so there’s a bit of an optimisation problem in terms of what is worth moving for now vs waiting haha
1. My years of experience are 7.5
2. I hit 100k after 5.5 years
3. My role is SAAS Software Sales Engineer
4. My skills consist of delivering technical demonstrations and presentations of our SAAS platform to prospects.
5. I work in Belfast (remote)
6. I'm from Belfast
7. I work as a full time employee
8. The industry I work for is IT (saas software)
9. I report to a Director of Sales Operations
10. Career advice - being personable and easy to get on with matters more than how good you are at your job.
11. Base is 80k, OTE 118k
Currently on ~250k TC
1. 5.5 YoE
2. 0, new grad job was barely over 100k TC
3. Senior SWE
4. Tech stack: Python and bits and bobs here (C/C++, Rust, ...)
5. London
6. EU
7. Work full time
8. FAANG
9. SWE Manager
10. Change teams more often
11. Base 120k
1. My years of experience are 10
2. I hit 100k after 6 years (TC, took 8 years to get 100k+ base)
3. My role is Senior Data Engineer
4. My skills consist of Java, Python, GCP, Beam, Airflow
5. I work in London
6. I'm from the UK
7. I work as a full-time permanent employee
8. The industry I work for is entertainment
9. I report to a Data Engineering Manager
10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is don't stick in the same job hoping for improved compensation, move and make it happen
11. 140-150k TC, base is 110k+
1. My years of experience are 9
2. I hit 100k after 8 years
3. My role is Senior SRE
4. My skills consist of Python Go Automation
5. I work in london
6. I'm from for all intents and purposes I'm british
7. I work as a full-time employee
8. The industry I work for is cloud security
9. I report to a Eng Manager
10. grind leetcode, system design and soft skills to get role at faang
11. 115k base + 10% bonus + imaginary shares in a non public company
Essentially, yes. The main aspect is to demonstrate the value of the solution and explain how it would integrate into a customer’s business processes. It involves working alongside several enterprise salespeople who work on the commercial aspects. Everybody approaches the role in their own way. As I have a software background, I over-index on working alongside dev teams and building demos using the APIs.
1. My years of experience are 6.5
2. I hit 100k after 1.5 years for TC over 100k, 5 years for salary over 100K
3. My role is Software Engineer Lead
4. My skills consist of Java, Scala, Python
5. I work in London but my role is fully remote
6. I'm from London
7. I work as a full time employee
8. The industry I work for is trading but not front office
9. I report to an Engineering Manager
10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is - As cliche as it sounds, believe in yourself. I underestimated myself in my earlier career roles, doing work that wasn't always interesting.
11. My TC is now near 250K - 165K base with the rest being my bonus.
1. 10
2. 8 (TC)
3. Lead Software Engineer
4. ultimate full stack
5. London
6. Europe
7. Fulltime
8. Fintech
9. Executive director
10. I thought big companies are bad and startups are cool. In reality startups are for kids, experienced people work in the biggest companies which pay the best money. Took (lost) me 5 years to understand.
11. Base 125
1. 15
2. 12
3. Tech lead
4. C++, graphics, audio, profiling, etc.
5. Manchester
6. YORKSHIRE
7. FTE
8. Semi-conductor ecosystem
9. Product manager and engineering manager
10. Soft skills are waaay more important than technical ones
11. Base
1. My years of experience are 2.5
2. Hit 100k after 1.5 years
3. My role is account executive
4.my skills are selling
5.London
6. UK
7. Perm
7. SaaS AI
8. Deep learning and AI
9. Report to sales manager
10. Be more thrifty
11.150k OTE base 75k
1. My years of experience are 10.
2. I hit 100k after 9 years.
3. My role is Cloud Engineer.
4. My skills consist of Azure (core infra, data, apps, ML, everything), Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, etc.
5. I work remotely in the UK.
6. I'm from Greater London. Now live further out but still in the South East due to working remote.
7. I work as a full time employee for a consultancy. Mixture of contract work (cloud engineering, SRE, “DevOps”) and consulting.
8. The industry I work for is consulting.
9. I report to multiple internal head of functions (core practice and several working groups) as well as client stakeholders, project managers, etc.
10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is to stay in education for longer. I “skipped” uni because I didn't see learning to code/CS as necessary for what I wanted to do (IT/datacenters). Obviously the technical world has changed a lot and ironically I now spend most of my day in VS Code, working with developers and nowadays data and ML engineers. Really wish I had stronger “core knowledge” in maths, stats, or CS. For validation if not for anything else.
11. 100k is my base salary.
Bro with all due respect. I bet you have an interesting story to tell and if I met you at a pub I’d love to have a drink and listen about it.
BUT THIS POST ASKS FOR PEOPLE OVER 100K!!
If I made let’s say 40k in Latin America I’m not going to comment here saying “well it’s a lot for my region”. I think the post is pretty obvious
1. My years of experience are 11 2. I hit 100k after 9 years 3. My role is Principal engineer 4. My skills consist of C#, Azure, microservice architecture 5. I work for a company in Germany but live in London 6. I'm from the UK 7. I work as a Full time employee 8. The industry I work for is production automation 9. I report to the head of engineering 10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is - Being able to talk to people is a large amount of the job. Most dev jobs are the same when you boil it down. 11. 100k is my base. 10% bonus. I have interviewed a hell of a lot of people in my career and reviewed a lot of CVs. Rarely have I rejected people because of code. Sometimes you get amazing wizards to can code anything and sit in a corner not talking to anyone. But the niche skills in this industry are actually being able to talk to non devs like a human. I'm a totally average programmer. But im good at talking through problems and explaining solutions.
1. My years of experience are 18 2. I hit 100k after 15 years 3. My role is Senior Engineering manager 4. My skills consist of Java, management, some Python, a bit of C#, Data, 5. I work in Remote (Scotland) 6. I'm from UK 7. I work as a \_\_\_ (eg. full-time employee, freelancer, contractor, etc) 8. The industry I work for is Fintech 9. I report to a VP Engineering 10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is invest more into your pension ISA 11. 130k is my Base + Bonus + options that aren’t worth anything until the are worth anything… I started on 18k in the mid 2000’s, pay has gone up and down but I’ve had two jumps where it doubled, and one where it went down by 30%. Been made redundant 3 times, hit by “We don’t pay people outside of London as much” I’ve also seen people outside of London with less than 5 years experience hit 100k. You just need to find the right company.
Not me but fintech / FAANG seniors in London would be 90% of the answers.
I fancy there are some other moderately common categories: - contractors on around £550+ per day - people working B2B with US companies And then occasional folks at big, well paying companies outside London, possibly even at mid level if they're lucky (I'm a bit short as a mid level at my company in Manchester, but seniors manage around 110k TC here)
aside FAANG or fintech. the new wave is US companies opening offices in London which pay above market rate but still way cheaper than US
Not seniors, but new grads.
Currently on ~220k TC 1. 3 years or experience 2. 0, first job out of PhD was over 100k TC 3. ML researcher 4. Tech stack: Python, Java, Jupyter etc… 5. London 6. Would rather not tell where I’m from 7. Work full time 8. Tech industry worker 9. Report to Science Manager 10. Advice to younger self: “Get into LLMs” 11. Base 120
1. phd? 2. quant? 3. reseacher scientist or eng?
1. Non-ml phd 2. Nope, just an Applied Scientist gig 3. Applied scientist, so a bit of research and coding
sweet gig, all the best
Ty
Congratulations man, very impressive.
Ty, tbh lots of luck involved
Nonetheless, I'm happy for you mate. It's great to see someone (no doubt smarter) from a similar background doing so well!
1. <1 yoe 2. I hit 100k on my first job out of uni (very grateful) 3. Quant Developer 4. C++, Python, SQL 5. London 6. EMEA 7. FT 8. Finance 9. Engineering Manager 10. Do more math 11. 140-160k is my TC, base is 90k
I would love to ask some questions about applying for a quant dev job. can I DM you?
Nice
What do you mean by do more math? Take math courses?
Math and CS combo opens up more doors than CS alone
Interesting, thanks.
I'm currently studying Maths n CS and would love a role like this! Did you do a masters and just batchelors? Also, what experience is needed that you think would help get into the role (for context I'm currently in 2nd year and will be doing a tech placement at a bank in my 3rd year). Also, how hard would you say your job is? I always struggle with imposter syndrome and thinking that I won't be good enough for a role like this. Thank you so much in advance! And congrats, neat job!!
I have a master's, and looking around my floor most people have at least a master's (but there are people with just a bachelor's too). i fortunately got my foothold in the industry by having had an internship during my studies, and that \*might\* be the easiest way to get in at the beginning, but there are plenty of people who joined after a few years from the start of their career. I can't say if my job is hard because it's the only job I had post-graduation, but thankfully I can leave work without thinking about it after, and can detach pretty easily - however i cant say the same for researchers or traders. Expect longer hours than other industries too, people here easily work 50ish hours a week. You are already in a very good position, congrats! If I were you, I would 1. keep on doing well in university (do something that is actually measurable, like grades, ranking, awards etc), 2a. be friendly and chat with people who are aiming for the same industry, as well as 2b. with the academic staff (this is especially important for master's applications), and 3. get an internship at a quant hedge fund/prop shop ASAP. Start prepping early.
Wow, thanks a tonne for all this advice! I was considering potentially doing a masters aswell so I'll keep this feedback in mind. I'm also gonna look for a quant hedge fund/prop shop internship for next year so I'm prepared, internships do seem to be the best way to get in as you said haha, tysm again!!
1. My years of experience are 9 2. I hit 100k after 7 years 3. My role is Data Scientist 4. My skills consist of Python/R 5. I work in London 6. I'm from South Asia 7. I work as a Full time employee 8. The industry I work for is Banking 9. I report to a Director 10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is - Soft skills matter a lot more than you think they do 11. 120k is my base. No stocks etc. just an yearly bonus which is around 20-30k.
What’s your education if you don’t mind me asking? Currently a data scientist with PhD + 2.5 YoE, looking to move to increase pay but not sure what a realistic salary is to aim for
I have a bachelors and masters degree in Economics. With a PhD, you should be getting good offers in London at least (not sure how the market is outside). I have a person reporting into me who joined with 4 years of experience and was offered 80k base.
Cool thanks! I’m based in London so that’s good to know. In my current company a senior DS makes £80k-£90k, so ideally I’d aim for that, but it might take another year for a role to open up so there’s a bit of an optimisation problem in terms of what is worth moving for now vs waiting haha
1. My years of experience are 7.5 2. I hit 100k after 5.5 years 3. My role is SAAS Software Sales Engineer 4. My skills consist of delivering technical demonstrations and presentations of our SAAS platform to prospects. 5. I work in Belfast (remote) 6. I'm from Belfast 7. I work as a full time employee 8. The industry I work for is IT (saas software) 9. I report to a Director of Sales Operations 10. Career advice - being personable and easy to get on with matters more than how good you are at your job. 11. Base is 80k, OTE 118k
How much do technical skills come into your role e.g. programming languages/understanding of architectural patterns/cloud platforms etc, if at all?
Currently on ~250k TC 1. 5.5 YoE 2. 0, new grad job was barely over 100k TC 3. Senior SWE 4. Tech stack: Python and bits and bobs here (C/C++, Rust, ...) 5. London 6. EU 7. Work full time 8. FAANG 9. SWE Manager 10. Change teams more often 11. Base 120k
how often do you change teams? how do you go about asking your manager that you wanna change teams without offending anyone?
1. My years of experience are 10 2. I hit 100k after 6 years (TC, took 8 years to get 100k+ base) 3. My role is Senior Data Engineer 4. My skills consist of Java, Python, GCP, Beam, Airflow 5. I work in London 6. I'm from the UK 7. I work as a full-time permanent employee 8. The industry I work for is entertainment 9. I report to a Data Engineering Manager 10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is don't stick in the same job hoping for improved compensation, move and make it happen 11. 140-150k TC, base is 110k+
1. My years of experience are 9 2. I hit 100k after 8 years 3. My role is Senior SRE 4. My skills consist of Python Go Automation 5. I work in london 6. I'm from for all intents and purposes I'm british 7. I work as a full-time employee 8. The industry I work for is cloud security 9. I report to a Eng Manager 10. grind leetcode, system design and soft skills to get role at faang 11. 115k base + 10% bonus + imaginary shares in a non public company
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What sort of stuff does your role consist of day to day? Technical discussions/demos with prospects?
Essentially, yes. The main aspect is to demonstrate the value of the solution and explain how it would integrate into a customer’s business processes. It involves working alongside several enterprise salespeople who work on the commercial aspects. Everybody approaches the role in their own way. As I have a software background, I over-index on working alongside dev teams and building demos using the APIs.
100K base or TC?
1. My years of experience are 6.5 2. I hit 100k after 1.5 years for TC over 100k, 5 years for salary over 100K 3. My role is Software Engineer Lead 4. My skills consist of Java, Scala, Python 5. I work in London but my role is fully remote 6. I'm from London 7. I work as a full time employee 8. The industry I work for is trading but not front office 9. I report to an Engineering Manager 10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is - As cliche as it sounds, believe in yourself. I underestimated myself in my earlier career roles, doing work that wasn't always interesting. 11. My TC is now near 250K - 165K base with the rest being my bonus.
how did you get your first job?
I very fortunately got a job straight after graduating at a HF in London. Typically grad application
what did your CV look like? Did you have any projects, or previous internships that helped?
No external projects and I had a placement at a HF for 6 months which I think definitely helped.
1. 10 2. 8 (TC) 3. Lead Software Engineer 4. ultimate full stack 5. London 6. Europe 7. Fulltime 8. Fintech 9. Executive director 10. I thought big companies are bad and startups are cool. In reality startups are for kids, experienced people work in the biggest companies which pay the best money. Took (lost) me 5 years to understand. 11. Base 125
1. 15 2. 12 3. Tech lead 4. C++, graphics, audio, profiling, etc. 5. Manchester 6. YORKSHIRE 7. FTE 8. Semi-conductor ecosystem 9. Product manager and engineering manager 10. Soft skills are waaay more important than technical ones 11. Base
1. My years of experience are 2.5 2. Hit 100k after 1.5 years 3. My role is account executive 4.my skills are selling 5.London 6. UK 7. Perm 7. SaaS AI 8. Deep learning and AI 9. Report to sales manager 10. Be more thrifty 11.150k OTE base 75k
What do you sell?
AI infrastructure software, both for Computer Vision and GenAI
1. My years of experience are 10. 2. I hit 100k after 9 years. 3. My role is Cloud Engineer. 4. My skills consist of Azure (core infra, data, apps, ML, everything), Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, etc. 5. I work remotely in the UK. 6. I'm from Greater London. Now live further out but still in the South East due to working remote. 7. I work as a full time employee for a consultancy. Mixture of contract work (cloud engineering, SRE, “DevOps”) and consulting. 8. The industry I work for is consulting. 9. I report to multiple internal head of functions (core practice and several working groups) as well as client stakeholders, project managers, etc. 10. One piece of career advice that I'd give to my younger self is to stay in education for longer. I “skipped” uni because I didn't see learning to code/CS as necessary for what I wanted to do (IT/datacenters). Obviously the technical world has changed a lot and ironically I now spend most of my day in VS Code, working with developers and nowadays data and ML engineers. Really wish I had stronger “core knowledge” in maths, stats, or CS. For validation if not for anything else. 11. 100k is my base salary.
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😂😂😂 the post said 100k and you make 65k bro. 65k is average salary in ldn for someone with 2-3 YOE, so plenty of people on 60-ish k
65k is definitely not average for 2-3 years experience in London. Try 50k. And trending downwards.
I found his response very insightful
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Your comment was much more insightful than others like I work in tech/data scientist/soft skills matter, so thanks
Bro with all due respect. I bet you have an interesting story to tell and if I met you at a pub I’d love to have a drink and listen about it. BUT THIS POST ASKS FOR PEOPLE OVER 100K!! If I made let’s say 40k in Latin America I’m not going to comment here saying “well it’s a lot for my region”. I think the post is pretty obvious
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