I’m a big fan of salary transparency, and I don’t like that salaries – especially in my industry of software engineering – are frequently so-opaque and that roles are not advertised in a fair way (e.g. not specifying salary ranges).
I can’t fix the world, but, like Jeremy Keith and other before me, I can at least share my salary in the hope that this gives a leg-up to others who are negotiating for what they feel is fair in their role.
Understand
A few understandings and caveats:
- For most of my career I’ve described myself as a “Full-Stack Web Applications Developer”, but I’ve worked outside of every one of those words and my job titles have often been more like “CMS Developer” or “Senior Engineer (Security)”.
- My specialisms and “hot areas” are security engineering, web standards, performance, and accessibility.
- When I worked multiple roles in a year, I’ve tried to capture that, but there’ll be some fuzziness around the edges.
- The salaries are rounded slightly to make nice readable numbers.
- I’ve not always worked full-time; all salaries are translated into “full-time equivalent”1.
- I’ve only included jobs that fit into my software engineering career2.
- If the table below looks out-of-date then I’ve probably just forgotten to update it. Let me know!
History
| Year | Employer | Salary | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 – 2026 | Firstup | £80,000 | Remote. + Stock (spread over four years). |
| 2024 – 2025 | Automattic | £111,000 | Remote. + Stock (one-off bonus, worth ~£6,000). |
| 2023 | Automattic | £103,000 | Remote. |
| 2021 – 2022 | Automattic | £98,000 | Remote |
| 2019 – 2020 | Automattic | £89,000 | Remote. |
| 2015 – 2019 | Bodleian Libraries + Freelance | £39,000 | Hybrid. |
| 2011 – 2014 | Bodleian Libraries | £36,000 | Practices salary transparency! ❤️ |
| 2010 – 2011 | SmartData + Freelance | £26,000 | Remote. |
| 2007 – 2009 | SmartData | £24,000 | |
| 2004 – 2006 | SmartData | £19,500 | |
| 2002 – 2003 | SmartData | £16,500 | Alongside full-time study. |
| 2002 | CTA | £18,000 | |
| 2001 | Freelance | £4,500 |
Ad-hoc and hard to estimate.
Alongside full-time study. |
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