The starting salary for an entry level java developer position is $60,000. It graduates with degrees in computer science or related fields are expected to have the skills that can earn them a starting salary of $70,000. The average amount has hovered around those amounts for over 20 years.
It is estimated that a graduate with a bachelor’s degree in computer science can expect to earn an annual salary of up to $63,000, while those with a master’s degree can make $73,000 per year. A Ph.D can earn $90,000 or more each year
Starting Salary For It Graduate Overview
With all the excitement of graduation, it’s easy to forget that you will now be responsible for paying your own bills. This can be a scary thought, but there are many factors that will affect your starting salary as a graduate.
To help you prepare, we have put together a list of some of the most common questions about graduate starting salaries and how to get them!
How much does an IT graduate earn?
The average starting salary for an IT graduate in London is £30,000. However, this can vary depending on company size, location and industry sector. A computer science graduate can earn even more than this if they have worked experience in an industry before graduating from university.
What is the average salary after 5 years?
The average salary for a graduate after five years is £38,000 per year. This may sound like good money at first glance but remember that these figures are only averages and don’t take into account overtime hours or bonuses that some companies offer their employees. The best way to find out what your specific salary might look like is by researching what other graduates working in similar fields at similar companies make each month before signing any contracts!
IT graduate scheme salaries
Starting salaries for IT jobs tend to be highest at big employers that run IT or technology graduate programmes. The following figures refer to 2022 start dates, unless otherwise stated.
- Airbus graduate salary: £27,000–£28,000
- Alfa graduate salary: £40,000
- Aviva graduate salary: £28,000
- American Express graduate salary: £40,000 (2020 entry)
- BAE Systems graduate salary: £30,000
- Bank of England graduate salary: £31,000
- Capital One graduate salary: £40,000
- Close Brothers graduate salary: £27,000 (increases to £32,000 in the second year)
- Deloitte graduate salary: reportedly between £31,000 and £33,000
- FDM Group graduate salary: £23,500–£27,500 (2020 entry)
- IBM graduate salary: £32,000 minimum
- Kubrick Group graduate salary: £32,000 (increases to £40,000 in the second year)
- Lloyds Banking Group graduate salary: £31,000–£45,000 depending on the scheme
- Metaswitch graduate salary: £41,500
- MI5 graduate salary: starting at £33,350 and rising to £36,053 after the first year for the intelligence and data analyst programme; starting at £36,159 and rising to £39,091 after the first year for the technology graduate development programme
- National Grid graduate salary: £29,254 (bachelors degree); £30,318 (masters degree)
- NHS digital, data and technology scheme graduate salary: £25,000–£30,000 depending on location
- Sky graduate salary: £30,000–£35,000 (2020 entry)
- Softwire graduate salary: £37,000–£40,000, depending on location (software development graduate programme)
- TPP graduate salary: £50,000 (software development and technical engineering graduate schemes)
- Virgin Media graduate salary: £30,000
Average salaries for graduate IT jobs
According to the 2021 Institute of Student Employers (ISE) Annual Student Recruitment Survey, the median graduate salary for digital and IT careers is £31,750, which is higher than the overall average of £30,500 across all sectors. Note that these figures are a median based on the salaries of the self-selecting sample of the ISE’s members.
Can I negotiate a higher starting salary?
At entry level, there’s not much scope for negotiating a higher remuneration package. However, some IT companies do have salary ranges, and will position you on these depending on your academic qualifications, previous experience and performance in the selection process.
Tech recruiters have previously told targetjobs that, while they may not be open to negotiating graduate salaries, the listed graduate salary may just be a ‘benchmark’ on top of which enhanced offers may be made to candidates who have especially strong academic results (such as a postgraduate degree) or particularly relevant work or project experience.
Will I get paid more if I have a postgraduate degree?
Some IT employers do start their graduates higher up the pay scale if they have a masters degree or PhD. For example, National Grid offers a slightly higher starting salary for graduates with a masters, while, some recruiters have stated that a postgraduate degree is one factor that might contribute to a higher starting salary.
How much do experienced IT professionals earn?
The Hays UK Salary Guide 2021 gives an indication of what experienced IT professionals in a variety of roles could expect to earn (based on jobs placed by Hays recruitment agency). For example, an IT security engineer (in London) could typically expect to earn £65,000, rising to £100,000 for IT security architect roles. Developer roles can expect to earn £25,000–£95,000 depending on the location of the role, level of expertise and the languages they work with. Data analysts can expect a salary of £30,000–£45,000 across England and Wales, while for data scientists salary expectations can range from £42,000–£90,000.
According to IT Jobs Watch, the median salary for developer jobs (all experience levels) is £57,500. The median for IT project management jobs is also £55,000; the median for analyst jobs is £62,500; the median for IT consultants is £60,000; the median for fintech jobs is £70,000 and the median for technology jobs in investment banking is £85,000. The median for information security jobs is £60,000, and the median for games developers is also £60,000.
IT Jobs Watch’s analysis also shows that the median salary for jobs requiring AI skills is £67,500. For C# jobs the average salary is £52,500 (likewise for .Net jobs). For jobs involving Perl the average salary is £62,500, £70,000 for Python and £70,000 for Java jobs (6 months to November 2021).
Factors that may affect your salary
There are a few factors that can affect how much you earn as a graduate, so it’s handy to keep these in mind.
1. Job role
Some roles are in higher demand than others, as well as harder to fill, so some companies may pay a premium to attract talent into these positions. Software development, applications development and IT security are some of the areas that employers are finding the most challenging to find talented professionals. The following, taken from specialist recruitment service Robert Half’s 2018 Salary Guide, will give you a good idea which tech roles are hard to fill:
Australia: Cyber-security Specialist, Fullstack .Net Developer, Cloud Engineer
New Zealand: Fullstack Senior Developer, DevOps Engineer, Business Analyst
Other skills in demand: Functional programming, GOLANG (Google language), ReactJS and VueJS (Javascript language), PowerShell, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
2. Company type
Pay scales may be vastly different depending on the size of the company you join. If you start your career at Microsoft, Uber or Google, the chances of increasing your earning potential shoot up. If you start off at a mid-tier or brand new startup, your pay may still be good but there is also the chance that smaller companies may not be able to match the salaries of blue-chip employers.
3. Location of role
Are you willing to relocate for your dream job or even a better salary? Different regions have different priorities in terms of the technological skills they are looking to bolster within their workforce and will probably pay higher-than-average salaries in order to do this.
Graduate salaries in IT
At GradAustralia, we’ve surveyed recent graduates and also contacted major companies so that, in this article, we can share with you what we’ve learned about average graduate salaries.
Generally, starting salaries for IT are highest at big, blue-chip employers. In Australia, they start at approximately $56,000 and vary by organisation and role. After a year or two on the job, graduates can expect a salary range from $60-90,000 (desktop/business analyst) or $50-70,000 (service desk/customer support). Of course, this can be significantly higher at well-known companies, which pay a premium to attract talented employees, and for graduates recruited into specialist roles.
Salaries for IT graduates are reasonably consistent across different sectors. According to a 2015 Graduate Careers Australia survey, average starting salaries for IT graduates ranged from $52,000 in industry and commerce to $59,000 in government. Interestingly, females received a slightly higher average starting salary ($57,000) than males ($53,000), which demonstrates the push to even out the gender disparity in the Australian technology workforce.
