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Let me give a quick rundown of rates I've heard for contract developers in London. Please add comments if you feel this doesn't reflect the truth or you have ad

Let me give a quick rundown of rates I've heard for contract developers in London. Please add comments if you feel this doesn't reflect the truth or you have additions to make. Do note I'm specifically referring to contract developers in London. Highest rates are working in finance. For specialised skills one can get around £1000 per day. £700 is more typical. This is in the context of Scala and "big data" developers. Outside of finance Scala developers typically get £500-600 per day. Ruby seems to be £400-500, with PHP in the region £300-400. As always, the rarer your skills the more you can charge. Assuming of course your skills are in demand. As a contract developer you're a bit of a commodity anyway. You're a "Ruby developer" or a "Scala developer" and are seen as plug-compatible with other developers in your class. If you want to charge more (or work less) stop being a contract developer. Become the go-to person in a particular niche, by publishing the best content about that niche, and people will seek you out. Then you can charge more. Oh, and you also want to work for people with money. I know from experience working within education is a great way to be poor.

vidarh 12y ago
Typical rates may be right. With more experience you can exceed it quite a bit. Fully agree with your "go-to person" comment. If you're not well known in a niche, at least network so you're well known to a reasonable group of people with hiring/contracting budgets. Even if you're not seen as a leading expert in your field, being consider a high quality person in your field that your contacts know and trust will deliver also adds quite a bit to what you can bill. I know guys that'll happily pay twice the amount to someone they know well than to some random developer that they have to take a chance on. Especially for short term contracts. "Losing" a month on a 3 month contract to an unknown quantity, for example, will very easily cause any savings to evaporate.

vidarh 12y ago

Typical rates may be right. With more experience you can exceed it quite a bit. Fully agree with your "go-to person" comment. If you're not well known in a niche, at least network so you're well known to a reasonable group of people with hiring/contracting budgets. Even if you're not seen as a leading expert in your field, being consider a high quality person in your field that your contacts know and trust will deliver also adds quite a bit to what you can bill. I know guys that'll happily pay twice the amount to someone they know well than to some random developer that they have to take a chance on. Especially for short term contracts. "Losing" a month on a 3 month contract to an unknown quantity, for example, will very easily cause any savings to evaporate.