Starting software developer salary in SA with a masters degree

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MartinMorrison

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I've read the other "Salary expectation for a PHP Developer" thread in which a 21 year old with only Matric was told to expect R12k pm as a PHP developer, R18k with a degree, and > R25k with 5 years full time experience.

I was wondering what I could expect in SA. I did my matric in SA but then went abroad to do a degree so I'm a bit out of touch. I now have an honours degree in CS and Artificial Intelligence from a top 5 UK university, with experience in most popular programming languages, a few esoteric ones, and lots of maths and stats. I will probably do my masters at Cambridge.

Overseas it is very common for people to do summer internships during their studies which turn into full time jobs. My first such of these in the UK pays about R65k per month - but of course living costs etc are much higher. There is a good chance this will turn into a full time job starting at around R70k. I did go out of my way to get an opportunity with this company, which generally offers the highest starting salary for new grads in my field in the UK.

I want to look for an analogous opportunity in SA. I'm not asking for opportunities in SA with anywhere near this figure, but I was just wondering if anyone knows of the *top paying* graduate tech opportunities in SA. I would expect that this would be with banks and things related to the JSE For example, are there any hedge funds in SA that recruit CS grads? I can move and work anywhere.

Also, with a masters degree in CS, what are the top paying opportunities here? I guess what gives me an edge over other SA grads is significant experience in machine learning and AI from world leading research universities, international experience (studying and worked in the US too), strong Python and web experience, but I don't know if there are any companies here that look for that specifically.
 
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In the UK a typical graduate salary is around 30000gbp per year/ 2500pm. That is quite far from the 4000pm you are quoting.

As far as if having a degree from a uk university gives you any advantage here, I doubt it.
 
_kabal_ said:
In the UK a typical graduate salary is around 30000gbp per year/ 2500pm. That is quite far from the 4000pm you are quoting.
Click to expand...

A graduate, or even internship, offer for tech in London for a financial institution like JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America etc is typically 38 - 46k pounds a year. I have been offered 44, which is around 65k rand a month, and my peers at these organisations have been offered within this range in the same area as fresh grads. This is definitely above the typical graduate salary in the UK, which ys why I am interested in similar above average opportunities in SA relative to the rest of the country (if any).
 
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I think your thinking is a little bit backwards:
A masters degree in CS from Cambridge and an Hons degree in AI from a "top 5 UK university" with "lots of maths and stats" lines you up for an academic or research career. So not exactly a lot of money. Also you don't have the Cambridge masters yet

Top paying requires a skill set that is demanded at a fee so:
I guess what gives me an edge over other SA grads is significant experience in machine learning and AI from world leading research universities, international experience (studying and worked in the US too), strong Python and web experience, but I don't know if there are any companies here that look for that specifically.
Click to expand...
Is simply wrong unless you want to get a job in a university or research institution and even there you are grossly under-estimating the quality of competent SA grads in those fields, especially at postgraduate level.
 
Paul Hjul said:
I think your thinking is a little bit backwards:
A masters degree in CS from Cambridge and an Hons degree in AI from a "top 5 UK university" with "lots of maths and stats" lines you up for an academic or research career. So not exactly a lot of money. Also you don't have the Cambridge masters yet

Top paying requires a skill set that is demanded at a fee so:

Is simply wrong unless you want to get a job in a university or research institution and even there you are grossly under-estimating the quality of competent SA grads in those fields, especially at postgraduate level.
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Fair points. Though certain international companies look very favourably on masters grads from what seem like purely research degrees (example: McKinsey and Company and Part 3 at Cambridge). There is a level of credit for certain degrees and universities that reflect the way some companies abroad recruit, for example, I participated in a Google recruitment program and workshop that was only open to CS students from top 5 UK universities. Strong maths and stats knowledge is a requirement for some (non-research) positions in hedge funds in the UK and such knowledge is explicitly tested in interviews. I know this is rare in SA, but such opportunities may exist.

Any idea of an expected salary though, in perhaps the financial industry?
 
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MartinMorrison said:
Fair points. Though certain international companies look very favourably on masters grads from what seem like purely research degrees (example: McKinsey and Company and Part 3 at Cambridge). There is a level of credit for certain degrees and universities that reflect the way some companies abroad recruit, for example, I participated in a Google recruitment program and workshop that was only open to CS students from top 5 UK universities. Strong maths and stats knowledge is a requirement for some (non-research) positions in hedge funds in the UK and such knowledge is explicitly tested in interviews. I know this is rare in SA, but such opportunities may exist.

Any idea of an expected salary though, in perhaps the financial industry?
Click to expand...

The financial institutions employs people with lots of maths and computer science as quants in the bank since they can do complex calculations and they can write programs and algorithms
 
R12K pm for a PHP developer with only matric - doubt it. Oh, I am a PHP developer.

@OP, stop converting to Rands because if I interviewed you and you threw those figures at me I would laugh in your face and tell you to go back to school. You got paid in pounds while working in the UK, not SA so you never earned R65K per month, you most likely earned the equivalent of R7K pm max.

As for your question, I doubt most people would offer you close to R10K. You need to first get experience. All a degree does is give you an invitation to go to interviews, does not get you the high paying job. That only comes from personal attitude and what value you can give to the company with your experience.

Also understand that more and more companies are relocating their dev houses to South Africa because the labour is cheap, not because our coffee is good.
 
MartinMorrision: I don't think the others here really understand the market for your skills. There are really three scenarios for a first job:

1) You don't find an opportunity that needs any of your specialized skills. I would expect approx. 20k per month in such a scenario.

2) You find an opportunity in a generic industry that does need your specialized skills. I would expect approx. 30k per month in this scenario.

3) You find an opportunity in a hedge fund or IB (as a quant or quantitative developer) that needs your specialized skills. I would expect approx. 40k per month in this scenario.

You should check out the local hedge funds and IBs (hedge funds are better if possible) in SA, but the primary markets for your skill set in finance are New York, Chicago, London and Singapore - a PhD is usually preferred. I know at least one guy in an SA hedge fund who is doing very well for him self (PhD maths).
 
cbrunsdonza said:
R12K pm for a PHP developer with only matric - doubt it. Oh, I am a PHP developer.

@OP, stop converting to Rands because if I interviewed you and you threw those figures at me I would laugh in your face and tell you to go back to school. You got paid in pounds while working in the UK, not SA so you never earned R65K per month, you most likely earned the equivalent of R7K pm max.

As for your question, I doubt most people would offer you close to R10K. You need to first get experience. All a degree does is give you an invitation to go to interviews, does not get you the high paying job. That only comes from personal attitude and what value you can give to the company with your experience.

Also understand that more and more companies are relocating their dev houses to South Africa because the labour is cheap, not because our coffee is good.
Click to expand...

There are exceptions to what you're referring to, especially when it comes to particularly smart people. A guy I studied with who was exceptionally smart, started off with a salary of 38k as a developer, straight out of university. This was several years ago as well. Today he's sitting at Amazon doing significantly better than that.
 
cguy said:
MartinMorrision: I don't think the others here really understand the market for your skills. There are really three scenarios for a first job:

1) You don't find an opportunity that needs any of your specialized skills. I would expect approx. 20k per month in such a scenario.

2) You find an opportunity in a generic industry that does need your specialized skills. I would expect approx. 30k per month in this scenario.

3) You find an opportunity in a hedge fund or IB (as a quant or quantitative developer) that needs your specialized skills. I would expect approx. 40k per month in this scenario.

You should check out the local hedge funds and IBs (hedge funds are better if possible) in SA, but the primary markets for your skill set in finance are New York, Chicago, London and Singapore - a PhD is usually preferred. I know at least one guy in an SA hedge fund who is doing very well for him self (PhD maths).
Click to expand...

Thanks, this is exactly what I needed to know. If you know any specific organisations or people that recruit for local hedge funds and IBs in SA, or a community that exists for people looking for jobs in this area, please do let me know. PhD is on the cards.

cbrunsdonza said:
@OP, stop converting to Rands because if I interviewed you and you threw those figures at me I would laugh in your face and tell you to go back to school. You got paid in pounds while working in the UK, not SA so you never earned R65K per month, you most likely earned the equivalent of R7K pm max.
Click to expand...

I do hope I never have the experience of being interviewed by you then :whistle: I'm not sure your arithmetic checks out as even factoring in living cost differences I most certainly am not making the equivalent of R7k. Regardless, the per month pay remains approximately R65k, that's just the way it is. I'm happy to convert to rands because I do intend to spend my earnings in SA, as I still live here. Your advice doesn't check out either, as the one time I was offered as a job in SA (still as an undergrad), the offer was 20k. It's clear you don't put much stock in education, I have a very different opinion.
 
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_kabal_ said:
In the UK a typical graduate salary is around 30000gbp per year/ 2500pm. That is quite far from the 4000pm you are quoting.

As far as if having a degree from a uk university gives you any advantage here, I doubt it.
Click to expand...

For the 2 jobs I started in the UK, I got paid way more than £30k with my degree
However that is with over 10 years exp
MM, I would suggest the SA market is too small for you.
 
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cbrunsdonza said:
R12K pm for a PHP developer with only matric - doubt it. Oh, I am a PHP developer.

@OP, stop converting to Rands because if I interviewed you and you threw those figures at me I would laugh in your face and tell you to go back to school. You got paid in pounds while working in the UK, not SA so you never earned R65K per month, you most likely earned the equivalent of R7K pm max.

As for your question, I doubt most people would offer you close to R10K. You need to first get experience. All a degree does is give you an invitation to go to interviews, does not get you the high paying job. That only comes from personal attitude and what value you can give to the company with your experience.

Also understand that more and more companies are relocating their dev houses to South Africa because the labour is cheap, not because our coffee is good.
Click to expand...

Friend was hired straight out of university years ago, worked on longhorn, vista, windows 8 and now 8.1 zero experience, earning stupid money now as a kernel developer at redmond.

Relocating to SA, not sure where you are pulling these random stats from. Because that is rubbish.
 
semaphore said:
Friend was hired straight out of university years ago, worked on longhorn, vista, windows 8 and now 8.1 zero experience, earning stupid money now as a kernel developer at redmond.

Relocating to SA, not sure where you are pulling these random stats from. Because that is rubbish.
Click to expand...

A MS product dev spoke to us last year (at UCT) who did the same thing? I wonder if it's the same person

On topic, I am 2-3months from finishing my masters, I have 4 internships under my belt one of which is at one of the big 4. It counts for nothing salary-wise but it makes getting jobs easier. There is one research company in ZA that I know of which actually acknowledges your Masters/PhD degree, however realistically the pay between a masters student and an honours student starting is the same (based on anecdotal evidence from friends)
 
With those qualifications, why would you be benchmarking against an entry level PHP developer position?
 
MartinMorrison said:
I've read the other "Salary expectation for a PHP Developer" thread in which a 21 year old with only Matric was told to expect R12k pm as a PHP developer, R18k with a degree, and > R25k with 5 years full time experience.

I was wondering what I could expect in SA. I did my matric in SA but then went abroad to do a degree so I'm a bit out of touch. I now have an honours degree in CS and Artificial Intelligence from a top 5 UK university, with experience in most popular programming languages, a few esoteric ones, and lots of maths and stats. I will probably do my masters at Cambridge.

Overseas it is very common for people to do summer internships during their studies which turn into full time jobs. My first such of these in the UK pays about R65k per month - but of course living costs etc are much higher. There is a good chance this will turn into a full time job starting at around R70k. I did go out of my way to get an opportunity with this company, which generally offers the highest starting salary for new grads in my field in the UK.

I want to look for an analogous opportunity in SA. I'm not asking for opportunities in SA with anywhere near this figure, but I was just wondering if anyone knows of the *top paying* graduate tech opportunities in SA. I would expect that this would be with banks and things related to the JSE For example, are there any hedge funds in SA that recruit CS grads? I can move and work anywhere.

Also, with a masters degree in CS, what are the top paying opportunities here? I guess what gives me an edge over other SA grads is significant experience in machine learning and AI from world leading research universities, international experience (studying and worked in the US too), strong Python and web experience, but I don't know if there are any companies here that look for that specifically.
Click to expand...

I work for Toyota SA the IT programming grads get between 16000-25000pm plus a 6000 car allowance but you have to get a toyota which on that rate you can get most lexus and all toyota except landcruiser and a petrol card
hope that answers your question check toyotacareers.co.za for dates for recruitment
thanks
 
CrazYmonkeY159 said:
A MS product dev spoke to us last year (at UCT) who did the same thing? I wonder if it's the same person

On topic, I am 2-3months from finishing my masters, I have 4 internships under my belt one of which is at one of the big 4. It counts for nothing salary-wise but it makes getting jobs easier. There is one research company in ZA that I know of which actually acknowledges your Masters/PhD degree, however realistically the pay between a masters student and an honours student starting is the same (based on anecdotal evidence from friends)
Click to expand...

How much it counts really depends on whether your masters topic is related to your job, and/or whether or not it is actually technical (there is a lot of fluff out there). If it isn't related, then there may be some marginal prestige and credit benefits, however, if it is strongly related then it likely counts as much, or even more than on the job experience, putting you at a different level in terms of income and opportunity. There's a full spectrum in between these extremities.
 
CrazYmonkeY159 said:
A MS product dev spoke to us last year (at UCT) who did the same thing? I wonder if it's the same person

On topic, I am 2-3months from finishing my masters, I have 4 internships under my belt one of which is at one of the big 4. It counts for nothing salary-wise but it makes getting jobs easier. There is one research company in ZA that I know of which actually acknowledges your Masters/PhD degree, however realistically the pay between a masters student and an honours student starting is the same (based on anecdotal evidence from friends)
Click to expand...

No it wasnt the same guy, he has not been back to SA since he left. Close to 10 years ago ( i speak to him daily).
 
Why would you do a masters if not for academic purposes? In the professional world it wouldn't get much more recognition than a bachelors
 
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