Insights From Our 2020 .Net Developer Report
11th May, 2020 5 minutes
The tech market continues to boom in 2020 even though COVID-19 has had a significant impact on many organisations' hiring plans. One thing that has not changed is how tricky it can be to find and retain really good developers with .NET skills.
The information in our 2020 .NET Developer Report is based on data from our placements, an extensive questionnaire filled out by a highly relevant pool of candidates and from salary ranges provided by our current partners that include some of the best technology-driven businesses across the UK.
What’s the current state of the .NET talent pool in the UK?
There are 30,000 professionals in the Software Developer talent pool with .NET & C# experience in the UK on LinkedIn. 88% of these are male highlighting the gender gap that is evident across the tech industry, although companies are trying to encourage more gender diversity.
Companies are willing to pay above market rate to secure the best talent in the .NET space. With demand this high, many candidates will receive multiple offers, making the hiring process very competitive. On average, .NET Developers decide to move companies to pursue a new job after 1.3 years, highlighting the importance of retaining good talent.
We have seen higher salaries being offered to candidates with knowledge and experience of Cloud and DevOps tools. Alongside .NET there is also an increase in demand for TDD / BDD methodologies, CI / CD as well as experience with front-end technologies such as JavaScript, React and Angular.
Although an increasing number of companies are taking on .NET Developers without formal degrees, 61% of UK based .NET Developers hold a Bachelor’s degree. To find out more about which universities are producing this talent click here.
What does this talent earn?
Based on placements we have made in 2019/2020 in London and the surrounding home counties, Senior Developers with 5-10 years’ experience, can expect an annual salary in the range of £60,000 - £100,000 with some earning more than £100,000. A total of 63% of our respondents received an annual bonus with the highest being up to 25% of their base salary. For more salary insights check out the full report.
Where is this talent located?
In the UK, the likes of Lloyds Banking Group, Capgemini and the BBC currently have the largest number of .NET Developers in their workforce. Meanwhile, companies such as Nationwide Building Society, OVO and ClearBank have seen an increase in hiring this type of talent in the last year.
Naturally, London has the highest number of .NET professionals with over 7,000 .NET developers choosing to work in the capital. Manchester, Europe’s fastest-growing tech city and Leeds are other top locations for .NET specialists.
Flexibility is key in retaining .NET talent
76% said that their company offers flexitime while 73% said that their company offers remote working although only 7% could work from home unlimited. From our research, remote working was clearly a sought-after benefit for .NET Developers with a staggering 45% saying they would not accept a new job offer if it did not offer flexitime or the option of working from home.
The average allowance for working from home was 1-2 days a week and only 16% were allowed to fully work from home should they wish, although we see this changing in the future due to most businesses having adopted remote working policies during the COVID-19 epidemic.
We have also found that lots of businesses who were sceptical with remote working are now happy to offer it moving forward. They have learnt a lot about their staff and believe they can trust them to work from home.
What else is important to .NET Developers?
The top 5 employer value propositions most important for this talent are:
- A good work-life balance
- Excellent compensation and benefits
- Colleagues and culture that inspires employees to do their best
- Employees have influence over tasks and priorities
- Convenient commute to work
Other popular benefits include:
- Training budgets, training time, dedicated time to work on personal projects
- Automatic annual pay rise based on inflation & paid overtime
- Relocation packages & technology discounts
