A Senior Full Stack Developer is an experienced software developer who has expertise in both Front End and Back End development. They are responsible for creating and maintaining the entire web application or software, from designing the user interface to programming the server-side logic. Due to their advanced skills and experience, Senior Full Stack Developers command a higher salary than regular Full Stack Developers.
According to various sources, the average salary of a Full Stack Developer in the United States is around $87,000 per year, while a Senior Full Stack Developer earns an average salary of $119,000 per year. This significant salary difference is due to the additional skills, experience, and responsibilities that come with a senior-level position.
It's important to note that the salary of a Senior Full Stack Developer can vary based on various factors, including location, company size, and industry. In this article, we will dive deeper into the factors that affect the salary of a Senior Full Stack Developer and explore ways to increase your earning potential in this in-demand career.
Senior Full Stack Developer Salary: Understanding the Compensation
A senior full-stack developer's salary can vary depending on factors like location, experience, industry, and company size. However, according to salary data from various sources, a senior Full Stack developer in the United States can expect to earn between USD110,000 and USD150,000 per year.
Because of the higher cost of living and demand for talent in some cities, such as San Francisco or New York City in the US, the salary for a senior Full Stack developer can be even higher. In smaller or less expensive cities, however, the salary may be lower but still competitive. Anyway is easy to find a job that offers USD100,000 per year.
In Europe, for example, some countries are looking for developers around the world with very competitive salaries, some of those are:
| Location | Salary (€) |
|---|---|
| UK | 60,000 - 85,000 |
| Netherlands | 60,000 - 85,000 |
| Sweden | 45,000 - 70,000 |
| France | 50,000 - 75,000 |
It is important to note that salary is only one factor to consider when evaluating a job offer. Benefits, work-life balance, and other considerations. A lot of companies offers benefits like health insurances, different vacation places, dental health insurance, vacation days and flexible schedules, work-life balance, company culture, and growth opportunities.
Factors that Affect Senior Full Stack Developer Salaries
The salaries exposed in the table above point to a senior developer who is just entering a company, and it is an average value. As you gain experience in the field and assume better positions within the company, your "Senior" level will not rise further but it can be the salary due to the following factors:
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👉🏽 Number of responsibilities: The more responsibilities are assigned to the worker and while he carries these responsibilities well, his salary will increase over time, due to the indispensable that is being done for the company.
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👉🏽 Seniority in the company: It is known that salaries are readjusted over the years in most companies, and older workers are always "rewarded", so taking a long time in the company will be reflected in the salary you receive.
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👉🏽 Company size: Because of the size and scope of the work, as well as the possibility of bonuses or stock options, developers working for larger companies or startups may earn more than those working for smaller companies.
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👉🏽 Company item: There are items that move more money than others, regardless of the amount of work, for example, the finance item will have a salary potential for its workers greater than others, since this industry is very large and moves large amounts of money.
Overview of Senior Full Stack Developer Roles
In every company, the development area of a web platform, software, or similar, is responsible for building, maintaining and testing the code that is developed as the project progresses. This team should be led by a developer with a lot of experience and who has global knowledge of the operation of the tools that are being used for the project.
The senior Full Stack developer is in charge and responsible for the coordination and planning of the development team, where less experienced developers are doing the more technical and specific work supervised by a more experienced manager.
The senior developer level is the highest level of professional in the range of developers (Junior, semi-Senior and Senior), and goes purely through technical knowledge and work experience or experience in the specific project being worked on. This means that, in a certain company, a senior level developer corresponds to a semi-senior category in a different company, since the technical knowledge used in one and another company may be different, and therefore varies from category to category.
If you want to Become a Senior Full Stack Developer you should become first a Junior Full Stack Developer, there are many ways to learn to code now days and one of it is with a Full Stack Developer Course at a Coding Bootcamp
Importance of the Senior Full Stack Developer Role
A development project must not only have good user experience (UX), nice and friendly design and work properly, but the code must be as optimized as possible and must be scalable. The latter means that this code can continue to grow with more and more contributions without destroying it to incorporate something new.
All the technical knowledge necessary for the correct execution and supervision of a project that uses different technologies with a common purpose must always be commanded by an experienced person, a high-level developer who knows how to make decisions when choosing between one way and another way of doing things and an experienced person to whom other team members can go and consult technical issues, And maybe not so technical, by this I mean that soft skills are not only also requirements for a senior developer, but they are transversal characteristics that every worker should work to have and continue growing in that area.
Since a software, or web platform is a product developed by a team, owned by a company and designed for a user, that means, that a software is a standard market product, where every operation must always have a manager who is in charge of the team to present it, introduce it, give explanations to bosses if it's needed and who is responsible for the work done in all aspects.
Understanding the Skills and Technologies Required for Senior Full Stack
A Senior level developer is a responsible person in charge of a work team, regardless of the number of developers below it, therefore, it must meet all the characteristics of a team manager, some of these are:
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Must be a leader: Leading a work team necessarily entails an ability to be understood by your team, being a person respects yourself and radiates respect among your peers and for the members of your team in charge. A leader is a person who knows how to listen to the opinion of others and takes his time to understand and address the different areas of a person that may be influencing his life, work or behavior. Generate empathy and friendship among their peers in order to be a member loved by the team.
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You must achieve motivate: This means that it is very common for a team, after a while working routinely, to tend to lower performance at the moment when things get difficult or monotonous. Maintaining a team that organically continues to work at a good pace is a motivated team, who are interested in the project, who genuinely care that each part is well achieved and delicate, and that each member takes care of himself and others, generating a synergy that will lead to a group of people working together to a great work team, who listen to each other, share ideas, and create something more incredible than each could alone.
“Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.”
Steve Jobs
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Understand his subordinates: No one can forget that every work team is composed of people, and people have complex personalities. A person's emissions can't be kept in a drawer until the afternoon and resumed when we leave work. We are beings who transfer emotions from one place to another without wanting to, and that can easily affect our behavior at work, either in performance or relationship with our peers. If this is the case, a good leader in charge of the team must have the skills to be able to approach and be able to talk these things are their people, since we are not only workers who receive a salary, but we are normal people who need to be understood, we need to be heard and sometimes we need to be asked about our problems to be able to talk about them. For this reason, understanding people and generating empathy is one of the greatest skills a leader should have, and then the rest will happen naturally.
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Have complete understanding of the orientation and the project's approach: Because he must lead the team of developers for building the product expected of the company, it is essential that he has a full understanding of where the project is pointing, what the owners and founders of the project expect, and propose ideas of a technical nature to their superiors to incorporate characteristics that enrich and provide solidity to the project. This implies a strong understanding of the Front End part and a good proficiency in the Back End development.
Developing the Required Skills for Senior Full Stack Development
Considering the skills that a Senior Full Stack Developer mentioned above must have, the paths to acquire these skills are different, and depend on the nature of the skills. In this way, the way to develop the required skills are:
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Gain experience: There are many ways to gain experience in the development world. It is possible to gain experience working for others and working for oneself on personal issues. Experience is an item that makes a big difference between one person and another, it is for this reason that it is common for companies to publish job offers for people with a minimum of 1 year of experience. Think about it!
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Be at the forefront of techniques: The technology at this era is changing and evolving every day, and there is bunch of forums and blogs where people talk about this topics. Keep yourself up with the latest technologies and frameworks in the Full Stack development field a must in your senior Full Stack developer self-grow, also is the option of attending conferences, a full stack bootcamp and watching online courses.
Gaining Experience and Building a Portfolio as a Senior Full Stack
There are many ways of gaining experience in the development world. Since the most obvious one to other more creative and self worked.
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Working in company(ies): Spend many years working in one or more different projects earning perspective of the difficulties and characteristics that a development projects have. Is useful for self-growing because one must adapt to others requirement, and going out of our comfort zone this way is always enriching.
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Working in personal projects: Working on personal projects is not only fun and useful, but it gives you the benefit of owning your work, guiding the project to your liking without depending on anyone's opinion, but only following your own intuition, keeps you practicing the activity of writing code and manage your time as you want.
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Collaborating with other developers, or contributing to open-source projects: Participating with others in some project with give you valuable experience, enhance your portfolio, learn new skills and build network.
Creating a good Full-stack developer portfolio is critical to being able to show the world what you're capable of, and have effectively done. The experience you gain in the road will be fully reflected in the skill you capture in your portfolio and this will be the tool with which you will present yourself to a company that requires someone with experience and good skills.
Finding Senior Full Stack Developer Job Opportunities
It is very possible on the way to becoming a senior Full Stack developer you have connected with many people in the field, so the classic way to find job opportunities through the network you have built is always a valid option.
It is also very common to find job offers with all their specifications of what is required in job portals for technology companies, where each country has its own in addition to having other transversal ones.
Some of the most famous web portals in America and Europe are the following:
- 👉🏽 Linkedin, jobs section.
- 👉🏽 Indeed, worldwide job search engine.
- 👉🏽 Upwork, platform for freelancers.
- 👉🏽 Stackoverflow, famous forum for sharing doubts has a section for searching for jobs in technology.