Surely, among your frequently asked questions about salaries, there has been the disruptive step from middle to senior. The years of experience, the career path and skills learned, the cities with the highest salaries… everything influences when it comes to adjusting the figure for the senior backend developer. We researched with the best tool at our disposal: Joppy’s candidate offer and salary range data.
Backend: everything the user doesn’t see, the server side, in charge of the logic that makes a website work. SeniorBackend: a programmer who is an expert in this logic. What is an expert, what salary do you expect to receive, what salary do you usually offer? You can go to our salary report to find out… or read on to unravel it with us.
What is a senior backend?
The concept of Senior is very different depending on the perception of each one, some people associate it to years of experience, to projects you have developed, to knowledge in a specific area… At Joppy, for example, we consider that from 6 years with knowledge in a specific language and in a specific role you can be considered senior. In Joppy, for example, we consider that after 6 years with knowledge of a particular language and in a specific role you can be considered senior, but there must be something more. What does it add up to?
- If you have led a development team
- If you are fluent in two or more programming languages (imagine being an expert in Java, Python and PHP with four years of experience, wouldn’t you say that’s senior)?
- If you know and have implemented “good practices” in your work processes.
- If you have demonstrated what you know in iconic and referential projects.
This article is not to define what is a Senior backend Developer, I think it is something that does not have a unique definition, what we wanted to share with you is an analysis of the Senior backend offers that have been published in Joppy, what is the average salary for backend according to the years of experience and the roles that companies require for their profiles with more expertise.
Senior backend demand data
Our data is based on more than 3,000 job offers and expectations of the more than 45,000 developers we have on our platform. Remember that both companies and candidates can put their salary anonymously.

Let’s look, for example, at this graph of the evolution of tech offers in Barcelona. Although the search for profiles is diversifying, backend is in the lead, being the profile with the highest demand.
Look, for example, at the specific demand for remote backend languages. Java continues to lead for another year, although Python is hot on its heels.

It is clear that being a backend profile is to find a wide variety of offers to match with. What about the salary for a senior? Will there be much difference in the offers published on Joppy?
Data on backend developer salaries
When posting an offer on Joppy, it is necessary to indicate how many years of experience the candidates must have in order for the match system to work properly.
One of the most common pains when we talk to recruiters is that depending on which platforms they upload their offers, they get a lot of junior profiles that do not fit with what they are looking for, so with our match system you can reduce this “noise”.
But… how do companies configure the offers for senior profiles?

According to the data, we see that the largest number of senior backend offers ask for between 3 and 5 years of experience in a given role.
Does this correspond to senior profiles, and is a person with 3 years of experience really considered for a senior position? We leave these questions for everyone to think about.
Salary is another of the things we ask for when we publish a job offer, more than anything else, so as not to waste the time of candidates and companies. How many times has it happened to you that a recruiter contacts you with a very juicy offer, without salary, and when you talk about salary it does not fit at all?
There is the possibility that there are salaries sent anonymously to the platform, both from candidates and from offers. Although we have found that offers with public salaries work 87% better. But don’t worry, our match system does know the salary and if it matches the candidate’s salary expectations.

The average base salary in a city like Madrid for senior backend workers was more than 60,000 euros per year, last year. The lowest salary for full-time backend developer job offers is above 50k.
In order to take a closer look at how seniority influences backend developer salaries, we have reviewed the salary range requested for profiles with more than 5 years of experience.

In this case we see that more than half of the Senior offers offer more than 70K. Do you think this is a commensurate salary for a senior position? Is the company where you work within this range?
Fuentes: techtarget
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