IT sector salaries in 2023

H512.com is a specialized IT job site with about 20 000 job applications per month. Working with over 1,300 companies, we have an insight into trends in the sector. For the first time, we are publishing aggregated data on salary levels in the industry, which are calculated based on the salaried job postings on H512.com. We hope you find them useful!

Before looking at the data, please familiarize yourself with the specifics of the survey:

1. One of the key advantages of the survey is that all data is from 2023 and reflects the pay levels that companies have actually advertised for open positions in the current year.

2. Net salaries. These figures are subject to change if the maximum social security threshold changes.

3. Possibility of inflating values. In this way they want to demonstrate one of their competitive advantages. In view of this trend and based on our observation of market developments, we believe that the average values in the H512.com survey may be higher than the actual average pay values in the industry.

4. Scope limitation: still a small number of employers advertise their pay levels in their advertisements. The trend is upwards, but for 2023 only less than 10% of positions have a salary advertised. Because of this we do not publish information for certain roles, technologies and experience levels where we have less data. Over the years the scope and representativeness of our survey will increase.

5. Methodology. H512.com gives the average of the minimum as well as the maximum pay levels of these ranges in its survey. The data are presented as an average and as a median.

Salaries in the IT sector for Mid and Senior roles

The data clearly shows that the increasing demand and limited supply of DevOps professionals is reflected in the pay levels. Mobile development and C/C /Embedded roles also feature in the top 3 areas by net salary according to H512.com data.

IT salaries for Mid and Senior roles

H512.com category	Mid level (2-5 years experience)	Mid level (2-5 years experience)	Senior level (5 years experience)	Senior level (5 years experience)
	Average value (net/lv)	Median (net/lv)	Median (net/lv)	Median (net/lv)
Backend Development	4648 – 7524	5000 – 7100	6383 – 9028	6400 – 9000
Java	4802 – 8569	5000 – 8700	6801 – 9563	7000 – 9000
.NET	4664 – 6679	4500 – 6750	5550 – 7890	5000 – 7000
C/C/Embedded	4857 – 7500	5000 – 8000	6143 – 10857	6000 – 11000
PHP	3757 – 5922	3750 – 6000	5065 – 7851	5000 – 7000
Python	5025 – 7407	5000 – 7000	7000 – 9849	7000 – 8000
Node.js	4486 – 7530	5000 – 7000	6021 – 8788	6000 – 9000
Frontend Development	4738 – 7757	4500 – 8000	6136 – 8428	5500 – 8000
JavaScript	4579 – 7369	4500 – 7000	5683 – 8105	5500 – 8000
Angular	4507 – 7479	4500 – 7750	6055 – 8166	6000 – 9000
React	4483 – 7636	4500 – 8000	5902 – 8673	5500 – 8000
Fullstack Development	4322 – 6764	4000 – 6500	5644 – 8691	5250 – 8000
Mobile Development	5041 – 9431	5000 – 10000	7059 – 9800	7000 – 10000
iOS	5298 – 9917	5500 – 10000	6786 – 9679	6500 – 10000
Android	4841 – 9133	5000 – 10000	7357 – 10857	8000 – 10000
Quality Assurance	3859 – 5968	4000 – 7000	5074 – 6632	5000 – 7000
Manual QA	2454 – 4315	1800 – 3200	4000 – 5200	4000 – 5200
Automation QA	4524 – 6788	5000 – 7000	5360 – 7013	5000 – 7000
DevOps	5195 – 8138	6000 – 9000	7810 – 11838	7000 – 13000

Salaries in the IT sector for Junior Professionals

In the following rows we will look at how things stand for professionals without experience in the H512.COM sample. For the year 2023, the lowest salary announced is BGN 800 and the highest is BGN 6000. These figures could be a reason for sensational headlines like “The IT salary bubble burst” (800 BGN) or “6 bucks for a person without a gram of experience – the IT market went crazy”.

But let’s look at things realistically. It is possible that the ad with the bottom level of the pay range of around 800 BGN was published by a company with a non-technology core business, which does not know the market and is looking for an IT professional for the first time. And an ad with an upper level of the pay range of 6000 BGN has requirements that a person with no experience cannot realistically cover. What is the reality?

IT salaries for professionals without experience

Junior / Intern (professionals with no previous experience in the field)
Average value (net/lv)	Median (net/lv)
1632 – 2744	1500 – 2550

*The sample includes only those Junior positions that do not require previous experience.

What is the most I can take and how much should I not go below?

We also publish the lowest and highest salaries advertised on H512.com during the year. They set a pretty broad framework because they cover different levels of professionals in each category – from people with no experience to team leaders.

It is noteworthy that the maximum values of the JavaScript and Angular categories are higher than the maximum salary in the Front-end development category. The reason for this is that there are positions that are Fullstack roles that use JavaScript/Angular for Front-end respectively.

Minimum and maximum IT salaries in H512.com for 2023

H512.com category	Minimum value (net)	Maximum value (net/lv)
Backend Development	800	20000
Java	900	16500
.NET	800	20000
C/C/Embedded	3000	17000
PHP	800	18000
Python	2000	20000
Node.js	2400	12500
Frontend Development	1300	14500
JavaScript	800	18000
Angular	2400	11000
React	1500	18000
Fullstack Development	800	20000
Mobile Development	2500	20000
iOS	3000	12500
Android	2500	12500
Quality Assurance	1000	10000
Manual QA	1200	7200
Automation QA	1000	10000
DevOps	1300	16500

Instead of conclusion

We are involved in many discussions about salary developments in the sector. But in this article we have let the data do the talking. What impresses you? What are you missing? How can we improve this peculiar H512.com Salary Report? Write to us at sve@dev.bg

Here you will also find the data on IT salaries in 2024.