The average web developer salary in New York is $81,850, according to the latest data from CyberCoders, a leading national recruiting firm in the U.S.
Most employers will post jobs for specialized positions, such as front end or backend web developers.
Front end developers in NYC make an average of $100,454, while backend developers make around $118,993, according to the recruiting firm's latest salary guide.
Backend developers typically deal with a wider range of web technologies and complex infrastructure than their colleagues on the front end, which often places them in a higher salary bracket.
Ultimately, how much you earn—regardless of expertise—depends on the company's product, approach and needs at the time of hiring.
Web developer job outlook
Web developers are key team members at any startup or tech company, and the position is routinely included among the lists of best technology jobs in America.
Due to the growing popularity of mobile devices and online shopping, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that web developer jobs will grow 27% from 2014 to 2024—much faster than the average for any other occupation.
There were roughly 148,500 developer jobs in 2014, and one-in-seven developers were self-employed, according to the BLS.
Approximately 188,000 positions are expected to be created by 2024.
At any given time, the Built In NYC job board has hundreds of web developer openings in the city, and these positions are often well-paid, full-time and in high demand.
From 2009 to 2013, New York tech jobs increased by 33 percent, which was four times faster than any of the city's other industries. In fact, tech sector growth as a whole is even outpacing Silicon Valley.
There's never been a better time to be a web developer, especially in New York.
Skills required to be a developer
The breadth of a web developer's skill set can greatly impact his or her earning potential. It's not uncommon for many startups, and even some larger tech companies, to seek developers who are skilled in multiple disciplines.
Generally, however, companies are usually looking for someone experienced in either front end development or backend development.
Front end developers
A front end developer works closely with product development, designers, marketers, SEO and other engineers to accomplish a variety of extremely important objectives:
- Implement front end interface
- Write clean and high performance code that is responsive across multiple devices
- Collaborate with the engineering department, and other departments, in an agile software development environment
- Work with designers to turn wireframes and mockups into the real thing
- Architect and build scalable, maintainable, testable, and reusable applications
- Work with the SEO team to build a search engine-friendly site architecture
- Strong understanding of CSS, HTML, JavaScript and web browsers
A good front end developer not only has a strong understanding of how to build websites, apps and programs, but also an eye for maintaining design integrity and an understanding of user experience.
Backend developers
A backend developer works closely with product managers, other software engineers, and QA engineers to fine-tune software features to the needs of customers. The backend developer must be able to do the following:
- Build efficient and scalable software
- Identify and address performance issues
- Participate in design and code review sessions
- Identify and prototype best practices for backend engineering
- Perform debugging and benchmarking quickly and proficiently
The backend developer is a critical member of any startup team because they build the infrastructure of the website and the applications that store business functions such as customer information and ecommerce data.
Required development languages include .NET, Android (Java), C#, DevOps, iOS (Objective-C), Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP and Python.
