Software Developer: pay, outlook, and how to get in

What the work is like

Most of the job is reading and writing code, but the reading usually wins. Developers spend the largest share of their time understanding existing systems — someone else's code, an old service nobody documented, a bug that only appears on one customer's data.

A typical week includes building a feature, reviewing colleagues' changes, and investigating something that broke in production. The feature work is the visible part; the review and debugging work is where a lot of the real judgement sits.

Work is usually organised in small teams with a short planning cycle. You will be given a problem rather than a solution, and expected to ask questions when the requirement does not make sense.

Specialisation varies widely. Some developers work on user interfaces, some on data pipelines, some on infrastructure. The early years are often deliberately broad before narrowing.

Skills that matter

• One general-purpose language well, not five badly — the second language is much easier once the first is solid
• Reading unfamiliar code without panicking; this is the most under-practised skill in the field
• Version control (Git) as a daily tool, including branches and resolving conflicts
• Debugging methodically: forming a hypothesis, testing it, and narrowing the search space
• Writing clearly enough that a colleague can follow your reasoning in a pull request
• Basic data structures and when to reach for each one
• Enough SQL to answer your own questions without waiting for someone else

Routes into the role

A computer science degree remains the most common route, and is still the default requirement at larger employers and in regulated industries.

Bootcamps and self-teaching work, but the market is more sceptical than it was. A portfolio of real, working projects carries more weight than a certificate.

Adjacent moves are common — testers, support engineers, and analysts often transition internally, which is usually easier than applying cold.

Internships remain the strongest single signal for new graduates.

Resume tips

• Describe what the software did and who used it, not which framework you touched. "Reduced checkout failures from 4% to 0.3%" says more than "worked on checkout."
• Name the scale. Team size, request volume, and data size tell a reviewer whether your experience transfers.
• Link to code you can talk about. A repository you understand deeply beats ten you contributed to once.
• Cut the list of technologies. A long keyword list reads as a lack of depth.
• Do not claim years of experience with a tool released last year.

Other job guides