2015 Austin tech salaries guide: How does your salary stack up?

2015: How does your salary stack up? Built In dove into the data to find salary information on a number of the most common positions in the Austin tech space.

Written by Tessa McLean
Published on Aug. 19, 2015
2015 Austin tech salaries guide: How does your salary stack up?

Related: Best Startups to Work for in Austin

*For positions with junior, middle and senior level salary ranges, the mid-level range is displayed above
 
Before we dive into the employee descriptions and salary ranges, here are three tips for negotiating salary from SW Managing Director Mario Espindola at Betts Recruiting, an Austin recruiting firm. 
 
When negotiating salary companies take several factors into consideration:
  • current compensation 
  • your skills and experience 
  • how your skills and experience line up with the existing team 
  • how your skills line up with the overall market (other offers you've received)
Do Research 
 
“Find some really valuable data behind what you’re negotiating," Espindola said. "When you're dealing with counteroffers there needs to be concrete value behind what the market is doing.”
 
Consider Equity
 
"It's high risk, but it's high reward," Espindola said. "That can be really competitive and very attractive."
 
Know Your Worth
 
"Understand what means most to you as a candidate and work within that," Espindola said. "For example, do you want an uncapped commission and a higher earning potential? Negotiate for that. Be mindful of your competition. Salary negotiation is always important to do, because it’s a very candidate driven market, and it’s indicative of what you’re being hired for.”
 

Backend Developer

Salary: $80,000 to $120,000
 
Backend developers must be able to efficiently design, build and deploy software applications. They work closely with other software developers, QA engineers and product managers to fine-tune software features to the needs of customers. 
  • 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
  • Skilled at performance debugging and benchmarking
Skills: .NET, Android (Java), C#, DevOps, iOS (Objective-C), Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, quality assurance, Ruby, API best practices
 
 

Front End Developer

Salary: $75,000 to $120,000
 
Front end development is where software design meets the user. Good front end developers build websites, apps and software programs that not only perform technically well, but are also easy to use. They work closely with the product development team, designers and the engineering team to craft the user facing part of the software.
  • Implement front end interface
  • Write clean and high performance code 
  • Collaborate with the engineering department, and other departments, in an agile software development environment
  • Work with designers turning wireframes and mockups into the real thing
  • Architect and build scalable, maintainable, testable, and reusable applications
Skills:  HTML, CSS, JavaScript, web browsers 
 
 

Mobile Engineer

Salary: $75,000 to $120,000

There’s an app for almost everything these days and mobile engineers are the people who build them. Whether on iOS, Android or Windows, mobile engineers are putting the next generation of computing in our pockets. They must be able to work with a diverse set of team members, have a strong understanding of UX, and be up-to-date on the rapidly evolving mobile application space.
  • Developing, releasing, and maintaining mobile applications
  • Collaborating on software projects with project managers, UX designers, backend developers and QA engineers
  • Participate in design and code reviews
  • Knowledgeable of agile software development and other methods
  • Strong understanding of user experience best practices
Skills: HTML, CSS, Javascript, iOS SDK, Android SDK, Windows SDK, agile software development, APIs, Objective-C
 
 

Senior Backend Developer/ Senior Software Engineer

Salary: $85,000 to $140,000 
 
Description: Senior Backend Developers must be able to efficiently design, build and deploy software applications. They work closely with other software developers, QA Engineers, and product managers to fine-tune software features to the needs of customers. 
  • 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
  • Skilled at performance debugging and benchmarking
 
Skills: .NET, Android (Java),C#, DevOps, iOS (Objective-C), Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, quality assurance, Ruby, API best practices

Companies hiring similar positions now

Inside Sales 

Salary: Junior: $32,000 to $35,000 base + commission; Middle: $40,000 to $60,000 base + commission; Senior: $70,000 to $150,000 base + commission
 
Inside sales representatives are the first part of the sales process. Whether it is responding to inbound emails and phone calls or sending outbound emails and phone calls, representatives must be good at starting a conversation cold and then warming it up to be passed to sales representatives or account managers.
  • Follow up and qualifying on inbound leads and phone calls
  • Reach out to prospective customers via emails and phone calls
  • Handle large scale email campaigns in coordination with the marketing team
  • Assist customers in their purchase decisions with product demonstrations, technical sales support, and best practices
  • Build the funnel of qualified sales leads for the rest of the sales team
Skills: Phone sales, email sales, understanding of the sales process, email marketing, persistence, strong speaking abilities
 
 

Account Manager

Salary: Junior: $40,000 to $50,000 base + commission; Middle: $60,000 to $70,000 base + commission
 
Account managers keep customers happy. Happy customers keep buying. Positioned between the product team and sales team, account managers work to improve customer relations by helping them with their existing products and upselling additional helpful products or features.
  • Responsible for all customer communications, conflict resolution, and compliance
  • Manage contracts and customer billing communications
  • Monitor customer activity, analyze performance, and suggest areas of improvement
  • Upsell features to customers to increase revenues
  • Resolve customer problems with customer support and engineering teams 
Skills: Sales, customer support, ability to understand technical subjects
 
 

Account Executive/Sales Represenative

Salary: $70,000 to $100,000 base + commission

In front of every successful company is an army of good sales representatives. In an era of increasingly complex digital services and products, the art of sales has become ever more sophisticated. Modern sales representatives not only have to have the gift of gab, but also an ability to quickly learn new technologies and work with marketing, product and engineering teams. They must be outgoing, but also introspective enough to organize their sales efforts for efficiency. 
  • Build, grow and manage a pipeline of accounts. 
  • Create new customers by cultivating new relationships and regularly setting up product demos.
  • Engage and respond to existing accounts by scheduling check-ins and also customer service inquiries
  • Research trends and best practices, read business publications, seek out learning and development opportunities and utilize internal resources
  • Work with engineering and customer service to provide feedback and stay updated on the products latest’s features and benefits
Skills: Sales, product demonstration, CRM, marketing, customer service
 
 

Sales Director  

Salary: $100,000 to $125,000 base + commission
 
As manager of the sales team, sales directors are key to driving higher sales growth. Sales directors set the tone of sales campaigns and keep an eye on company interaction with customers. Behind any successful sales team is a manager supporting and directing.
  • Effectively articulate the value proposition to senior-level stakeholders and make internal recommendations to support its evolution
  • Cold call, prospect and lead generation activity to develop an ongoing pipeline of opportunities
  • Develop sales process and cadence that leads to more efficient company-wide selling over time
  • Meet quarterly and annual sales quotas while contributing to the larger business development and marketing efforts of the team
  • Help develop sales materials like brochures, case studies, and website copy with the marketing team
Skills: Sales, management, email marketing, sales strategy, lead generation
 
 

Marketing Manager

Salary: Junior: $40,000 to $50,000; Middle: $55,000 to $70,000; Senior: $70,000 to $120,000 

Marketing managers must be fluent in a whole range of branding and outreach methods, from social media to print advertising. Using a variety of methods, marketing managers create a strategy to advertise their company’s brand then execute that plan by managing a team of marketers, advertising partners and PR representatives.
  • Create marketing strategies to most effectively sell products & services
  • Execute marketing strategies
  • Coordinate with marketing, advertising partners, PR represenatives, and sales team
  • Market research products and competitors
  • Periodically access ROI on marketing efforts
Skills: Marketing research, strategic planning, social media, advertising, messaging, personnel management
 
 

Creative Director

Salary: $90,000 to $150,000

Creative directors are the mastermind behind the creative aspects of a company’s marketing and sales efforts. Creative directors must be knowledgeable in a variety of fields including UX, copywriting, web development, advertising, and design; and they must bring all those disciplines together into a coherent brand voice.
  • Own the voice of a brand through a variety of channels, including print, web and email distribution
  • Work closely with sales, marketing, web development teams to produce new materials
  • Design and execute a brand strategy
  • Write copy for websites, advertisements,  and social media
  • Keen sense of branding 
Skills: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, HTML, CSS, copy writing, web development, advertising
 
 

Data Scientist

Salary: $80,000 to $120,000 

Most companies are swimming in a sea of data. It is the job of the data scientist to distill that data into actionable information. Using statistics, analytical software and a savvy understanding of user behavior, data scientists find ways for companies to improve their performance.
  • Knowledge of statistics, machine learning, and probability models
  • Ability to use software to tease out patterns in the data
  • Help the company better understand customers by working with backend developers, engineers, system administrators, and marketers 
  • Ability to visualize and articulate data patterns to colleagues
  • Design experiments leading to a better understanding of data and how to improve its predictive ability
Skills: R, Python, Matlab, Tableau, statistics, user behavior, marketing, business best practices
 
 

Product Manager

Salary: Junior: $45,000 to $70,000; Middle-Senior: $75,000 to $140,000

Product managers drive development of new products for companies. It’s their responsibility to guide the process from prototype to marketable product. They work with engineers, designers, managers, marketers and customer service representatives to make sure all inputs are properly considered and, if needed, added to the product. 
  • Act as champion for product success, from product requirements specifications through product release
  • Define product strategy through collaboration with internal stakeholders, customers and prospects
  • Perform technology assessments, competitive assessments, and monitors industry standards and innovations.
  • Release roll-out training and education for technical personnel and writes technical white papers, presentations, and product announcement documents
  • Effectively coordinate and communicate with other company functions, such as development, sales, professional and technical services to ensure that the product’s successful 

Skills: Google Analytics, A/B testing, user behavior, business best practices, agile software development, product life cycle, product launching, product positioning

Companies hiring similar positions now

 

UX Designer

Salary: $80,000 to $115,000
 
User experience designers are responsible for improving user engagement with websites, mobile apps and software. They study the behavior of users and then use methods like A/B testing to see how changes in the design influence user behavior.
  • Design and prototype aesthetically pleasing interfaces 
  • Work closely with engineering and product teams to define and develop new features
  • Help create a beautiful and modern application that targeted customers enjoy using
  • Test new features on users and optimize design around results

Skills: HTML, CSS, Javascript, A/B Testing, design abilities, Adobe Photoshop, Google Analytics

Companies hiring similar positions now

 

Digital Marketing Associate/ Content Manager

Salary: $55,000 to $80,000
 
A Digital Marketing Associate knows how to tell a company’s story. This person is part digital marketer, part journalist and part social media guru. Digital marketers must boil down their company’s marketing into marketing copy people will appreciate engaging with.
  • Write copy for websites, press releases, blog posts and advertisements
  • Engage community through social media content 
  • Create video and other multi-media content
  • Analyze and improve website SEO
  • Manage company websites with content management systems like Wordpress
Skills: Wordpress, HTML, CSS, AP Style Guide, knowledge of Google Ad Words, SEO, Adobe Suite
 
 
*Note: The above salary ranges represent reference numbers for digital tech companies in the city of Austin. This information was gathered from Betts Recruiting and several Austin digital tech companies. Salaries will vary across industries, companies and locations. Salary is also dependent on the negotiating ability of the employers and applicants.

Related: Best Startups to Work for in Austin

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