Backend Developer salary
What a backend developer actually earns, from 474 live job postings blended with the official US OEWS (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) wage anchor. Pick a market for its median and range, then read the seniority split, the trend, and the country comparison below. Updated 2026-07-23.
Switch the market above to see backend developer pay in the 3 countries our sources cover, each with its own cost of living. The trend, seniority, and state detail below are United States data, where the official record runs deepest.
What the number means
Backend developer posts a blended US median near 132,000 dollars, a touch above the general software-engineer band, because the title concentrates the higher-paid, systems-heavy end of the work: databases, services, scale, the parts that do not show on a screen. The spread tracks the stack and the scale, from small-company generalists near the floor to distributed-systems specialists well above. It is the most portable seat in software, one hop from data engineering, DevOps, and solutions architecture, and the demand has held even as front-end hiring softened. Depth in one backend domain is the pay lever.
Open backend developer roles
Live openings tagged to this occupation, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.
- Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Loki Ingest | Germany | RemoteGrafanalabs · Germany (Remote)RemoteJul 23
- Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Loki Ingest | Spain | RemoteGrafanalabs · Spain (Remote)RemoteJul 23
- Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Loki Ingest | Sweden | RemoteGrafanalabs · Sweden (Remote)RemoteJul 23
- Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Loki Ingest | UK | RemoteGrafanalabs · United Kingdom (Remote)RemoteJul 23
- Staff Backend Engineer - Grafana Second Horizon | Germany | RemoteGrafanalabs · Germany (Remote)RemoteJul 23
- Staff Backend Engineer - Grafana Second Horizon | Ireland | RemoteGrafanalabs · Republic of Ireland (Remote)RemoteJul 23
By seniority
Posted-median pay by seniority signal in the title, from our corpus. Noisy at the edges where sample sizes are small.
By country
- United States$109,844 – $182,882 · median $135,581
- United Kingdom$73,510 – $104,876 · median $84,022
- Canada$82,917 – $129,350 · median $112,550
Top-paying US states
OEWS median by state, highest first.
- Californiamedian $170,910
- Washingtonmedian $166,910
- New Yorkmedian $161,260
- Marylandmedian $137,890
- Utahmedian $127,390
- Wyomingmedian $112,590
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Move into or out of backend developer
- software engineer → solutions architectmeasured route
Related salaries
- Software Engineer salary$181,991 median
- Data Engineer salary$124,685 median
- Solutions Architect salary$143,641 median
Quick answers
How much do backend developers make?
The blended US median is about 132,000 dollars, slightly above general software engineering, reflecting the systems-heavy end of the work.
Do backend developers earn more than frontend developers?
Usually a modest premium, because backend work skews toward scale and systems, which pay more.
What can a backend developer move into?
Data engineering, DevOps, and solutions architecture are the common, well-paid next steps.
Method: bands are the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of live US postings with stated pay, shrunk toward the official OEWS anchor by sample size (the “blended” figure). Trend is the OEWS annual median for SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) code 15-1252. Unemployment is the 2025 BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) CPS (Current Population Survey) annual-average rate for “Software developers.” Live corpus 474 observations, 2026-07-23. Definitions in the glossary.