4 Ways To Improve Your .Net Developer Salary

A .NET Developer is a software developer who works with .NET technologies. It has risen in popularity in recent years. If you’re a .NET developer, read on to see how you can improve your salary.

What Is The Average .NET Developer Salary?

First of all, let’s have a look at the salary figures.

The average .NET developer salary in the US is $111,191.

https://www.computercareers.org/net-developer-salary/

Let’s see how this compares to other roles.

As you can see, there is a large difference with these roles, which were chosen for this list as they are similar roles.

• Application Developer: a general developer role, which I assume is where the survey respondents don’t mention a specific language, or aren’t focused on just one language.
• IT Consultant: this is a consulting role and was put here as a comparison, as some consultants could be developers, and vice versa.
• Junior/Lead Software Engineer: there is a big difference in salaries for these roles. A software engineer is a pretty experienced role, so I’m not surprised that the salary is higher.
• Java Developer & Senior Java Developer: an alternative language which is used a lot in companies, Java developers have comparable salaries to .NET developers.
• Web Developer & Senior Web Developer: these salaries are a bit lower that other roles, which may be for several reasons.
• Senior .NET Developer: This is a senior role of the role in question, and the salary is almost as high as the Senior Java Developer and other senior roles.
• Database Developer & Senior Database Developer: these roles work on databases and also have a higher salary than a .NET developer.

Alright, so we’ve seen the salary data. What can we do to improve our own .NET developer salary?

1. Learn More Skills

I’ve mentioned this in a few of my other salary improvement posts, but one of the best ways to improve your .NET developer salary is to learn more skills.

Learning skills that are related to your role as a .NET developer (so I’m talking about other technical skills) can improve your salary for several reasons.

You can do more tasks that you weren’t able to before, because you have learnt the skills that allow you to do different tasks.

You can save your employer time and money, because if you’re able to do some tasks with your new skill, then they may not need an extra team member. For example, if you were to learn SQL Server skills (which, according to Payscale, can provide a 3% higher salary), you can write and run your own SQL queries.

According to the Payscale website, the skills that cause a .NET developer’s salary to increase are:

• IIS (Internet Information Server): 6% salary increase
• Microsoft SQL Server: 3% salary increase
• C# or ASP.NET or Oracle: 2% salary increase

2. Move Companies

A common way to increase your salary is to move companies. Time and time again I hear stories of people who have moved companies and have gotten an increase in their salary.

Moving companies can result in a large increase to your salary. This can be from a movement into a more senior role, or just moving into a similar role at a different company. This can happpen if you’re underpaid in your current role.

3. Gain More Experience

Getting more experience as a .NET developer is another good way to improve your salary.

Of course, experience is often mentioned in time, and just spending more time in the role can help. But you pribably knew that.

What I mean by “getting more experience” in this point is that it can be helpful to work on different kinds of projects in your company.

If you’ve been doing similar kind of development work for some time, it could be a good idea to find a new kind of project to work on. This will expand your knowledge and get you to try out different skills and techniques.

It can also make you more valuable to the company, as you have different experiences and more knowledge to use in your role.

4. Get Certified

Another way to get a salary increase as a .NET developer is to get a certification. Microsoft offers several certifications that you can get as a .NET developer, such as the MTA (Microsoft Technology Associate), or the MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer).

Microsoft has recently changed their certification structure, which means they have not developed many higher-level certifications at the time of writing. However, the MCSD is a good certification to get, and comes in different variations for developers.

Conclusion

So, in this article we’ve looked at the current .NET developer salary and a few ways you can improve it, which are:

• Learn more skills which are related to .NET development
• Move companies to get a pay rise or a promotion
• Gain more experience in other projects or teams
• Get a certification relating to .NET development

Readers, what other advice could you offer to improve your salary? What do you have planned to earn more this year?