UK Salaries Edge Out the German Market, But Don’t Vary Widely Within the Country

The CompTech Revolution has rescued thousands of companies around the world from stale benchmarking figures and manual spreadsheet maintenance by delivering real-time salary data and integrated merit cycle solutions.

Higher quality data and automated performance review processes help HR leaders demystify the compensation market and, ultimately, bring more transparency to job offers and promotion cycles.

As a leader in CompTech, Pave is digging into our growing catalog of international market data to surface novel insights from some of the largest tech hubs in Europe. 

Average German Wages Trend Below the United Kingdom

The German and UK markets are two of the hottest in Europe’s tech industry. Head-to-head, the average salaries for professional level employees show that, accounting for the currency differences, incomes are higher in the United Kingdom by as much as 17%, although those figures vary by job family. 

R&D positions such as Product Management, Software Engineering & Product Design see the smallest difference between the UK and Germany. German-based R&D positions are 0-9% lower than their UK counterparts. 

Software engineers—one of the most in-demand roles abroad—earn 6% more in the UK than in Germany, on average.

GTM roles such as Sales, Business Development and Customer Success see a larger differential between the UK and Germany. UK-based Sales team-members have an average compensation 7% greater than German Sales team members.

Meanwhile, Customer Success and Business Development salaries average 15% higher than their counterparts in Germany.

Diving Deeper into London Salaries

Within the UK, London is the largest and most competitive market for tech hiring. But when looking at how metro area salaries stack up against the rest of the country, the urban center doesn’t boost salaries as much as one might expect.

While our data shows Sales roles average higher wages in London, several other job families are receiving higher average wages outside the metro area.

This data suggests that in the UK, as in the US, the significance of geography on compensation is diminishing as remote work continues to gain popularity and broad adoption.

However, if more firms push to refill their offices post-pandemic, we may see the current sprawl of top-tier salaries reconcentrate in established tech hubs.