IT sector in Armenia and especially salaries paid to those employed in the sector don't comply with the general rules of the labor market in the country. Salaries are way higher than the average income in the country. Developer wages in Armenia, Belarus, and Russia are comparable and not that far from each other.

We calculated average salaries of developers in Armenia, went through the reasoning behind the numbers, and compared them to the salaries of developers in Belarus, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine.

Numbers
Companies in Armenia don't disclose the information on the salaries, numbers that we use in the article are based on the data provided by the biggest technical recruitment agency in Armenia meettal. The data shows salaries of the software engineers only, mostly Java, .NET, JavaScript, Mobile Developers, PHP, Python and Fullstack engineers. Architects weren't included.

Average net salary of a developer in Armenia:

• Junior: $580
• Middle: $1528
• Senior: $3061
• Team Lead: $3470

To give a perspective on whether that is a big sum of money or not, on the chart below we drew a line marking the average expenses of one person in Yerevan - $793. That number includes basic needs, rent and things like public transportation fees, dining out, etc.

What is different about Armenia?
1. The salary is always discussed in terms of take-home pay.
Some of the companies in the country take advantage of the tax benefits, for example, startups. The payroll tax varies from 10 to 30%. The common tendency is to discuss the net salary in the first place.

2. It's not common to talk about annual salary as it's done in the US or Europe.

3. In general, wages are not public information. Just a couple of companies mention expected salary on the job boards or websites.

4. The gap between junior and senior wages is huge compared to the gap in the US or Europe. The average salary of a junior is 6 times lower than the senior.

5. The Armenian tech sector is a relatively small market. The percentage of developers out of all working population is rather high but still, there is a shortage of specialists to cover all the needs of the sector. That is why in some cases the company focuses more on a concrete engineer and his/her skills, how they can be applied in the company rather than an open position and internal grade of the company.

6. All the wages are declared.

7. The salaries are paid in terms of money rather than stocks and options. Among the companies that include an option to the benefits package are krisp, a startup in the field of background noise reduction, health-tech startup Vineti and the largest software provider for virtualization VMware.

8. There is one more thing that doesn't affect the salary directly but significantly contributes to the low cost of living. Yerevan is a small city and the location of the office is rarely discussed with a potential candidate. While in Moscow, Russia for example, that information is usually mentioned on the job boards.

Armenian salaries in comparison to the ones paid in Belarus, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine
In the beginning, let's talk about the sources.

Belarus
For the past couple of years, the Dev.by portal has been accumulating data on the wages in the tech companies operating in Belarus. In one of the reports, the team presented average salaries for all level specialists based on their working language. We calculated the average salary for specialists no matter their language. All numbers and net.

Ukraine
Dou.ua portal creates a chart on the average developer salary across Ukraine. Information on Team Leads is taken from the vidget. All the numbers are take-home pay.

Russia
According to MoiKrug, the average salary of a developer in Russia is 108,431 rub or 1,683 USD. The average salary for a software developer is taken from here. Information on Team Leads is taken from another chart.

Germany
Data on Germany was taken from glassdoor, payscale, and stackoverflow. The salary mentioned on the websites was gross. The net salary was calculated in the calculator.

The German tax system is more complicated. We calculated the net salary for a person:

• who lives in Berlin
• is 27 y.o
• does not have kids
• belongs to the 1 category: that means a person is not married or a partner is not a resident of Germany, does not live in the country.

It is crucial to look at the numbers considering the context of a particular country and the cost of living in the city. The cost of living for each country is the one of its capital, in all cases, the cost of living is based on the information provided by numbeo (expenses of one person including rent of a flat in the city center).

Based on that we can see the turning point when a specialist can afford a comfortable living and when even after all the taxes and expenses are paid he/she still saves almost half of the salary.

There is a common trend in Armenia, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine - with every additional year of experience, the salary of a developer significantly increases. While in Germany the gap between junior and senior is not that vivid. In Germany, even Junior salary covers all the needs including rent.

One more interesting indicator is the amount that is left out of the senior developer salaries after the taxes are paid and the basic needs are covered. That is not the actual savings but rather the amount that is left for other costs and leisure after the necessities are paid.

To sum up: the Armenian tech sector is growing steadily, the number of companies is continuously going up while the number of experienced developers is limited to its amount. Competitions for the engineers are resulting in high salaries as one of the methods to attract and retain specialists in the company, country and out of freelance.