How do gender and ethnic background affect pay in tech?

Contextual data

White female engineers have the lowest average salaries of all groups of engineers, at £57,262. The average female engineer from a minority ethnic (i.e., non-white) background earns £58,414, and minority male engineers earn, on average, £66,170. White male engineers are the highest earning group, with an average salary of £67,750 - 18.32% greater than that of the average white female.

Below, the data is explored by function, job title (among developers), seniority and years' experience, in order to compare the difference between the salaries of engineers of comparable ability and experience from different gender and ethnic backgrounds.

Unless clarified by context, "engineer" is used to refer to any professional who has created a profile for job-seeking purposes on cord. Engineers are carefully selected to be able to create profiles on cord. They require professional experience in Tech and Product-related roles, and are therefore specifically represent people working in these roles rather than, as many other statistics sometimes cover, the "Technology industry" as a whole. It is therefore felt that the data discussed here gives a unique insight into gendered and ethnic pay differentials among people working in Tech and Product-specific roles.

Salaries by function

White males are the highest earners in Infrastructure and Data positions, while male engineers from ethnic minority backgrounds are the highest earners among developers and in Product & Design. White females are the lowest earners in every function.

The disparity between highest and lowest earners is greatest in Development, where males from ethnic minority backgrounds earn 23.24% more, on average, than white females.

Engineer salaries by seniority

At entry and junior level, minority females are the highest earners. However, at mid-level they fall into second behind ethnic minority males, and from senior level upwards white males are the highest earners.

At every seniority level besides junior, white females have the lowest salary expectations. At junior level, white female salary expectations are second lowest (following white males).

Developer salaries by job title

Males from ethnic minority backgrounds earn more than other groups in Back End and Full Stack developer roles, but white males earn the most among Front End developers. Again, white females are the lowest earners in all three development positions.

The disparity between highest and lowest earners is greatest in Front End, where white males earn 23.64% more, on average, than white females.

Key Insights

• Across all tech and product functions, seniority and experience levels, men from minority backgrounds are the highest earners, while white women are the lowest earners

• Men from ethnic minority backgrounds earn, on average, 25% more than white women

• The average white female needs 6 years' experience to out-earn the average man from a minority background with 2 years' experience

Data Disclaimer

Data refers to 46,752 engineers based in the UK who have looked for work on cord.

Gender is determined by one of two methods. All engineers are given the opportunity to self-ID. Roughly one quarter of engineers do so. The remainder have been assigned a gender (male or female) by a third-party predictive API (https://namsor.app/) based on their name. The API makes mistakes, but is accurate in 90-95% of cases. The same API is used to predict the ethnic background of all engineers.

All salary data is based on engineers' expected salaries on cord, which is used as a proxy for actual salary.