Salary Report: What IT professionals earn

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According to data from the job portal Stepstone, the gross annual salary for a full-time IT job is a median of 66,750 euros. This is significantly higher than the cross-occupational and cross-industry gross median salary in Germany, for which Stepstone determined a value of 53,900 euros. “Median” is the value in the middle of a numerical series. Across all professions and industries, job satisfaction in IT has also been steadily increasing. According to Stepstone, 36 percent of employees are satisfied or very satisfied with their income, an increase of two percentage points compared to the previous year.

Compared to the previous year, both salary figures are now significantly higher – at the beginning of 2025, Stepstone still reported a median of 58,000 euros for IT professionals. However, the current report is not comparable with the figures from previous years because the evaluation methodology and the composition of the sample have changed, as the job portal explained.

53,000 euros for entry-level jobs

According to Stepstone, salaries vary depending on the IT job. For example, project managers are at the higher end with a median salary of 74,250 euros. Other professions such as software developers (65,250 euros), IT system administrators (58,000 euros), and IT specialists in system integration (46,750 euros) are, however, slightly or even significantly below the general IT median. Educational level also creates clear differences: with a university degree (73,750 euros), one earns almost 10,000 euros more than without one (64,250 euros).

For IT job starters, the median gross annual salary for full-time positions is 53,000 euros. Here too, there are noticeable differences depending on the IT profession one enters. While, for example, data engineers can expect a median of 65,000 euros and database developers 55,750 euros, it is clearly less for web developers (48,500 euros) and IT system administrators (48,000 euros).

Women earn less than men

With increasing professional experience, earnings also increase – with six to ten years of experience, the median rises to 70,500 euros, with eleven to 25 years to 77,750 euros, and with more than 25 years, it is 83,250 euros. Personnel responsibility also makes a difference: with it, it is 75,250 euros, without it, 63,750 euros. And a gender pay gap still persists – women earn significantly less with 62,250 euros than men with 67,500 euros in IT.

The size of the company an IT professional works for also makes a difference in their wallet: small companies with fewer than 50 employees pay significantly less with 58,750 euros than large companies with 500 to 5,000 employees with 70,750 euros or very large companies with 5,000 or more employees with 76,750 euros.

Broken down by industry, the struggling automotive industry (77,500 euros) and mechanical and plant engineering are still the top payers for IT professionals (74,500 euros). Companies in the wholesale and retail trade (64,500 euros) and IT & Internet (63,000 euros) sectors pay significantly less in comparison.

Thuringia at the bottom

And finally, the federal state in which one lives remains a factor. Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Bavaria, and Hamburg offer the best IT salaries with a median of around 70,000 euros. The eastern federal states are, as always, at the bottom of the ranking, with Thuringia marking the tail end with 56,500 euros.

As in previous years, doctors are the top earners among all professions, according to Stepstone. With a median salary of 105,500 euros, they earn almost twice as much as the average. This year, the engineering professions with a median salary of 75,000 euros and “Technical development and design” with 72,250 euros also rank higher than IT professionals.

More pay transparency by law

For the year 2026, Stepstone also expects increased pay transparency in Germany: by June 7, the federal government must transpose the EU Pay Transparency Directive into national law. This would then require employers, for example, to provide salary information during the hiring process, and employees would gain a right to information about average salary levels.

For its Salary Report 2026, Stepstone states that it has evaluated over 1.3 million remuneration data collected between January 2022 and November 2025. According to this, only salary information from full-time employees with a standardized weekly working time of 40 hours, including bonuses, commissions, and premiums, was considered.

(axk)