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Comment by davidschof | Hacker News Reader

Their senior solution architect vacancy has similar pay: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about/our-people/careers...

Somewhat less eminent job title though.

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I would love to have "Stonehenge architect" as a job title.

They really miss out on opportunities here.

Monolithic codebase though

It's still modular.

And probably a prototype deployed to production!!!

Don't threaten me with good times.

I'm counting the liths and I'm getting a lot more than mono

That's because I think it's more accurate to call it a megalithic codebase. :)

> We offer flexible working arrangements where the role allows. This role can be based at our offices in Swindon, or worked on a hybrid pattern. You will be required to attend our Swindon offices 1 day per week.

Pretty decent flexibility though.

Yes but you can have a pint down at the pub on a warm summer evening with your colleagues after work. Almost makes up for it.

that is abysmal!

Maybe you missed the “25% discount in our shops and cafes” perk for the day you need to be in the office. Score.

That's a fairly standard wage outside London for senior developers.

UK wages are not great.

i wouldn't call that standard wage, rather the lowest end of the spectrum where you could theoretically shop a "senior" outside of london.

Median senior dev salary is £70k according to recent job postings: https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/senior%20developer.do

And that includes London, it lists "excluding London" as £65k.

People overestimate how much senior devs in the UK earn, even after knowing they're not well paid, my usual response to hearing we should be earning £90k+ is, "well give us a job then"!

A friend is making about £180k / yr in London, and they bought a house recently in London. I think that's a lot, and his wife also makes a similar amount, slightly more. That seems to be the minimum, otherwise you're a renter for life. Pretty nuts.

As a senior dev?

What sector?

Probably FANG or finance.

A product lead/architect in Finance.

Outside of Finance that's high for London.

London property is expensive, but £180k is a lot more than the "minimum". I am on half that, and I managed to buy.

That is an extremely high salary, and very far from the minimum required to buy, even on your own. A dual £350k income is truly astonishing. You could buy most houses in London in cash after saving for 5 years.

What? No that will not allow you to buy "most houses in London in cash after saving for 5 years" unless you live far out of town in a tiny place and eat plain rice for 5 years, and even then it'll be long odds.

First, you'll take home slightly over half of that net of various taxes and deductions, but let's be generous and say your take-home is 200k. You live very frugally, don't go out, don't really buy anything and keep your costs at 50k a year, including rent (!). That leaves you with 150k a year, so after 5 years you have 750k. This allows you to buy a modest 2-3 bed row house with a postage stamp sized garden in one of the less desirable areas of the city.

If you want something that doesn't look like a shed, you are looking at 1 million pounds and up, more like 1.5 million. If you want in a nice area and large garden, make it 2 million.

What are you smoking? The median house price in London is 500k. At 750k you can afford 77% of houses and at a million you are in the top 10%. 50k per year is also a preposterously high expenditure. Rent will be your leading expense by probably a factor of 10. You could put aside 3k a month for rent (again, totally preposterous number) and not touch the sides.

The only thing I can think of that would even come close to making a difference is having children. Then all bets are off, they can cost as much as you like.

They do have children and therefore buying centrally in London got a bit expensive, I believe.

The median terraced house (entry level family home) in London is actually £642K

'Inner London' and it goes up to £876K

Median property price in London is £542k [0]

Assuming a 90% mortgage that's 487k mortgage

That's two people on £70k each at a 3.5 multiple. £60k at a 4x multiple.

Two people on £180k would get you a £1.5m house, twice the average semi.

[0] https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi/browse?from=2025-...

Partly depends on what you mean by "London". I don't want to work for FAANG/AI/finance/gambling so our combined salary is well under the 180 figure. Yet we bought a 2-bed terraced house with a garden and driveway in south-west London (technically Surrey, but a London borough) just over five years ago. It's still 20 mins to Waterloo and most of central London is under an hour away. As we pay off the mortgage we should be able to further upsize over the years. It's not ideal, but it works.

A salary of £180k put you in the 98th percentile of UK salaries in 2024 (99th percentile was only a little higher at £207k) [1]. With a household income approximately doubling that, i'd suggest your friend is in an even smaller minority.

The average house price in London in July 2025 was £565k [pp33 - 2].

There is not being able to afford something and then there is not being able to afford exactly what you want.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-incomes-s... [2] https://data.london.gov.uk/download/24rpx/37w/Housing%20in%2...

Yeah, but they probably have a £700K mortgage and will have to bulldoze one career to have kids.

The balancing force to this though, is that cost of living outside of London is massively lower

As a Finnish dev with 12 years of experience, I can only aspire for such salary.

Are you serious? Sarcasm Don't translate well on internet.

He's serious. American programming salaries are an extreme outlier. You guys are in for a massive shock if they ever normalise.

Or in the next few years as AI devours the profession.

Comparing US and European salaries is the closest thing to comparing apples to oranges.

What fruit are UK salaries here?

Red Delicious

Ah so terrible

Snozzcumbers

Why would they "normalize"? Do you think Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Amazon, etc. are going to relocate to the EU or something? Are all the venture capitalists going to flock to Spain?

The mechanics driving compensation arent "normal." American pay is driven by the underlying mechanics. The USA didn't just randomly win at tech.

There are real factors that could reduce US compensation, but calling that "normalization" assumes the current gap exists for no reason. It exists because the US software industry is structurally different from most of Europe.

If demand for software developers decreases due to AI, salaries are likely to decrease as well. Take the academic world for comparison, where supply of very smart people vastly exceeds the demand.

I suspect demand for software is nearly infinitely elastic, so far we’ve seen demand and comp for engineers increase as coding agents got better

Academia for comparison doesn’t make money…maybe a better comparison is HFT? Plenty of very very smart people playing a zero sum game, yet their comp has only increased

I already addressed this in my comment. There are real factors that could reduce US compensation, but calling that "normalization" assumes the current gap exists for no reason.

> Why would they "normalize"?

Globalization? Look at manufacturing, it moved to a country where things are a lot more affordable. In a world where remote collaboration gets easier and easier and you're able to pay software engineers half the world away a lot less there's no way it wouldn't have an effect on the domestic market.

feel like that narrative has died given the return of RTO. In person work is really valuable

and the talent is just better in the US on average (mostly because of immigration!), software is so levered one good Eng can 1000x the value of a bad one

American eng comp is commensurate with the money American tech brings in, you could even argue underpaid

Most of the “money American tech brings in” comes from the magnificent seven. US software engineering salaries are high even outside of those. In fact, it's high even in companies that are merely burning investor's money.

there are plenty of american cos that bring in tons of money that are outside the mag7.

vc funded companies pay high so they can grow and eventually bring in lots of money, and america has the deepest vc pockets so it reaps the rewards of the biggest exits

High pay at Mag7 companies pulls up pay at other American software companies. They have to pay more to compete for talent.

This is what it looks like right now. Unless there's some huge economic boom coming, which I doubt.

wait till you hear about the stock grants and vesting schedule

Be warned though, the equity you are granted will be exceedingly illiquid.

And you'll have to pay taxes on it despite it being unsellable.

Screw those things up, and those taxes will bankrupt you because they can exceed all your other earnings.

Wait till you see UK wages, when it's the UK arm of a US firm....

american salaries must be ridiculous if £70k (~$93.5k) is considered "abysmal(ly)" low!

as others have said, some may be in for a very rude awakening...

And this is for a 36 hour work week.

$93.5K isn't abysmally low in the USA. Average is about 66k

$93.5k is abysmally low for a Senior Solutions Architect in the USA. I would expect at least $175k if not $200k+ on average. Plus stock and bonuses.

Stock... in Stonehenge?

I think comparing a job like this purely on salary terms misses a lot. It's a prestige job that will be the highlight of someone's CV for the rest of their career. Not to mention 25-28 days vacation.

As someone that's lived both in the US and outside of it there's no denying US salaries are top of the game. But there are a lot of other factors that go into a person's life than salary alone. Long hours in US jobs are not rare at all. I expect folks at Stonehenge are out the door at 5pm sharp.

> I think comparing a job like this purely on salary terms misses a lot.

OK maybe. But that's how the salary compares.

Please re-read the comment I replied to. He speculated about salary differences and I gave solid numbers. You are arguing against some unspoken claim that I never made (something like "more money is always better").

> I expect folks at Stonehenge are out the door at 5pm sharp.

I don't expect that's true for the Head of Stonehenge. You're right about the prestige of that position though.

This is a job for a charity - you're never getting stock + bonuses + competitive pay in a third sector job. UK pay is not near US but this is probably still median SWE pay outside tech roles and London + FAANG + others will pay closer with what you're suggesting with the mentioned bonuses/stock.

You are explaining why the pay is what it is.

I am comparing average pay in UK/US for a senior solutions architect position.

I dont understand what your comment has to do with my comparison of pay. Mind you, the comment I replied to speculated about this comparison. Hence why I provided more specifics.

Yes, American salaries are ridiculous in a global context. The rest of the world should demand better.

For that level of experience you can prob get 200k in a MCOL area in the US, or up to 500k+ in HCOL

The rest of the world has already been in a rude awakening, talented engineers should be compensated well no matter where they happen to live

Good luck only working 36 hours a week at that kind of job, though.

theres plenty of cruising 200k jobs in the us

not so much 0.5-1M jobs unless you got lucky with sbc or are really talented

36 hour work week, flexible hours, 25 paid holidays and a 10% pension though...

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