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The differences between senior product developers and contract developers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 2-4 years to become both a senior product developer and a contract developer. Additionally, a senior product developer has an average salary of $114,125, which is higher than the $91,433 average annual salary of a contract developer.
The top three skills for a senior product developer include product development, java and AWS. The most important skills for a contract developer are C++, javascript, and java.
| Senior Product Developer | Contract Developer | |
| Yearly salary | $114,125 | $91,433 |
| Hourly rate | $54.87 | $43.96 |
| Growth rate | 21% | 21% |
| Number of jobs | 212,955 | 249,808 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 73% | Bachelor's Degree, 68% |
| Average age | 39 | 39 |
| Years of experience | 4 | 4 |
A senior product developer leads product development activities to deliver quality products. In this role, they are in charge of delivering assigned project portfolios within the development plan through liaison with external and internal stakeholders. Their responsibilities include ensuring effective management of budgets, tracking of product development activities within the projects assigned to the team, promoting technical guidance to the production team in ensuring appropriate level support, managing specific product development activities across the supply chain, and integrating and promoting a positive working environment for the development team.
Contract Developers develop secure web applications for data collections, quality measurement efforts, and reporting purposes for large-scale performance, wireframes and UI specifications for interactive and static reporting and analysis features, and developing UI to interact with reporting engines. They are involved with system design and technical documentation and responsible for dot net development. In this position, contract developers must excellent in problem-solving, analytical skills and attention to detail, display and manipulate performance metrics, and highly confident dealing with internal and external clients.
Senior product developers and contract developers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Senior Product Developer | Contract Developer | |
| Average salary | $114,125 | $91,433 |
| Salary range | Between $87,000 And $148,000 | Between $67,000 And $123,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | San Francisco, CA |
| Highest paying state | California | California |
| Best paying company | Hotel Tonight, Inc. | Avanade |
| Best paying industry | Retail | Finance |
There are a few differences between a senior product developer and a contract developer in terms of educational background:
| Senior Product Developer | Contract Developer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 73% | Bachelor's Degree, 68% |
| Most common major | Computer Science | Computer Science |
| Most common college | Stanford University | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Here are the differences between senior product developers' and contract developers' demographics:
| Senior Product Developer | Contract Developer | |
| Average age | 39 | 39 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 57.2% Female, 42.8% | Male, 71.5% Female, 28.5% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 4.6% Unknown, 4.9% Hispanic or Latino, 8.4% Asian, 29.8% White, 52.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% | Black or African American, 4.4% Unknown, 4.8% Hispanic or Latino, 8.1% Asian, 27.8% White, 54.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% |
| LGBT Percentage | 8% | 8% |