Salary For A Bioinformatics Programmer In Europe?

Question

[Jeroen Van Goey]

(Not completely sure this question is appropriate here, although there have been a few career-related questions before.)

I am considering a job of for a bioinformatics programmer position in Belgium. I was wondering what salary range I could expect (gross salary in euro/month). Also, any additional information that I could use to negotiate a better deal is welcome.

Some background about me and the job: I have a MSc in biology and am halfway in a MSc in bioinformatics (the company is urgently looking to fill this position now, but they promised that would allow me to finish my degree in the future: working 4/5th and going back to school one day a week). The programming would be mostly in Python on the Windows platform. Python is the programming language I am most comfortable with and in which I have the most experience (about 5+ years). However I have never worked professionally as a programmer before.

They didn't ask me to do any coding during the interview, but asked if I could submit some code samples of work I had done in Python. Since I haven't done any big projects in Python, I submitted my solutions to some 40 odd problems of Project Euler. Apparently that was sufficient (their remarks on my code: I have a good grasp of the language and write Pythonic code, but it is clear that I have a biology background and not a CS background since I mostly go for the brute force approach where most of the Project Euler problems can be solved by using some mathematical 'trick').

The job would also involve a lot of international traveling and maintenance of large software installations on-site by clients. I have 2 years experience working on a help-desk but no real experience writing software in a business setting.

Thanks in advance.

[Casey Bergman]

See related post here: Economics Of A Career In Bioinformatics

Answer 1

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

From Biogang:Projects/Bioinformatics Career Survey 2008 Results

Very quick and dirty look at salaries in industry vs. academia:

Academic Salary Mean/Median: $36,520 / $33,712

Industry Salary Mean/Median: $66,239 / $64,235

Salary/Years Experience:

Academic Mean/Median: $10,970 / $8,333

Industry Mean/Median: $17,410 / $12,000

[Larry_Parnell]

Good numbers to have. Thanks, Pierre. Now, just add to that the rate of salary change/growth per year and you can have a good estimate for 2011. In the USA, salary growth for last 3 yrs is only couple percent for most positions; 0% for govt since 2009.

[Jeroen Van Goey]

Combining the above figures with the information from Larry below, for someone in the industry with a few years experience: $64,235/year is $4941/month (http://www.paisleynet.com/salarycalc/). Take 65~80% of that and convert to euro gives around 2,255€ to 2,776€ gross/month. Does that sound reasonable?

Answer 2

[Larry_Parnell]

I saw an analysis of salaries a few months back (possibly in Nature or Genome Technology) in which salaries were compared between USA and Europe. My recollection is you can expect a salary of ~65-80% of the comparable position in the USA. I know this is not a definite number - no one except the hiring manager can give you that as each situation is different from the last - but if you have some salary figures for USA, you can make a judgement.

[David Quigley]

Bear in mind that a $50,000 USD salary in San Francisco is quite a bit less money than $50,000 in Madison or Houston. Cost of living counts for a lot. Relative levels of benefits are also very important in the US, since our cost of health care is astronomical.

[Larry_Parnell]

True - points taken. On the other hand, I think that average salaries in biotech are driven by places of comparable high cost-of-living: Bethesda, Boston, San Diego, San Francisco. These locations dominate in terms of number of workers. Also, while US health care costs are high compared to European countries, if you're young/healthy, the main cost is insurance and those costs have a wide spread in USA and Europe (> $500/month in Germany for a private policy).

Answer 3

[Khader Shameer]

Have you checked glassdoor.com ? Here is a sample query for Bioinformatics Programmer, adding specific country / city location information will give you more accurate information.