Los Angeles is Southern California’s most populous city and home to Hollywood, golden beaches, and beautiful rolling hills that dot the landscape. The beautiful landscape and scenery far outweigh the city’s reputation for smog and traffic. While this desert city is known mostly for movies and media, it also hosts a surprisingly large tech industry with a massive demand for new workers. In Los Angeles, front end developers earn a handsome salary and enjoy excellent regional job prospects. Even though this city isn’t technically part of Silicon Valley, it’s still a great place to live and work in the tech industry.
What Is a Front End Developer?
Front end developers design and build the client-side of a website. In short, they’re in charge of everything a user sees and interacts with. Front end development is only one part of a process that also involves the server-side of operations too, called backend development. Front end developers must work closely with backend developers to ensure a website runs smoothly and functions properly. Comparatively, backend development has much less creative design involved, so artistic and visually-oriented people will excel in front end coding positions.
Junior Front End Developer Salary in LA
Junior front end developers are skilled enough to do the job but lack the experience to qualify for higher-paid positions. Most companies consider someone a ‘junior’ when they have less than five years of experience in a specific field. Most junior front end developers are recent college or coding bootcamp graduates with a reasonable portfolio from their education and an internship or good hands-on coding experience. However, each company uses its own specific system to determine applicant eligibility, so individual standards will vary depending on who you work for. In Los Angeles, junior front end developers earn about $80,000 on average, with the top 10% of earners bringing home over $110,000 annually.
Senior Front End Developer Salary in LA
Unlike junior front end developers, people in senior positions have a vast portfolio and several years of experience. Most companies only consider people for this position if the applicant has at least five years of experience in the field, but some people skip the line with a particularly eye-catching portfolio or an advanced degree in a related subject.
Senior front end developers and junior programmers have the same technical responsibilities; the difference is that senior developers have much less supervision and receive much more critical projects to complete. In Los Angeles, senior front end developers earn an average of $122,360, which is a massive increase from junior positions. The tech industry values experience over many other qualifications, and they don’t hesitate to compensate well-rounded professionals for their qualifications. This is a field worth staying in long-term, as salary increases come primarily with time.
How to Become a Front End Developer
Front end development is a fulfilling and lucrative technology career path, and you may be surprised at what it takes to break into this field. In the past, it was necessary for applicants to undergo a full four-year university program to qualify for high-paying tech jobs. Over time, it became clear that college isn’t always the best route for people in these positions.
The industry responded by supporting short and rigorous programming schools called coding bootcamps. These programs last between three and 18 months, and they train people for industry-specific jobs without all the filler of a four-year university. In Los Angeles, coding bootcamps are a tested and proven way for any motivated individual to break into the booming tech industry in the city. If you’d like to find out more, click the link below and see how Career Karma can help you find a program that fits your needs.
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