Is iOS Developer a Good Career?

There are many perks to being an iOS Developer: high demand, competitive salaries, and creatively challenging work that allows you to contribute to a wide variety of projects, among others.

There’s a shortage of talent across many sectors of tech, and that skill scarcity is particularly disparate among Developers. Recruiting firm Randstad Technologies recently reported a 104 percent year-over-year increase in the demand for Mobile App Developers, and in 2020, IDG’s State of the CIO survey found that customer experience technologies including mobile apps represented a top-three area for investment in companies’ improvements, cited by 28 percent of CIOs—a huge increase from 19 percent the previous year, when it ranked fifth. The U.S. Department of Labor has also predicted “much faster than average” 24 percent growth in the field by 2026, with an estimated 300,000+ new jobs on the horizon. Apple, which boasts the largest market capitalization on the planet as of mid-2020, obviously dominates a significant measure of that landscape.

In other words, the demand for iOS-tailored apps simply isn’t going to go away. And as demand for iOS Developers rises, there’s a corresponding rise in salaries; in major markets, iOS Developers’ median salaries sit comfortably north of $100,000. The stronger the skillset, the more likely this number is to skew even higher. These positions often provide a great deal of flexibility, too—to travel, to work remotely or from home, and even opportunities to relocate to another city or country.

All this being said, the job is not without its challenges—it’s demanding and requires continuous study to keep up with the ever-changing world of tech. If you’re looking for opportunities to learn and grow, then you won’t necessarily see that as a drawback. But there’s no getting around the fact that developing for iOS has a relatively steep learning curve, and the limit of what you can learn never comes—there are always more things to discover and new skills to acquire.