Software developer salaries in Kenya

A senior software engineer in Kenya earns a median of about $45,977 a year (5,960,000 KES). Here's pay by level and stack, contractor rates, and how Kenya's hours line up with UK and US teams.

Senior salary: $45,977; median per year
Senior contractor: $33–$43; per hour
Overlap London: 5.5h; UTC+03:00
Overlap New York: 0.5h; English: high

Salary by level

Level	KES	USD	GBP
Junior (0–2 yrs)	1,210,000	$9,334	£7,350
Mid (3–5 yrs)	2,380,624	$18,365	£14,461
Senior (6+ yrs)	5,960,000	$45,977	£36,202

Annual medians. USD at the 2026-10-14 rate.

Senior salary by stack

Specialism	USD / year	Contractor / hr
Frontend	$39,540	$28–$37
Backend	$50,575	$36–$47
Mobile	$44,138	$32–$41
DevOps & Cloud	$55,172	$40–$52
Data & AI	$56,552	$41–$53

Country median adjusted by global specialism premiums (Stack Overflow 2025).

The Kenya developer market

About 678,197 developers on GitHub (2026).
English proficiency: high (EF EPI rank 19).
Nairobi ('Silicon Savannah') is the hub. Safaricom/M-Pesa anchors mobile-money and fintech engineering, and Levels.fyi gives a Safaricom SWE median of KES 1,926,288.
Pay is highly dispersed: Nairobi p75 KES 5.96M and p90 KES 7.65M, driven by multinationals (Levels.fyi).
EAT is UTC+3 with no DST: 6h of London overlap, little US overlap.

Hiring from Kenya?

Vetted engineers at about $30/hr all-in.

Contracts, payroll and compliance handled. A senior in-house hire costs about £48/hr loaded in the UK and $82/hr in the US.

Hire in Kenya

FAQ

How much does a senior software developer earn in Kenya?+

The median senior software engineer salary in Kenya is about 5,960,000 KES a year (about $45,977), against about $18,365 for mid-level and $9,334 for junior developers. Senior remote contractors typically charge $33–$43 an hour.

What is the time difference between Kenya and the UK or US?+

Kenya runs on UTC+03:00 in winter. A 09:00–17:30 working day there overlaps 5.5h with London and 0.5h with New York.

How much does it cost to hire a developer from Kenya through OctogleHire?+

OctogleHire publishes one client rate: about $19/hr for a mid-level engineer and $30/hr for a senior, including vetting, contracts and payroll, with no placement fee. A comparable senior in-house hire costs about £48/hr loaded in the UK and $82/hr in the US.

Sources · Q4 2026

Method notes: Salaries are Nairobi: junior = p25 (KES 1.21M), mid = median (KES 2,380,624), senior = p75 (KES 5.96M). Levels.fyi's Nairobi entry-level median of KES 1,930,135 is noisy and was not used. Contractor mid range: Arc $51,274/2,080 ≈ $25, Jobbers $27, Upstack $32.11. Senior = mid × 1.35 (Lemon.io). Salary basis: Levels.fyi Nairobi SWE, all levels, updated 2026-02-24.