Developer insights: women software developers in Germany

What are the chances of hiring a woman software developer in Germany? Not very good, as the data shows.

The information is rather bleak. I remember that roughly two years ago an agency estimated that there are about 2,500 senior women developers in the Berlin metropolitan region.

That got me curious and I looked into the data from the Federal Agency for Employment. The Agency collects data based on professions every year and returns it for the regional agency directions.

And, true: for Berlin, they identified about 3,500 developers that are women in total at that time. Breaking it down according to the usual share of junior, mid-level, senior and lead level and taking Potsdam and satellite towns into account that sounded about right.

The number has slightly risen since then. This is not surprising, as we see growth rates of 50% and more over the last years for the overall developer population.

Centers in Germany with significant numbers of women software developers

But what about other centers? As recently shown, Germany is a distributed country when it comes to software engineer populations and digital hubs. So I crunched the numbers.

And insights are thrilling, but also humbling. Women in tech are scarce.