[wwww4all]

My current hourly rate breaks down like this. I make adjustments every 6 months.

15 years professional experience + 5 years experience in latest specialized tech stack + 1 hour = $200 dollars/hour for contracts longer than 6 months. Hourly rate is higher for shorter term contracts.

My rate is more cost effective than not delivering the solution.

[atleta]

How/where do you manage to charge this kind of rate? Are you contracting clients directly or through some agency? Also, is this for on premise or remote work? You take on full projects or augment existing teams?

[wwww4all]

Simply ask for the highest rate within reason.

$200 per hour is about $400K per year, which is around senior engineer total comp rates, https://www.levels.fyi/.

You have to ask for the rate and demonstrate that you can deliver solutions and deliver solutions.

[atleta]

Yeah, so I'm aware that the way to charge more is to tell clients that you'll charge more ;). However, the range people work for is pretty wide and depend on a lot of variables. I was trying to figure out some of those in your case to see whether there is a big difference with the type of the clients you work with.

[wwww4all]

There are companies that need senior level software engineers to lead in updating legacy enterprise applications to latest tech stack. Development and integration into existing systems are extremely difficult and time consuming. These companies have attempted several updates and most have failed over the years.

These are mission critical systems that process and generates millions and billions in revenue. They have already spent millions of dollars and years of effort in failed attempts.

These are the companies that will pay to get their systems back on the roadmap schedule. There are big names and small names.

[atleta]

Thanks. Definitely informative.