3 Predictions for South African Tech in 2025

2024’s been a rollercoaster: open tech jobs decreased, and inbound job applications picked up. At the same time, AI continued its rapid development while its on-the-job use struggled to keep up.

Navigating these trends and what they mean for tech careers and hiring as we head into the new year is challenging. Opinions are everywhere and data is scarce. To help bring much-needed transparency to our community, we’ve launched our 6th annual 2025 State of the Developer Nation survey.

Co-founder Brett Jones shared his top 3 predictions on what the results might reveal.

?? Help build SA's largest data set – take the 6th edition of OfferZen's tech career survey now.

1. Salary growth will remain slow

2024 saw the tougher macroeconomic climate for tech companies continue. That became evident in developer salaries:

Across the board, salary band growth for developers has slowed in recent years. Entry-level developers saw their salaries decrease by 3.5% while juniors only saw a nominal 0.9% increase.

Seniors, on the other hand, still experienced salary increases but these were lower than what they received two years ago.

When controlling for inflation, many developers experienced a decrease in their buying power in the past two years.

While we’ve passed the worst of the downturn, it’ll take time for the industry to fully recover. That means salary growth will likely remain slower than normal heading into 2025.

2. On-the-job AI use will increase as devs and companies look for productivity gains

In 2023, AI adoption in South Africa was low. Just over a third of South African devs reported using an AI tool during the year.

In 2024, this number jumped to 51.9% of developers. However, only a third said they used these tools in their roles. Since then, AI has continued its rapid development and more powerful tools entered the market.

We expect to see on-the-job AI use increase as tools become more specialised and can better help devs and companies make sustainable productivity gains.

3. More developers will be working in the office at least some of the time

One of the best trends from the 2024 data is that local devs largely avoided a mass return to the office.

However, at the start of this year, we started to see a slow return to office movement (RTO) among tech companies. During this time, 17% of developers saw their policy change away from being fully remote.

We expect to see more developers working in an office at least some of the time in 2025, but this won’t be due to a widespread war on remote work. Instead, we expect more companies will start looking for pro-hybrid candidates when hiring.

At the same time, we also expect to see another trend playing out locally: Companies that choose to stay fully remote will continue embracing the possibilities this policy offers.

Help create the dataset that lets you navigate tech careers and hiring with confidence in 2025. Take and share SA's biggest tech career survey now.