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I am planning to move from Dublin, Ireland to the UK. My base salary is about € 80,000 before tax and I have benefits like health insurance and retirement contribution from the employer.

I have seen jobs equivalent to mine in the UK being advertised at a significantly low rate of £ 40,000-50,000.

I have tried using Numbeo for cost of living comparison. There is no way of living in the UK with £ 40,000 when the cost of living seems comparable between Ireland and the UK.

Can someone who is living in the UK or even better, who have worked in Ireland and the UK, provide an insight into what I should be expecting in terms of salary?

Background: PhD biochemistry, 7+ years of industry experience. To avoid industry bias, I have looking into the salaries for data science and ML roles where the salary in Ireland is around € 85,000 (several years of experience) and £ 50,000-60,000 in London.

Thank you!

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    The actual salary between currencies and locations is not really relevant as it also depends on the local cost-of-living.
    – jwh20
    Commented Feb 3, 2022 at 17:48
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    @jwh20 Cost-of-living isn't really the factor here - London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. To the OP I would say check contract roles, these tend to be better-paid, but yes, salaried UK tech roles tend to be poorly paid in comparison with other European countries. I have no idea why this is.
    – Joe Stevens
    Commented Feb 5, 2022 at 11:12
  • Why avoid industry bias? Just use the role you are targeting. Is there anyone you can cold call and ask?
    – Michael McFarlane
    Commented Nov 4, 2022 at 16:23

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The salary of a position varies by supply and demand in a region (market principle).

The compensation of a position in a region can not be compared by currency exchange to another region. Costs can be different and currency exchange rates change by the performance of nations economies (gross domestic product, national bank interest rate, long-term expectations, short-term expectations).

To compare a position of one region with a position in another region, the standard of living could be compared. Calculating the standard of living is by far simple. One method is the "Big Mac Index" (https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index).

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I have looking into the salaries for data science and ML roles where the salary in Ireland is around € 85,000 (several years of experience) and £ 50,000-60,000 in London.

I lack the experience to address the Ireland/UK comparison but this seems like a very low salary for a technical role of that kind in London. With at least 7 years of industry experience you should probably be looking at six figures. Outside of London, with a lower cost of living, your skillset should be earning at least £70,000 and probably quite a bit more.

Given the above, I suspect that one of the issues here is that you're more familiar with job advertising in Ireland and are better able to find roles which fit your skills and experience, whereas your search for jobs in the UK is finding mostly roles for folks with 1-2 years' experience.

Technical roles in the UK pay relatively well compared to other sectors, and a Bachelors or Masters plus a few years of experience would set you up to be earning more than the £50,000-60,000 figure even outside of higher-paying areas like Machine Learning and without the increased salary you would get from working in London.

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