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All You Need to Know to Become an RPA Developer in 2024

The global RPA software market is expected to reach $11B by 2027, and in a 2021 report, 70% of businesses said that they will hire more RPA developers in the next year. Although there are plenty of resources online about RPA skills and training, job seekers still find it difficult to understand where to start.

In this article, we’ve compiled the most comprehensive resource on RPA developer skills, salary, and jobs to help job seekers explore where to start and what they need to do to excel as an RPA developer.

Who’s an RPA developer?

An RPA developer is a specialist who creates RPA bots to automate manual workflows. But to do that, they should first understand which manual processes are slowing down the companies the most and warrant automation. 

Therefore, RPA developers are in continual communication with company leaders who:

  • Present them with their manual processes, 
  • Describe the difficulties they are having, 
  • Outline the interdependencies between the processes, 
  • And ask them to create an RPA bot to remedy the issue. 

From that point on, the developer is responsible for: 

  • Drawing flow diagrams of the manual process, 
  • Understanding the nature of the process, 
  • Interviewing employees to know their opinion on where the pain points are,
  • And designing, implementing, and troubleshooting the bot.

Explore processes that are suitable for RPA automation, and processes that are ill-suited for RPA automation.

Is RPA developer a good career?

If you are undecided about becoming an RPA developer, here’s what you need to know:

1. RPA is the fastest growing enterprise technology

According to Gartner, RPA is the fastest-growing segment of the global enterprise software market. Unsurprisingly, interest in RPA has been steadily increasing in the past five years.

Figure 1: Interest in RPA is higher now than it was in 2016. Source: Google trends

We summarized all major industry analysts’ estimates about the RPA market and there is consensus about RPA retaining its momentum into the next few years.

2. Tasks are becoming more complex as machines are becoming smarter

3 factors contributed to the rise of RPA which puts companies leveraging RPA at an advantage and pushes other companies to adapt the technology to compete effectively:

  1. Employees today use a larger number of tools compared to the past. It is not feasible to automate all those tools and their interactions with simple macros
  2. Advances in computer vision enabled automation in every enterprise setting, including remote desktops
  3. RPA alternatives, such as outsourcing, no longer creates benefits as most benefits of outsourcing have been reaped

Learn more about why RPA is relevant now.

3. Learning curve for RPA software is low

RPA programming is easier to learn than most programming languages as it is the highest level programming language

Interestingly, we couldn’t find reliable sources on measurements of learning curves for different programming languages. However, a fact of programming is that the lower level a programming language is, the more difficult it is to learn and to program in. For example, no one would categorize assembly as an easy to learn programming language today as it forces programmers to think about memory storage or the order in which their code will be executed at a lower level than they need to in any modern programming language.

RPA is a really high level programming language as most of its instructions tend to be about manipulating items on the screen, processing data and passing data to different systems. What RPA software tends to do with a line of code would take multiple lines in most other languages.

5. Average RPA programmers tend to be paid competitively

Experience and location are the most important criteria in determining salaries for similar roles.

Neuvoo is one of the largest job post websites and provides average salary per role. According to Neuvoo, these are the average salaries by country. We also shared top and bottom end of the ranges to give you an idea of how experience impacts salary:
CountryMedian salaryLowest salaryHighest salary
India₹650,000₹300,000₹1,105,000
United Kingdom£48,000£23,550£81,600
United States$107,250$47,000$156,000
Canada$39,000$25,350
$66,300

While RPA developer wage is competitive, it is a bit below developers of other, more general purpose programming languages.

According to Neuvoo, these are the average salaries of Python developers by country. It is seen that Python programmer salaries are higher than RPA developers. You can also see top and bottom end of the ranges to have an idea of how experience impacts salary:
CountryMedian salaryLowest salary ($k)Highest salary ($k)
India₹920,800₹300,000₹1,565,400
United Kingdom£58,000£30,000£90,000
United States$110,000$29,500$170,000
Canada$97,200
$53,500$158,700

6. RPA developer opportunities are increasing faster

Though an RPA developer is not the best paid developer, RPA is an emerging field, therefore there is a lack of qualified RPA developers in the market. This makes it easier to be hired as an RPA developer.

Just about 3 years ago, in the beginning of 2017, RPA development was not a keyword searched on Google in the US or India while now it is searched on Google more than 1k times in both countries

Perhaps that is the reason why “robotics engineer” – another title for “RPA developer” – was ranked #3 on LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs Report in the US, with a 40% YoY growth compared to 2019. 

5. Being a developer is not the only way to jump on the RPA bandwagon

RPA is a technology for programming process automation and as with any process related software project, these roles are important for a successful RPA project:

  • Business analyst / process analyst / designer: Though this position has numerous names, it essentially handles the business-related aspects of automation. Process analyst understands the current process, identifies both improvement and automation opportunities and performs a zero based design of the process. Required skills and experience include
    • Strong problem-solving and analytical skills so analyst can understand the process and redesign it
    • Knowledge or experience with capabilities of RPA software, process analysis, process optimization (e.g. lean or six sigma methodologies), design thinking, gathering business and technical requirements analysis and User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
  • Project manager: As in any project, RPA projects also require project management activities such as ensuring that requirements are completed, that project is completed within schedule and budget. In especially smaller RPA projects, a project manager is expected to manage multiple projects. Required skills and experience include
    • At least 2-3 years of professional experience
    • Project management experience or a firm understanding of project management tasks such as risk assessment, client communication etc.
    • A sample project manager posting from Capgemini:
Source: Capgemini

What are the responsibilities of an RPA developer?

1. Analyzing

An RPA developer should first analyze the manual process the company presents them with to find automation opportunities. Process improvement tools, such as process mining and/or process mapping, and strategies, such as process workflow generation, can help visualize and document how the manual processes are carried out in real life. This will assist in pinpointing areas that could benefit from automation. 

A developer could also conduct a survey of employees involved in the soon-to-be-automated manual processes, which tasks take the most to complete, and the reason why. 

RPA consultants can also advise the developers on which processes are realistically automatable. 

2. Developing

The developer is then tasked with designing a bot that specifically mitigates the challenges. For instance, a company might lament the fact that their invoice issuing stage of e-commerce orders takes too long. 

The developer should, therefore, create a bot that automates the series of steps an average employee traverses to issue an invoice. Moreover, the client might also like the bot to have certain features, such as a “help center” for employees to access in order to resolve the problems in-house.  

In addition, the bot should have the following standard features: 

  • A dashboard through which the staff can access the inner workings of the bot, monitor its performance, drag & drop commands to modify its functionality, “stop” & “start” workflows, and more. 
  • A physical or virtual server to house the bot on. 
  • The ability to reach out to a human staff whenever it encounters an issue that it was not programmed to deal with. 

3. Testing & implementing 

Once the bot has been developed, it should be tested and integrated into the company’s legacy systems through API. If there are any faults, such as wrong codes, failure to integrate with other applications, low-efficiency rate, etc., the developer should go back to the drawing-room and remedy the issues.

4. Maintaining

Once the bot has been tested and deemed viable for implementation, it should be monitored and maintained for some time through visible dashboards to assess its success rate, speed, compliance, and more. 

It should be emphasized that the developer is also in charge of fixing any problems the business may have with the bot in the future.

How do I become an RPA developer?

RPA is still an emerging industry and there are numerous solutions in the marketplace. The first thing to do is to decide on a platform on which to build your RPA developer skills. RPA tools achieve similar outcomes (backend or desktop automation) so choice of tool is important but not critical. Basic RPA concepts are shared across tools.

1. Choose your RPA platforms

RPA platforms are built on programming languages and you can become proficient in an RPA platform faster if you are already experienced with the underlying technology

All RPA platforms have Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) but it helps to know the underlying technology of the tool because especially in complex processes, developers need to customize their bots using the underlying programming language of the RPA tool.

We can help you choose among the most popular RPA platforms based on the programming languages you are familiar with. If you are

To proceed in the platform that you chose, you have two options. If you

2. Start building

Most RPA software platforms provide plenty of free material to guide you through building your first bot. Here we list all such resources:

Open-source RPA solutions can also enable you to enhance your RPA development skills. And since most of them are free for both commercial and noncommercial use, you don’t worry about your company’s budget.

3. Get employed as an RPA developer

There are 4 types of employment opportunities for RPA developers:

1. RPA companies

Most RPA companies support companies, especially large companies, as they build bots and automate processes

2. Implementation partners of RPA companies

System integrators, professional services companies and other niche RPA consultants provide RPA development services to other companies. They use RPA software companies’ technology. These companies are the largest employers of RPA developers.

Candidates can track major companies’ (such as Big 4 and IBM) RPA developer postings from their own websites. Regarding smaller consultants, candidates should use job posting aggregators like indeed.

3. End users of RPA

Companies using RPA to automate their own processes also rely on RPA developers. Companies typically form Centers of Excellence (CoEs) to aggregate internal RPA talent. While most of these companies do not employ large numbers of RPA developers, in total this category is the largest employer of RPA developers.

Since there are many companies in this category, candidates should use job posting aggregators like indeed to track opportunities in this category

4. Other technology companies

For example, automated document processing companies leverage RPA developers while deploying their solutions to end users. This enables them to deploy their solution fast without a complex integration process.

4. Establish credibility by publishing plugins and bots

Using RPA tools to build bots is the first step in RPA development. Creating reusable and configurable solutions for the community helps build a developer’s credibility and enables her to monetize her RPA code base.

RPA platforms are like operating systems in the sense that they need to integrate with a large number of different software and perform a wide variety of functions. Like operating system providers (e.g. Microsoft, Apple), most RPA platforms also rely on marketplaces to enable their ecosystem to build customized, reusable solutions. Read our up-to-date guide on RPA marketplaces to learn more.

5. Use process mining tools to improve your bot development speed

 Process mining has 2 benefits for RPA developers:

  • You can use it to understand actual processes better and faster. Traditionally, developers relied on outdated documentation and interviews to understand processes. You can rely on system logs to understand how processes work and configure your bots accordingly.
  • You can identify the best processes to integrate RPA solutions. Process mining tools can identify repetitive and manual processes, highlighting great candidates for automation with RPA.

A process mining vendor claims that process mining can improve RPA business value by 44%. Feel free to read our 4 step to facilitate RPA deployment with process mining.

For more on RPA

To explore RPA in details, you can check out these articles:

If you want an in-depth view of RPA, download our comprehensive whitepaper on the topic:

Get RPA Whitepaper

If you are ready to start automating with RPA, feel free to use

If you still have questions about RPA developers, don’t hesitate to contact us, we would like to help:

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Access Cem's 2 decades of B2B tech experience as a tech consultant, enterprise leader, startup entrepreneur & industry analyst. Leverage insights informing top Fortune 500 every month.
Cem Dilmegani
Principal Analyst
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Cem Dilmegani
Principal Analyst

Cem has been the principal analyst at AIMultiple since 2017. AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per similarWeb) including 60% of Fortune 500 every month.

Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and media that referenced AIMultiple.

Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised businesses on their enterprise software, automation, cloud, AI / ML and other technology related decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.

He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.

Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

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