How much would a senior/experienced TA charge for a 6 month contract?

Hi,

In the past when I’ve been looking at hiring a TA with 5+ years experience I was getting wage expectations at around £40,000 P/A in the UK. If I were looking to budget a TA of similar experience for a 6 month contract working remotely, would £25,000 be around the right ball park? Am I going to find it hard to hire someone to work remotely for 6 months? The work will be focused around building an ocean and sky/weather system for a VR game in UE4 - would that have an impact?

I realise this is highly dependent on the individual but I’ve got to put something in a budget.

Lastly, if you’re interested in the job drop me a mail at [email protected]

Cheers,
D~

My rule of thumb for contract work is to figure out my usual daily wage for a regular gig and then double it. So I’d say your 25% premium is probably too low to attract senior level talent.

As a contractor, you’re assuming a lot of risk from the company: you’re responsible for all sorts of non-wage expenses like equipment, software, and internet access. You also know for certain that you’ll be unemployed in the near future. There are also other taxes to pay and accounting costs to insure you don’t get too badly abused in paying the taxes. The 2X figure is a way of compensating for those risks.

In the UK context 2X might be too high a multiplier, since there won’t be any health insurance issues as there would be in the US. I don’t know how the UK system treats self employment for tax purposes. However the assumption of risk, the certainty of being on the street in a few months, and the opportunity cost of forgoing other job offers during the time will all still have significant impacts on the going wage, and anybody with significant experience who is taking contract work instead of doing full-time work will have to factor them in.

That’s really useful, thanks Theodox.