Cost of Hiring a

Apache Struts Developer

Cost to Hire Apache Struts Developers by Experience Level

Expect to pay $20–$40/hour for entry-level, $40–$80/hour for mid-level, and $80–$130+/hour for senior Struts developers; equivalent full-time salaries usually run from $55,000–$85,000 (junior) to $90,000–$130,000+ (senior) in top markets.

Experience materially shifts both productivity and risk profile. Newer developers are suitable for well-scoped maintenance; mid-level engineers own end-to-end features; seniors de-risk architecture and security while accelerating delivery across teams.

Entry-Level (0–2 Years) At A Glance

Early-career Struts developers are best placed on clearly defined tasks and supervised enhancements.

• Typical Hourly Rate: $20–$40
  
• Approx. Annual Salary (FTE, major markets): $55,000–$75,000
  
• Best-Fit Work: Bug fixes, CSS/HTML tweaks, simple Action/Result flows, minor interceptor configuration, unit tests, and documentation.
  
• Risks To Manage: Over-reliance on templates, slower velocity on legacy codebases, limited experience with OWASP hardening and migration pathways.
  

Output You Can Expect:
Small tickets closed daily, incremental refactors, test coverage improvements, and reliable assistance to senior contributors on complex modules.

Mid-Level (2–5 Years) At A Glance

Mid-level Struts engineers close the gap between maintenance and feature delivery with reasonable independence.

• Typical Hourly Rate: $40–$80
  
• Approx. Annual Salary (FTE, major markets): $75,000–$100,000
  
• Best-Fit Work: Full-stack features across Struts 2 MVC, Struts tags, OGNL usage, validation frameworks, security filters, Hibernate/JPA persistence, and REST integrations.
  
• Risks To Manage: Architectural decisions may need review; ensure code reviews for OGNL/EL expression safety and interceptor ordering.
  

Output You Can Expect:
Sprint-sized features, well-structured Actions/Results, improved performance, integration with SSO providers, and meaningful contributions to CI/CD pipelines.

Senior (5+ Years) At A Glance

Senior consultants provide the highest leverage: architecture, performance, and security leadership on legacy estates.

• Typical Hourly Rate: $80–$130+ (U.S./Western Europe frequently $90–$130)
  
• Approx. Annual Salary (FTE, major markets): $100,000–$130,000+
  
• Best-Fit Work: Architecture design, Struts-to-Spring migration strategy, OWASP remediation, performance tuning of interceptors/filters, caching and session management, mentoring, and stakeholder alignment.
  
• Risks To Manage: Higher rates demand clear outcomes—define milestones, non-functional requirements, and acceptance criteria.
  

Output You Can Expect:
Roadmaps that pay down risk, measurable latency reductions, fewer security findings in audits, and successful rollouts without downtime.

Quick Rate Table By Experience

A concise overview helps map budget to outcomes.

Experience Level	Hourly (Typical)	Monthly (Contractor, 160h)	Annual Salary (FTE, Major Markets)	Typical Responsibilities
Entry (0–2 yrs)	$20–$40	$3,200–$6,400	$55k–$75k	Bug fixes, small features, tests, documentation
Mid (2–5 yrs)	$40–$80	$6,400–$12,800	$75k–$100k	End-to-end features, integrations, security basics
Senior (5+ yrs)	$80–$130+	$12,800–$20,800+	$100k–$130k+	Architecture, audits, performance, team leadership

Budgeting Tip: If your backlog is dominated by small defects, a mid/entry blend (one mid-level lead with 1–2 juniors) often yields better cost-per-ticket than one senior alone. Conversely, for compliance or migration, the senior anchor pays for itself through risk reduction.

Cost to Hire Apache Struts Developers by Region

Expect lower hourly rates in South Asia and Southeast Asia ($18–$45), moderate in Eastern Europe and Latin America ($25–$65), and higher in North America and Western Europe ($70–$130+); salaries mirror this gradient across markets.

Rates vary with local wage levels, English proficiency, time-zone overlap, and the supply of enterprise Java specialists. Consider hybrid teams (regional blend) when cost and coverage matter.

Regional Snapshot And Ranges

Each region shows distinct price–performance profiles and hiring norms.

Region	Hourly (Typical)	Annual Salary (FTE, Indicative)	Notes
North America (U.S./Canada)	$80–$130+	$95k–$135k+	Deep enterprise expertise; fast time-to-value; premium billing
Western Europe (DE, NL, FR)	$70–$120	€60k–€95k	Strong Java talent pools; high compliance standards
UK & Ireland	$65–$115	£55k–£85k+	Financial services and public sector demand
Eastern Europe (PL, RO, UA)	$30–$65	$45k–$80k	Solid Java/Struts veterans; good overlap for EU/US
Latin America (MX, CO, AR, BR)	$30–$60	$40k–$75k	Handy for nearshore to U.S.; Spanish/Portuguese bilingual
India	$18–$45	₹12L–₹30L+	Large legacy-Java talent base; strong for maintenance
Southeast Asia (PH, VN, ID)	$20–$45	$25k–$55k	Cost-effective, growing enterprise Java footprint
Australia & NZ	$70–$120	AU$110k–AU$160k	High salary floors; excellent delivery standards
Middle East (UAE, KSA)	$50–$100	$65k–$110k	Strong demand from government/FSI; relocation packages common

Choosing A Region:

• For legacy system stabilization and cost containment, India/Eastern Europe often leads.
  
• For timezone alignment with U.S. teams, Latin America is a sweet spot.
  
• For regulatory projects with heavy stakeholder oversight, North America/Western Europe reduces coordination risk.
  

Many teams staffing web initiatives also evaluate adjacent CMS skill sets. If you need complementary platform experience, consider Hire Sitefinity Developers for .NET-based digital experience projects where legacy migration interacts with Java backends.

Cost to Hire Apache Struts Developers Based on Hiring Model

Expect freelancers at $25–$90/hour, staff-augmentation contractors at $40–$110/hour, agency/dedicated team models at $35–$120/hour billed per seat, and full-time hires with total compensation equivalent to $70k–$130k+ depending on market.

Different hiring models map to different risk profiles. The more turnkey the model (e.g., managed team), the higher the embedded costs—but also the wider the shoulders for delivery and compliance.

Model Comparison

Hiring Model	Typical Rate	Commitment	When It Shines	Watch Outs
Freelance Individual	$25–$90/hr	Hourly / Part-Time	Burst fixes, small sprints, PoCs	Single-point dependency, holidays, coverage gaps
Staff Augmentation	$40–$110/hr	Monthly	Velocity in existing squads, predictable capacity	Vendor margins; ensure knowledge transfer
Dedicated Team (Managed)	$35–$120/hr per seat	Multi-Month	Multi-discipline pods (QA / DevOps / FE / BE)	Less granular control of individuals
Full-Time Hire (FTE)	$70k–$130k+ per year	Ongoing	Long-term ownership, domain memory	Recruiting cycle, benefits, taxes, offboarding

Hidden Costs To Include:

• Onboarding (8–12% of first 90 days): Access, environments, domain ramp-up.
• Management Overhead (10–20%): Sprint rituals, design reviews, compliance.
• Benefits/Taxes (15–35% for FTE): Varies by country.
• Tooling & Licenses ($50–$300/dev/month): Monitoring, CI/CD, code quality, vulnerability scanning.
  

If your web program blends Java backends with modern marketing frontends, you may also need landing page specialists. For that workload, explore Hire Elementor Developers to parallelize frontend iteration while backend Struts changes land.

Cost to Hire Apache Struts Developers: Hourly Rates

The clearest snapshot is $20–$40 for junior, $40–$80 for mid-level, and $80–$130+ for senior Struts professionals, with premiums attached to security audits, performance remediation, and migration leadership.

Hourly rates reflect a mix of capability and risk. Work that touches authentication, permissions, and data privacy commands higher prices due to audit exposure.

Hourly Band By Work Type

Mapping tasks to bands makes planning tangible.

Work Type	Typical Hourly	Notes
Minor Bug Fixes & UI Tweaks	$20–$45	Newer developers under guidance
CRUD Features & Validations	$35–$70	Mid-level ownership, code reviews recommended
Integrations (REST/SSO/Payments)	$45–$90	Mid-to-senior; careful interceptor config
Performance Tuning & Caching	$70–$110	Senior review of filters, concurrency, and DB
Security Hardening (OWASP/OGNL)	$85–$130+	Senior specialist; audit deliverables
Migration Strategy (Struts → Spring)	$90–$140	Enterprise consultants; multi-quarter programs

Budgeting Heuristic:

• If the task list includes sensitive data flows or regulatory audit scope, expect +15–30% on the hourly band for seasoned seniors.
  
• If you’re building internal tooling with limited blast radius, mid-level bands often suffice.

What Does The Struts Developer Role Actually Include?

A Struts developer role spans MVC orchestration, interceptor chains, validation frameworks, tag libraries, security hygiene, and integration with persistence and services; total cost rises as you pile on security, scale, and migration expectations.

Before hiring, clarify which of the following are in-scope. This alignment prevents rate creep later.

Core Scope Areas

The role commonly touches multiple layers; this overview helps frame interviews and SOWs.

• MVC & Routing: Action classes, Results, OGNL/EL expressions, and tag libraries.
  
• Validation & Interceptors: Declarative validations, interceptor stacks (e.g., params, i18n, exception handling), and custom interceptors.
  
• Security: CSRF/XSS constraints, input sanitization, secure OGNL usage, authentication providers, role-based authorization.
  
• Persistence: Hibernate/JPA mappings, transaction boundaries, lazy vs eager loading, connection pooling, and performance profiling.
  
• Integration: REST endpoints, SOAP-to-REST facades, SSO (SAML/OAuth2), payment gateways, and messaging (JMS/Kafka).
  
• Ops & Delivery: Build pipelines (Maven/Gradle), containerization, log aggregation, vulnerability scanning, and blue-green/canary strategies.
  
• Migration Work: Struts 2 hygiene, deprecation handling, and stepwise modernization toward Spring Boot or Jakarta EE where appropriate.
  

Compensation Signal: Candidates fluent in interceptor design, OWASP remediation, and phased migration typically sit at the upper mid to senior rate tiers.

How Do Project Complexity And Risk Change The Price?

Expect +10–15% uplift for complex third-party integrations, +15–30% for security-sensitive workloads, and +25–40% when migration and parallel-run strategies are included.

Projects are not created equal. Complexity increases context switching, review depth, and test coverage, all of which influence time and cost.

Complexity Drivers To Price In

A brief checklist keeps estimates honest.

• Legacy Density: Hand-rolled interceptors, custom tags, thin tests.
  
• Compliance: PCI, HIPAA, ISO 27001—more artifacts, more reviews.
  
• Concurrency & Throughput: Thread safety, session management, caching layers.
  
• Integration Breadth: Identity providers, payment rail variants, vendor SLAs.
  
• Migration Path: Dual-run windows, data mapping, cutover rehearsals.
  

Negotiation Tip: Tie rate premiums to clear deliverables—e.g., “OWASP Top 10 remediation with evidence in a passing security scan”—rather than paying a blanket uplift.

What Do Realistic Monthly Budgets Look Like?

A single mid-level contractor often lands between $6,400–$12,800/month, while a balanced 3-person pod (senior + mid + QA) typically ranges $22,000–$32,000/month depending on location and scope.

Budgeting monthly capacity clarifies whether to staff internally or to augment a squad.

Example Pods And Costs

Anchor expectations with configuration templates.

Team Shape	Composition	Monthly Cost (Typical)	Suitable For
Solo Mid	1× Mid Developer	$6,400–$12,800	Backlog burndown, small features
Senior + Mid	1× Senior, 1× Mid	$19,000–$28,000	Security/perf & feature delivery
Product Trio	Senior, Mid, QA	$22,000–$32,000	Releases with quality gates
Full Pod	Senior, Mid, Junior, QA, DevOps (fractional)	$30,000–$45,000	Regulated domains, steady roadmap

Rule Of Thumb: Pods make sense when you want predictable velocity and built-in QA/DevOps without micromanaging staffing at the individual level.

Can You Estimate A Feature’s Cost Up Front?

Yes: multiply estimated hours × blended rate and add 15–25% contingency for integration unknowns. For example, a 120-hour integration at a $65 blended rate is $7,800, plus 20% contingency → $9,360.

A rough scoping model helps stakeholders budget before formal grooming.

Estimation Ladder (Illustrative)

Use size classes to speed up intent-level planning.

Feature Class	Example	Hours	Blended Cost (at $65/hr)
XS	Form validation & messages	8–16	$520–$1,040
S	CRUD + list/detail views	24–40	$1,560–$2,600
M	Payment gateway integration	80–140	$5,200–$9,100
L	SSO with roles/permissions	120–200	$7,800–$13,000
XL	Struts→Spring service migration	250–500+	$16,250–$32,500+

Contingency Guidance:
Add 10% when APIs are well-documented and mocked; 25–35% when vendor APIs are evolving or credentials are slow to issue.

How Do Salaries Compare With Contractor Rates?

Contractor billing includes utilization risk, admin, and bench time, so the hourly number is higher; FTE total compensation includes benefits and taxes that add 15–35% above base salary.

Choosing between FTE and contractors is a trade-off between variable cost flexibility and organizational memory.

Apples-To-Apples Comparison

Converting salary to an equivalent hourly helps align expectations.

Item	FTE Example	Contractor Example
Base	$110,000	$110/hour
Loaded Cost	~$135,000 (benefits/taxes)	$110/hour × 1,600h ≈ $176,000
Flexibility	Lower	Higher
Ramp/Offboard	Slower	Faster
Knowledge Retention	Higher	Lower unless extension

Guidance: For strategic systems with multi-year horizons, FTEs shine. For spikes, audits, or migrations, contractors compress timelines without long-term commitments.

Which Skills Push A Candidate Toward The Premium Bracket?

Expect premium pricing for OWASP-focused seniors, interceptor design expertise, high-scale tuning, SSO/IdP integrations, and migration architects who can chart the path off Struts when the business case is clear.

Market scarcity and risk exposure are the two strongest price multipliers.

Premium Skill Signals

Use these as screening criteria when paying top-of-band rates.

• Security: Proven OGNL expression safety, CSRF/XSS hardening, and secure session handling.
  
• Performance: Profiling interceptor stacks, async strategies, and JVM tuning.
  
• Complex Integrations: SAML/OAuth2 SSO, payment rails, and legacy SOAP migrations.
  
• Modernization: Phased Struts→Spring Boot, strangler patterns, and data migration safety.
  
• Leadership: Mentoring, clear ADRs, repeatable release patterns.
  

Outcome Lens: Rather than paying a generic premium, tie compensation to outcomes such as lower P99 latency, zero critical vulnerabilities, or green security scans.

What Interview Questions Reveal Real-World Struts Depth?

Ask scenario questions about interceptor ordering, validation frameworks, OGNL pitfalls, and thread safety; explore how candidates prevent injection, handle sessions, and design rollbacks in releases.

Better interviews result in better price–value alignment.

Practical Interview Prompts

These questions correlate well with job performance.

• How do you design and order interceptors to avoid side-effects across modules?
  
• Where can OGNL become a vulnerability, and how do you mitigate it?
  
• How do you implement centralized validation and granular error reporting?
  
• What steps do you take to ensure idempotency in Actions that call external services?
  
• How do you migrate a Struts module to Spring Boot incrementally with a fall-back plan?
  

Evidence To Request: Code samples/patterns, ADRs, and before/after metrics on performance or security issues they owned.

How Do You Keep A Struts Codebase Secure Without Overspending?

Budget recurring mini-audits and CI checks rather than massive one-off efforts. Add a security-minded senior for a sprint to create baselines, then let mid-levels run the playbook.

Security is a journey; bake it into the pipeline.

Cost-Effective Security Moves

These actions punch above their cost.

• CI Gate: Run dependency and SAST checks on every merge.
  
• Interceptor Audits: Quarterly review of ordering and custom interceptors.
  
• Input Hygiene: Enforce validation rules centrally; limit dynamic OGNL expressions.
  
• Session Controls: Tighten lifetimes, rotation, and storage.
  
• Threat Drills: Tabletop exercise on auth failures and data exposure.
  

Savings: A 2-week senior-led hardening sprint often reduces later incidents that could cost 5–10× in emergency consulting.

What Is The Total Cost Of Ownership For A Struts Initiative?

TCO blends people, process, and platform. Beyond developer time, plan for environments, monitoring, incident response, and knowledge capture to avoid repeating spend.

Mapping TCO early avoids sticker shock after development.

TCO Elements To Budget

A holistic view keeps programs sustainable.

• People: Developers, QA, DevOps, product, and part-time security.
  
• Tooling: CI runners, code quality, SAST/DAST, observability.
  
• Environments: Dev/QA/Staging/Prod, data masking, and backups.
  
• Run Costs: On-call, incident budgets, vendor SLAs.
  
• Knowledge: Runbooks, ADRs, internal documentation, and onboarding guides.
  

Planning Tip: For a mid-sized product, non-developer costs can equal 20–40% of developer spend. Budget them from day one.

How Do You Negotiate Rates Without Sacrificing Quality?

Focus on scope, outcomes, and cadence rather than fighting about the absolute hourly. Negotiation works best when you trade certainty for price.

Be specific about what success looks like and what you’ll provide to enable it.

Negotiation Levers That Work

Constructive trades keep both sides aligned.

• Longer Engagement Window: Offer 3–6 months for a 5–10% discount.
  
• Defined Outcome: Milestone-based payments linked to objective measures.
  
• Blended Teams: Use one senior with more mid-levels to hit budgets.
  
• Time-Zone Alignment: Pay slightly more for overlap if it removes meetings and delays.
  
• Backlog Hygiene: Provide specs, credentials, and decision access to compress cycle time.
  

Red Flag: Deep discounts with vague scope correlate with missed timelines and change-order fights later.

How Long Does It Take To Fill A Struts Role?

In active markets, expect 2–4 weeks for a qualified contractor and 4–8 weeks for a full-time hire; specialized security/migration roles can take 8–12 weeks.

Lead times reflect both talent scarcity and process friction.

Funnel Benchmarks

Use these to calibrate recruiting sprints.

Metric	Contractor	FTE
Sourcing To First Interviews	3–7 days	1–2 weeks
Interviews To Offer	4–10 days	1–2 weeks
Notice / Start	0–7 days	2–4 weeks
Total Time-To-Productive	2–4 weeks	4–8+ weeks

Acceleration Moves: Pre-write technical exercises, parallelize stakeholder interviews, and keep offers simple.

Are There Situations Where A Senior Is Non-Negotiable?

Yes—audits, payments, healthcare, government, and migrations typically demand senior leadership. The cost premium offsets regulatory exposure and rollout risk.

While mid-levels deliver the bulk of features, seniors are indispensable for de-risking change.

Senior-Only Triggers

These conditions justify top-band rates.

• Regulated Data: PHI/PII/PCI scope or penalties for breaches.
  
• Cutovers: Zero-downtime releases, data migrations, and rollbacks.
  
• Performance SLOs: Tight P99 latency or concurrency requirements.
  
• Complex SSO: Multiple IdPs, fine-grained roles, and session hardening.
  
• Security Findings: Active penetration test failures or audit deadlines.
  

Budget Note: Use seniors surgically—architecture weeks upfront and sign-off phases near release dates.

What Are Typical Engagement Models And Statements Of Work?

A clear SOW pairs deliverables, acceptance criteria, and timelines with rate structure. Clarity reduces scope drift and billing surprises.

Right-sizing the SOW aligns incentives from day one.

Common SOW Shapes

Pick one that matches your risk appetite.

• Time & Materials (T&M): Flexible scope, billed for actual time.
  
• Fixed-Price Milestones: Pre-defined deliverables; scope changes trigger change orders.
  
• Retainers: Ongoing capacity for support and minor enhancements.
  
• Outcome-Based: Payment tied to specific metrics (e.g., P99 latency < X ms).
  

Pro Tip: Even with T&M, include explicit acceptance tests—functional, security, and performance—so “done” is unambiguous.

How Do You Control Costs Without Cutting Corners?

Apply lean governance: small PRs, automated checks, and weekly demos. Use feature flags, maintain blueprints, and keep dependencies current.

Process discipline outperforms “hero hours” in both cost and quality.

Cost Control Playbook

These moves prevent waste.

• Definition Of Ready: Tickets have acceptance criteria, test cases, and designs.
  
• Small Batch Size: PRs under 300–400 LOC speed reviews and reduce rework.
  
• Automated Checks: Linting, tests, and security scans on every change.
  
• Observability: Metrics and logs for faster incident triage.
  
• Postmortems: Blameless and action-oriented to prevent repeats.
  

Return On Investment: Expect 10–20% cycle time reduction, compounding over quarters.

What If You Need To Modernize Off Struts Gradually?

Adopt a strangler pattern: carve out new services in Spring Boot while keeping the Struts surface stable. Route traffic progressively and retire legacy modules after parity.

This path spreads cost over time and reduces outage risk.

Phased Modernization Sketch

A three-phase outline keeps momentum.

1. Stabilize & Baseline: Fix critical defects, add tests, document interceptor chains.
   
2. Seam & Proxy: Introduce gateways, route selected endpoints to new services, maintain session continuity.
   
3. Decompose & Retire: Migrate features, rehearse cutovers, and decommission Struts modules.
   

People Mix: 1 senior architect, 1–2 mid-level implementers, fractional DevOps. Budget for 6–9 months on mid-sized estates.

Do You Need Onsite, Nearshore, Or Offshore Coverage?

Choose onsite for stakeholder-heavy work, nearshore for overlap without top pricing, and offshore for cost-effective backlogs—often blended into a single follow-the-sun team.

Geography is a lever for cost and speed.

Coverage Models

Pick what aligns with your calendar and risk.

• Onsite: Workshops, compliance sign-offs, high-touch discovery.
  
• Nearshore: Same-day collaboration with better pricing than onsite.
  
• Offshore: Efficient for maintenance, QA, and well-specified features.
  
• Hybrid: Senior discovery onsite; delivery offshore, reviews nearshore.
  

Outcome: With well-tuned handoffs, hybrid teams shorten lead time while keeping budgets in check.

FAQs About Cost of Hiring Apache Struts Developers

1. What Is the Best Website to Hire Apache Struts Developers?

The best website to hire Apache Struts developers is Flexiple. Flexiple connects businesses with thoroughly vetted freelance developers, ensuring companies find professionals with strong expertise in Apache Struts and related Java-based frameworks.

2. What Is A Realistic Budget For A Three-Month Struts Remediation?

Plan $60,000–$120,000 for a small team (senior + mid) focused on security/performance fixes and 2–3 minor features, with higher budgets if audits or payments are involved.

3. Are Struts Developers Hard To Find?

Not as common as general Java/Spring engineers, but talent exists—especially in regions with long enterprise Java histories. Expect moderate search times and stronger pools in India, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

4. Should I Hire A Struts Specialist Or A Generalist Java Engineer?

For short-term remediation or migration, prefer a Struts specialist. For ongoing product development leaning toward Spring or microservices, a Java generalist with legacy exposure may be more versatile.

5. Do I Need A Senior For Every Sprint?

No. Use seniors for architecture, security, and release gates; keep mid-levels driving day-to-day delivery. This balance optimizes both cost and velocity.

6. What’s The Best Way To Prevent Scope Creep?

Write acceptance criteria, keep PRs small, and maintain a change-control process. Tie payments to milestones or time-boxed sprints with clear outcomes.

7. How Much More Do Security-Focused Seniors Cost?

Typically +15–30% above standard senior rates due to audit exposure and specialized expertise.

8. Can A Junior Handle OGNL And Interceptors Safely?

Yes—with mentorship and checklists. Require code reviews, linting, and security scans, especially for user input and authorization logic.

9. What If My Team Is New To Struts But Strong In Spring?

Pair them with a Struts consultant for an initial enablement sprint (1–2 weeks). The uplift in context often offsets the consulting cost within a month.

10. Is Fixed-Price Better Than T&M?

Fixed-price is helpful for well-defined, low-ambiguity scopes. For evolving systems or uncertain integrations, T&M with guardrails avoids costly change orders.

11. How Do I Benchmark A Candidate’s Seniority Quickly?

Ask for a short system design around an interceptor chain, security hardening plan, and migration steps—plus a past example with measurable outcomes (e.g., latency or vulnerability reductions).