Elixir developers
Rates, hiring difficulty, a hiring guide and interview questions for an Elixir developer: everything in one place.
Overview
Elixir developers build highly concurrent, fault-tolerant systems on the Erlang VM (BEAM). Elixir excels at real-time applications: chat systems, IoT platforms, live dashboards, and any system that needs to handle thousands of simultaneous connections with low latency. The Phoenix framework and LiveView enable full-stack development with real-time features built in.
Elixir is a buyer's market: there are many more developers than open roles.
Retention: 67% of developers who use Elixir want to keep using it, and 5% of those who do not use it yet want to start.
Open roles per 1,000 developers Full ranking →
US job postings (30 days) divided by developers who use each stack. Higher means harder to hire.
What an Elixir developer costs
Contract and salary benchmarks for the US.
Contract rate
C2C or 1099, from W-2 hourly × 1.3–1.6 for tax, benefits and overhead.
W-2 equivalent
BLS median for US software developers ($135,980), adjusted +16% for Elixir using Stack Overflow 2025 pay data (123 respondents).
Full-time contractor cost
Per year at 40 hours a week.
Agencies typically bill 2–3× W-2 pay. See what a full project costs, compare W-2, 1099 and C2C, or check rates by state.
How to hire an Elixir developer
What good looks like, and what should worry you.
Typical projects
- Real-time web applications with Phoenix LiveView
- Chat and messaging platforms
- IoT backends handling thousands of device connections
- API services with Phoenix
- Event-driven systems and message processing
Team setup
Elixir developers are rare but exceptionally productive for the right use cases. If your application needs real-time features and high concurrency, one Elixir developer can replace a team of 3-4 working with WebSocket libraries in other languages. The talent pool is small — expect to hire developers willing to learn Elixir from Ruby, Python, or functional programming backgrounds. Phoenix LiveView has reduced the need for separate frontend developers in many cases, making Elixir teams very lean. Consider Elixir if you're building anything that would otherwise require complex WebSocket infrastructure.
What to look for
- Understanding of OTP: GenServers, Supervisors, and the let-it-crash philosophy
- Phoenix framework experience, including LiveView for real-time features
- Functional programming skills: pattern matching, immutable data, pipe operator, recursion
- Ecto for database work: changesets, queries, migrations
- Understanding of BEAM concurrency model: lightweight processes, message passing
Red flags
- Treats Elixir like an OOP language — trying to hold state in modules instead of using processes
- No understanding of OTP principles — GenServers and supervisors are fundamental, not optional
- Can't explain the difference between Elixir processes and OS threads
- Only knows Phoenix without understanding the underlying Elixir/OTP concepts
- No experience with distributed Elixir — clustering, node communication
Interview questions
Questions that separate strong candidates from people who just list the keyword.
- Explain the supervisor tree pattern. How does 'let it crash' lead to more reliable systems?
- How does Phoenix LiveView work? When would you choose it over a JavaScript SPA?
- Design a chat system with Elixir. How do you handle presence, message delivery, and persistence?
- What are Ecto changesets and why does Elixir separate data validation from the database layer?
- Compare Elixir's concurrency model with Go's goroutines. What are the tradeoffs?
Similar stacks
Related skills, with their rates and hiring difficulty.
Need Elixir developers?
We take on contract Elixir work, from one developer joining your team to building the whole product. Tell us what you need and we'll reply by email.
- MVPs and new products
- Developers for your existing team
- Rescuing stalled projects
- AI features
Questions
How much does an Elixir developer cost?
Contract Elixir developers typically bill $99–121/hr (C2C or 1099). The W-2 equivalent salary is about $157,900. Agencies usually charge 2–3× W-2 pay.
Is it hard to hire Elixir developers?
Elixir is rated Low on our hiring difficulty index (18/100, #26 of 29), with about 3 open US roles for every 1,000 developers who use it.
Should I hire a full-time Elixir developer or use a contractor?
If the work is ongoing and core to your product, hire. If you need to start quickly, cover a gap, or the role is hard to fill, a contractor or agency gets work moving while you search.