Treat the stated minimum years as one piece of the employer’s description.
How to read a requirement when you are early in your career
Treat the stated minimum years as one piece of the employer’s description. A posting asking for 4+ years belongs in the 3–5 minimum-years group. The group is not an upper limit on experience. Look for the work attached to it: the systems you would build or integrate, the customer or internal team you would support, and the level of ownership you would carry. A posting that says “3–5 years” but describes a narrow implementation task raises a different question from one that expects independent production delivery and technical leadership.
The paths for different backgrounds can help you connect your actual work to FDE responsibilities. The data here cannot tell you whether an employer will waive a stated year requirement.
2,197 postings · 734 employers · read September 20, 2026
Stated in the posting
Most postings say nothing about years of experience. Of the 916 that do, the largest group asks for 3–5 years.
Share of the 916 postings that state it.
11.6%47.4%34.0%
0–2 years106 postings · 11.6%
3–5 years434 postings · 47.4%
6–9 years311 postings · 34.0%
10+ years65 postings · 7.1%
1,281 postings say nothing.
The minimum years of experience stated in each posting. Postings that give no number, or that changed after we last read them, are unknown.
Our reading of the posting
1,679 of 2,197 postings (76.4%) are read as senior roles.
Our reading of the responsibilities in each posting, not the employer’s title. Junior means guided work, mid means independent delivery, senior means leading an ambiguous project through production, and staff+ means leading across teams or projects.