Tech Salary Trends & Skills / Positions in Demand
When it comes to salaries, a Bachelor’s Degree in STEM is hard to beat.
STEM leads the pack. Engineers not only rule the world, they are rocking the earnings. Mid-career salaries are highest for Petroleum Engineers, followed by Actuarial Mathematics, Nuclear/Chemical/Electronics & Communications Engineers according to PayScale.com’s recent survey on the majors with the biggest impact on future earnings.
Computer Science and Engineering and Computer Engineering are the 6th and 7th highest paying bachelor’s degrees both early and mi-career. A vanilla Computer Science degree ranks 13th and Computer Science & Mathematics ranks 16th, followed by Software Engineering, and then Business & Information Technology.
Information Technology salaries have gone up
According to the InformationWeek 2014 US IT Salary Survey, IT staffers reported a median raise of 1.6% and managers of 2.4% in total compensation over last year. The pay inequality between men and women remains as male staffers report making approximately 16% more in median total compensation than females, and male managers make about 11% more.
The highest earning sectors for IT managers are biotech, energy, consumer goods, financial services, IT and electronics, and consulting with median total compensation surpassing $140,000. The top median compensation (salary & cash bonuses) for IT staff professionals is: Architect $132K, Systems Architect $122K, Software Engineer $113K, Project Leader $107K, Software Developer $100K, and Systems Programmer $100K. The top median compensation for IT Management is: CIO $163K, Vice President $163K, Senior Manager $140K, Program Manager $135K, Director $132K, and CTO $131K.
Technology Positions in High Demand
Dice’s Fastest-Growing Tech Skills out in September showed Puppet, Cybersecurity, Information Security, Big Data, NoSQL, Hadoop, and Cloud as the highest top skills in demand.
The Robert Half 2015 Salary Guide for Technology Professionals looks at base salaries across technology positions. This guide indicates that 89% of technology execs are confident about company growth prospects but that two-thirds of them report facing recruiting challenges. Unemployment is very for many IT positions, and three specializations are predicted to be especially sought after: Mobile, Security and Big Data.
RH provides a salary range prediction for a number of tech positions (as opposed to the IT Salary Survey which provides a median). In the software development arena, Product Managers are forecast to earn a low of $101,750 and a high of $145,000; Software Engineer $96,000-$147,250; and Software Developers $85,500-$136,250. CIO’s lead the salary scale in 2014 according to RH with a low of $157,000 and a high of $262,500; CTO’s may enjoy $137,500-$220,250; Chief Security Officers (CSOs) $134,250-$204,750; VP of IT $138,000-$210,250. For plenty of detail, read the guide.