Cloud computing and the Internet of Things are driving digital transformation at enterprises of all sizes, which also means that IT pros with the right sets of skills can find their niche at a time when salaries remain flat.
These and other findings about the state of IT compensation are contained in Dice's annual salary survey, which the tech jobs and recruiting site released this week. Overall, IT salaries remained flat between 2015 and 2016 -- about a 1% increase -- with the average salary last year totaling $93,328, according to the report.
The survey's results are based on responses from 12,907 technology professionals conducted between October 26, 2016 and January 24, 2017. Dice published the results in a report on March 28.
While average salaries remain flat, IT pros who have certain skills are finding that they can increase their pay, or move to another better-paying job, if they are working in the right industry. The Dice report found that the skills that are in demand, especially networking and storage skills, are proving extremely useful for enterprises that are investing in cloud, or exploring cutting-edge technologies such as IoT.
"For example, both the storage and networking sectors, the categories where Dice has found the most salary increases overall, are undergoing major disruption," according to the report's summary. "The migration from hardware-based storage to cloud storage and the explosion of IoT technologies connecting billions of devices (Gartner) are creating a demand for skills to support these transitions and growth. When industries experience transformation at this level, it creates skills demand and increased salaries."
The industries that are pushing the envelope with digital transformation, and hiring the IT pros needed for these jobs, include hospitality, Internet, manufacturing, consumer
products and banking, according to Dice. (See Public Cloud Spending Will Hit $122B in 2017 – Report.)
Of the highest paid skills of 2016, two were related to cloud: SAP's HANA and Cloud Foundry. Other top-paying skills included ones based on big data, machine learning and analytics. Here's the breakdown from Dice:
HANA: $128,958
MapReduce: $125,009
Cloud Foundry: $124,038
Hbase: $123,934
Omnigraffle: $123,782
Cassandra: $123,459
Apache Kafka: $122,728
SOA -- Service Oriented Architecture: $122,094
Ansible: $121,382
Jetty: $120,978
Other cloud skills that showed up in the survey that are paying top dollar included platform-as-a-service (PaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), Amazon Redshift, Cloudera, Docker and Amazon Route 53.
For programming languages, the Dice report found that developers who know Drupal, JCL, XSLT and Objective C saw increased demands for their skills in 2016.
Re: figures As is the issue with other self-reported data. For some reason, I have always assumed people are very honest in DICE salary surveys. I know I always answer the survey truthfully.
Re: figures @ak22 I do some work for a data science academy that does sometimes take in people for training sent by companies. I'm not sure if they have gotten into courses specifically designed for IoT though.
Re: figures Does anyone know if any organizations are offering proper training courses yet to develop skills in IoT and with other associated technologies? There might be a bit of a gap in the market there.
Re: figures Speaking from experience, too many of these companies think they can just hire one data analyst and reap all the benefits. More often than not it takes a team to gather the required insight and know what actions to take based on the results.
Re: figures Sometimes I'm skeptical of the salary surveys not knowing exactly what's being asked of the firms and how honest the repsonses and replies are. I wonder if employees would come to agreement about the numbers cited in lots of these. But nonetheless, there's certainly opportunity out there for reaching higher salaries for the qualified folks in the right area.
Re: figures @Scott very true. Data science is no longer something that applies only to the Googles and Netlixes of the world. All kinds of businesses that want to be data driven today are in the market for people with these kinds of skills.
Re: figures @Ariella: I think you have to remember too that data science is just a hot topic now along with some of these other skills and companies that aren't tech, but want to do some big data stuff, are paying top dollar for people who say they can do this. In terms of something like HANA, it's very complex and not easy. I would say that would remain a top paying position for a while.
Re: figures @Scott absolutely! They're more than double the national average salary according to the figures presented in https://www.thebalance.com/average-salary-information-for-us-workers-2060808
Re: figures @Ariella: Yes, for sure. I think too we have to remember that these are averages, so there might be some very high-paying positions out there that pull in even more, and then a couple of less paying ones, maybe at a startup that has a lower base salary but stock options. Either way, these are good salaries and show where companies are willing to pay a premimum.
For the last several years, CIOs and IT professionals have been wrestling with two specific issues as they work toward a cloud-centric future: Agile IT and the rush toward digital transformation. While enterprises want to keep innovating, finding a starting point and knowing which projects to tackle first remain a major obstacle.
To get a better handle on Agile IT and digital transformation, Light Reading Managing Editor Scott Ferguson recently spoke to two experts in these fields: Dan Kearnan, senior director of marketing for cloud at SAP, and Roy Illsley, a distinguished analyst with Ovum.
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