Top 5 Most Desirable Roles in IT and Their Salaries

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IT spending is expected to increase 5.5% this year to a total of $4.6 trillion by the close of 2023, according to the latest forecast by Gartner. To put that into perspective, only two countries – the US and China – have higher GDPs than that. Soon, the IT industry may take over both China and USA and the recent pandemic may have played a big role in the shift.

The pandemic has proven to be a watershed event for the global economy. Even businesses that were unwilling to transition into a digital economy were forced to go digital. The affect was an overnight explosion in demand for high-skilled IT talent, but the supply continued to lag. 

Currently, hiring for the IT industry dire and now employees with advanced degrees in IT are being chased by starting salaries of $100,000, a number virtually unheard of in any most industries. Going by the trend, don’t be surprised if IT companies start hiring kids just out of school for entry-level IT roles usually starting at $50,000 per annum. The IT industry will continue to grow rapidly and be a leading employer worldwide. To attract the right talent, organizations are offering better salaries, flexible work hours, stock options, and many other benefits. Indeed, tech employees are revolutionizing work culture globally by strongly demanding and getting work-from-home IT jobs, remote IT jobs, and so on. Naturally, IT jobs are among the most sought-after roles in the world. If you have the right skillset, many employers will not require you to have a degree in IT, especially for entry level IT roles like IT helpdesk, part-time, and admin roles. You can get a host of IT jobs without a degree.

Here are the most sought-after IT job roles globally:

Data Scientists

Data Scientists are among the most coveted employees in the world of IT. They play such a critical role in organizations that Harvard Business Review has called them the “sexiest job of the 21st century.”

Business leaders no longer rely on gut feelings or past experiences to make critical business decisions. Instead, they make data-backed decisions and who gets these insights out of corporate data? Data scientists!

Data Scientists are tasked with evaluating mountains of data using machine learning, predictive modeling, and artificial intelligence technologies to obtain sharp insights for businesses. Enterprises use these insights to make business decisions that can have huge ramifications for their future. 

Average Salary of Data Scientists

The average salary of data scientists in the U.S. stands at an impressive $144,975. Evidently, data scientist roles are among the highest paying IT jobs in the U.S. Even fresh graduates with data science qualifications can land these IT jobs at entry level with average monthly income of $87,818.

You can definitely afford a Tesla with that salary. No wonder HBR is swooning over these jobs!

Skills Requirement for Data Scientist Roles

Data science requires advanced skills beyond regular computer science and engineering skills acquired during a four-year bachelor’s degree. Here are some of the skills that a competent data scientist possesses:

Artificial Intelligence Specialists

Artificial intelligence is frontier technology. At present, artificial intelligence (AI) is in various stages of development. In many industries, AI is equated with innovation and sustainability. This is reflected in the meteoric growth of AI job roles over the past few years. Each year, job openings for AI specialists have increased anywhere between 74% and 344%, depending on the geography, over the past few years. That’s incredible!

However, the fog clears up when you look at the big picture. AI is taking over almost everything slowly. Smart assistants, chatbots, self-driving cars, content writing AIs, facial recognition AIs – the list keeps growing. There is no technology field that isn’t being impacted by AI in a big way right now. Naturally, demand for AI engineers is at an all-time high!

Average Salary of AI Engineers

The average salary of AI Engineers in North America is $109,892. As more startups and enterprises implement AI within their organizations, the demand for AI Engineers will only increase. Therefore, their salaries are expected to rise fast from their already handsome levels.

Skills Requirement for AI Engineer Roles

The job roles of AI engineers and Data Scientists often overlap due to the interconnected nature of their responsibilities. So, it’s not surprising that their skill sets do too. Here are some of the skills AI engineers are required to possess:

Full Stack Developers

By 2023, there will be roughly 28 million developers worldwide. Most of them will be highly specialized and capable of working on highly complex niche problems. However, the rapidly proliferating technology solutions require people who can handle it all. Full Stack Developers are the people who can do that.

A crude way to define Full Stack Developers would be software engineers skilled and fluent in technologies at every stage of software development – frontend, backend, and database technologies. They have the skills to take a software development project from the initial design to the final deployment, debugging and perfecting it along the way.

Full Stack Developers aren’t just jack of all trades; they are masters of all trades too in software development.

Average Salary of Full Stack Developers

Full Stack Developers are among the most sought-after talent in the IT industry. They have a multitude of roles and responsibilities, often going beyond the scope of traditional software engineering. For this reason, they are paid handsomely. The average salary of Full Stack Developers stands at a high $102,307 in the U.S. and starting at £56,480 in the UK.

Skills Requirement for Full Stack Developers

Here are the top skills that a competent full-stack developer must possess:

Software Architect

Software Architect jobs are not entry-level roles; they are far from it. A typical Software Architect is responsible for designing, setting up, configuring, managing, and upgrading the entire organization’s IT infrastructure. The Software Architect role is one of the most critical roles in organizations and comes with an exceedingly high degree of responsibility.

Software Architects take a bird’s eye view of the organizational IT infrastructure and make critical decisions regarding which tools, solutions, programming languages, frameworks, libraries, and other resources should be used within a business. They also ensure that all stakeholders follow best practices and coding standards within the organization. 

Average Salary of Software Architect

In light of the critical nature of their job, Software Architect salaries vary drastically from one organization to another. Depending on the organization’s size and IT infrastructure, a Software Architect could be paid several times more than someone in the same role in a smaller organization. Software architects draw an average salary of $134,962 in the U.S.

Skills Requirement for Full Stack Developers

Cloud Engineers

Cloud computing is rapidly taking over corporate IT infrastructure globally. Every organization, big and small, is moving to the cloud. Today, even startups and small organizations have at least some of their IT infrastructure in the cloud. And, they need specialists to handle various aspects of their cloud infrastructure. Cloud Engineers often specialize in specific areas and roles, such as cloud security, SysOps engineering, docker engineering, and so on.

Generally, Cloud Engineers are tasked with responsibilities like the migration of corporate IT apps and data from on-premises hardware to cloud, development of cloud-native apps, development of modular systems for cloud, identification and resolution of vulnerabilities in cloud systems, reviewing existing systems and making improvements to them, and ensuring efficient functioning of cloud systems in accordance with organizational policies, among others.

Average Salary of Cloud Engineers

IT jobs salary vary from one role to another even within the same career path and specialization. In the U.S., the average salary of Cloud Engineers is an estimated $123,107 annually. However, some specialized roles of Cloud Engineers, such as Cloud Architects, earn significantly higher than that. It’s quite normal for specialized Cloud Engineers to earn above $200,000 on an annual basis.

Skills Requirement for Cloud Engineers

The following are some of the general skills that Cloud Engineers must possess, irrespective of their specific role in the cloud environment:

Bottomline

The IT industry is replete with high-paying jobs that put you on a fast track to top managerial positions. However, not all of them are the same. Use this guide to understand the job outlook, roles, responsibilities, and salaries for each of the top jobs in the IT field before picking the right IT career path for yourself.