Overall salaries have risen over the last year as the economy makes slow but steady gains. Two of the main tech industry surveys report on salaries, raises, skills, and more.
The Dice Salary Survey Report for 2014 highlights include:
U.S. tech salaries had an average increase of nearly 3% to $87,811 in 2013, up from $85,619 the previous year according to the Dice Salary Survey – that increase was less than the 5.3% jump the prior year.
The Dice report also shows that tech powered companies are nervous as compensation satisfaction slips. The recovering economy has tech candidates very confident, with low unemployment rates in tech sectors, the job market is good and employers recognize that talent reward goes along with talent retention.
Silicon Valley saw the largest increases with an average increase of 7.2%. Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and even Detroit metro areas all saw increase of more than 5% on average in tech salaries. New York, Charlotte, Dallas/Ft Worth, and Phoenix were north of 4%. In absolute numbers Silicon Valley offered the highest salaries, followed by Baltimore/Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Boston metro areas.
Most tech talent considering new employment report that higher compensation is the primary reason (68%). Other reasons to contemplate a move include better work conditions and opportunity for more responsibility.
Tech Management roles (CEO, CIO, CTO, VP, Dir.) got an 8% salary boost on average last year. Systems Architects, Data Architects, Tech Management (Strategist, Architect) and Project Managers all enjoyed healthy raises over the last year as well, ranging from 3.3% to 5.4%.
The top skills in demand are definitely in Big Data & Data Science: Cloudera, Hadoop, MapReduce, NoSQL, Pig, Cassandra, Hive, MongoDB, R and Hbase all garner in the 6 figures. Desired Cloud skills include Amazaon AWS, Azure, and OpenStack. Front End Development languages wanted include Angular and Knockout. UI/UX Design skills that pay big include Omnigraffe and Balsamiq, while Mobile developers must have Objective C; and DevOps must haves include Jenkins and Puppet to surpass the 5 figures.
The Robert Half Technology 2014 Salary Guide offers much more than tech salary information. It also includes tips on making a winning offer, and perks that are used to retain talent in the workplace.
This report also focuses on the raises over the last year. The results show that the roles who earned the biggest increases in pay are: Mobile Applications Developer, Developer/Programmer Analyst, ERP Technical Developer, CRM Technical Developer, Staff Consultant, Senior IT Auditor, Business Systems Analyst, and Practice Manager.
The highest overall salaries went to the managerial roles of Chief Information Officer $246,750, Chief Technology Officer $205,750, Vice President of Information Technology $196,750, and Chief Security Officer $189,750 on the high sides of the salary ranges.
The next highest paid (top of range) were the roles of: Director $169,500, Information Systems Security Manager $160,000, Network Architect $156,500, Practice Manager $155,750, and Data Warehouse Manager $154,250.
The biggest salary jumps happened for the roles of: Pre-Sales Engineer/Technical Engineer 8.40%, Mobile Applications Developer 7.80%, Software Developer 7.70%, Software Engineer 7.50%, and Business Intelligence Analyst 7.40%.
The Robert Half guide also provides information on salary variances by location, and provides a glossary of job descriptions.
Other resources for salary information and calculators can be found here:
Your tech recruiter is an expert in salary and whole-package compensation.
These reports offer fantastic aggregated information. If you are looking for information on specific tech industry niches, or on equity packages, perks, and bonus information, contact someone who is working with the growth mode companies that you compete with or want to work for. The recruiters at Redfish Technology would be happy to share their insights with you. Call us at 208-788-8260, or find us online at: www.redfishtech.com