Upasana Gupta - August 13, 2013
Salary Hikes for all IT Pros
10 Top Paying IT Jobs and Skills
It's a good time to be an information technology professional because salaries for technology employees in the U.S. have seen the biggest increase by above five percent in a decade, according to the 2013-2012 Salary Survey from Dice, a dedicated career site for technology professionals. Average annual wages for tech employees hiked to $85,619 in 2013, up from $81,327 in 2011.Salaries for IT pros have jumped significantly due to the high level of competition for top technology talent within employers. About 36 percent of respondents indicate an increase in their salary because organizations are stepping-up and doing more to retain and motivate their employees through: pay raises, internal promotions, challenging work assignments and offering flexibility in terms of remote work and telecommuting options. Likewise, 19 percent of respondents cite changing jobs as the primary reason for their salary increase.
"Employers are recognizing and adjusting to the reality of a tight market," says Scot Melland, Dice's chairman, president and CEO in the survey report.
So for students who enjoy working with computer software and hardware this is the time to consider majoring in information technology, a field offering excellent job prospects and salary hikes. Information technology professionals are responsible for designing, developing, supporting and managing computer hardware, computer software, and information networks, including the Internet. The realworld applications of information technologies can be found everywhere. In fact, IT is already a significant part of our daily lives- right from basic computer applications, computer generated animation in popular movies, networks and programs that allow us to purchase online, to complex satellites and systems that enable NASA to preform remote space exploration. From a career standpoint, IT is here to stay. (Also, view our listings for graduate and undergraduate IT colleges.)
10 Top Paying IT Job Titles in 2013:
| IT Job Titles | 2013-2012 Salary | Year-to Year % Change in Salary 2013-2012) |
| 1. IT Management (CEO, CIO, CTO, VP, Dir.,) | $123,081 | 6.2% |
| 2. Systems Architect | $121,248 | 8.3% |
| 3. Data Architect | $114,380 | 5.0% |
| 4. IT Management (Strategist or Architect) | $112,062 | 3.0% |
| 5. Project Manager | $106,130 | 1.7% |
| 6. Security Engineer | $97,994 | 0.2% |
| 7. Software Engineer | $97,742 | 4.9% |
| 8. Security Analyst or Security Architect | $94,719 | 6.6% |
| 9. Database Administrator | $94,430 | 2.9% |
| 10. Systems Developer | $93,484 | -2.3% |
10 Top Paying Skills in 2013:
The skill set having a significant impact on salaries in 2013 is big data. As organizations now deal with larger and larger amounts of information they actively seek people with technical skills to make sense of the massive amounts of information in all sorts of formats -- tweets, posts, e-mails, documents, audio/ video to basically predict future trends and behavior.
| IT Focus Areas | IT Skill | 2013-2012 Salary |
| 1. Operating Systems | Hadoop | $115,062 |
| 2. Special Skills | Big Data, IT Security | $113,739 |
| 3. Databases | NoSQL, Mongo DB, | $108,304-$113,031 |
| 4. Process Management | PMBok | $110,885 |
| 5. Graphics & Multimedia | Omnigraffle | $110,758 |
| 6. Architecture | Service Oriented Architecture | $109,504 |
| 7. Programming | Objective C | $104,989 |
| 8. Application Servers | Jetty | $106,936 |
The Dice Salary Survey was administered online with 15,049 employed technology professionals responding between September 24 and November 16, 2012.