The top-paying ICT jobs across Australia

Sector growth doesn’t always equate to a pay rise, as ICT professionals are discovering.

IT recruitment specialist, Peoplebank, has released its February 2018 Salary and Employment Index, detailing the salaries and rates in the Australian ICT sector.

The report found that on a national scale, the number of ICT roles available were reaching an all-time high.

But while demand for professionals continues to rise, salaries across a number of key ICT positions remained stagnant.

Business intelligence/data analytics, executives, architects, network engineer, testers, developer, system analysts and enterprise solution professionals all saw their salaries flatline over the last quarter.

A few specialists were a bit luckier, with cyber security, data analytics, project management and transformation/change professionals seeing some growth in certain states around Australia.

At a glance: Salary growth in 2018

However, Peoplebank CEO Peter Acheson warned employers that they might need to start opening their wallets.

“This is the first sign of a tightening skills market,” he said.

“If demand for tech professionals continues to grow in 2018, organisations may need to offer salary increases to secure their preferred candidates for new roles and projects.”

This follows an earlier report from Clicks IT recruitment, which found that 87% of companies had not increased salaries for their permanent ICT workers the over the past 12 months.

Growth in jobs

It seems the current strength of the ICT sector is being reflected by the number of jobs on offer.

“The growth in tech sector jobs has outstripped Australia’s broader jobs growth,” said Peoplebank CEO, Peter Acheson.

“In fact, demand for tech professionals is now nearly at historically-high levels, especially for those with digital, security, business transformation, business intelligence and data analysis skills.”

Increased business confidence across public and private sectors has created employment opportunities for ICT professionals in Australia.

“Demand, especially in Sydney and Melbourne, is being driven by  three  factors: government investments in infrastructure, as well as the private sector’s transformational investments in technology that expands the organisation’s capacity to deliver products and services," he said. “Thirdly, on the back of solid business confidence, business is updating its tech infrastructure to underpin business-as-usual operations.”

The report also found that demand for ICT workers from SMEs was on the rise.

The big earners

As expected, the biggest pay checks went to those with C-suite titles.

Chief information officers and IT directors recorded attractive salaries, with the average salary at around $200,000.

Chief information security officers also rated highly, indicating the growing value of cyber security, with high-end salaries averaging out at around $323,000 (in NSW it was $500,000).

Certain specialists were also well reimbursed, with enterprise architects were among the highest earners, recording $133,333 as their national average.

On a state basis, while CIO/IT topped the ranking in each state, there was significant variation in the other top earners.

The cyber security sector appears to only be attracting high paying roles in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

In the ACT data specialists are seemingly sought after, with data scientists and architects both amongst the best paid positions.

Top salaries by state

Who’s missing out

At the other end of the spectrum, test analysts averaged around $80,000, although low-end salaries in certain states were around $60,000.

Desktop/PC support team members recorded the lowest salary in the report, with a national average of $62,5000, but dropping down to $40,000 in the ACT.

The full list of national salaries for the ICT industry can be found here.