Since the IT job market is constantly changing, finding a gap can sometimes be tough.
Knowing which roles are the most wanted by businesses around the country will help find the right job – and pay packet – to suit you.
Information Age has been given a sneak peek at some results from the 2020 salary survey produced by recruitment firm Robert Walters.
Tech jobs across the country regularly pull in more than $100,000 per year, with cyber security and DevOps roles among the most consistently high salaries in each state.
This coincides with insights from the salary survey that outline DevOps, cybersecurity, and data analysis as the most in-demand IT fields for employers in 2020.
Gavin Campbell, Associate Director of Technology and Transformation at Robert Walters, told Information Age that the current demand for these positions is reflective of organisational needs.
“DevOps engineers are in high demand because there’s a lot of focus on the customer now,” Campbell said.
“There really is a movement away from pure operations and into continuous delivery which breeds this competition around how organisations can adapt in the marketplace.
“The same can be said of the data analyst side. Organisations are looking to leverage the data coming into their business then creating go-to-market strategies around that data.”
DevOps engineers and architects in NSW reported their 2020 salaries in the range of $110,000-$180,000 per year or a contracted rate between $65 and $125 per hour.
Salaries for DevOps specialists in Canberra have increased 7 per cent in the past year, averaging $160,000.
The rise in demand for cybersecurity professionals comes as no surprise with a growing number of attacks on governments, local infrastructure, and major businesses.
Job-hire website Seek shows a four per cent increase in cybersecurity salaries with an average of $126,000.
Robert Walters reports that cybersecurity salaries in Victoria especially are booming.
Security analyst and penetration tester roles pay $110,000 up to $170,000 in the garden state, with salaries for security architects and information security lead roles beginning at $150,000.
Campbell said these roles were becoming more necessary for business operations.
“We're seeing the rise of roles such as penetration testers, vulnerability testers, and cyber security analysts because organisations are focused on monitoring and ensuring they have the safeguards and barriers in place to protect against cyberattacks,” Campbell said.
Cybersecurity is a domain popular with IT professionals as well.
“There is a lot of interest in it and people are generally curious about cybersecurity too,” Campbell said.
“It does touch a lot of different areas of technology. Whether it be development or something with infrastructure, there will always be a security component.”
Management skills
Jobs pushing $200,000 per year tend to be reserved for senior management positions like CIO, CTO, CISO.
Campbell said that there is also growth in the amount of, and money for, technical management roles. However, these positions require a certain set of skills.
“We’re seeing people that have a strong understanding of infrastructure and development environments, who are quite hands-on technically, and also doing leadership roles,” he said.
“These are people who will have a broad understanding of technologies and on top of that they’ll have a background in agile methodology as well to be able to support those technology skills.
“So, they’ll be able to run scrums, run agile boards – really drive the teams for delivery. And then, when needed, get into the detail of the technology.”
Soft skills are useful for advancing your career with project management role salaries, especially in NSW, regularly exceeding $150,000.
But Campbell warns against viewing project management as a panacea if you do not also have the technical expertise.
“There’s a real glut in generalist project management roles where we’ve seen a new paradigm form with specialist roles in agile methodologies on the rise like ‘scrum master’ and ‘tribe lead’,” he said.
“It’s also seen a real rise in business analyst-type roles where specialist or technical business analysts are in high-demand as a by-product of the need for more technical roles.”
