2020 IT Skills Salary Survey & Report
Why IT?
The field of Information technology is creating more jobs than ever before. IT might be the only field of science that can be promised to expand more over the coming decade. With this field ever-growing, the number of jobs in IT is also growing substantially, as IT is a vast term that includes many divisions.
Almost all aspects of human life in some way directly touch or benefit from IT. The different sectors of IT can include system administrators, IT technicians, software/web developers, quality assurance people, UI/UX designers, SEO experts, analytics experts, and many more. IT is more of an umbrella term covering many different fields, and every single field has many sub-fields, these subfields can also have various subfields. For example; A software developer is further classified into a web or desktop/native developer, and a desktop developer can be further classified by what skills he possesses, like C++ developer or Java developer. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to explaining various sectors of IT.
Although becoming a developer (programmer) of any kind might require some extensive skills and more time to gain them, there are many other fields of IT that almost anyone can join and start gaining skills with relatively less effort and time. Many people who are willing to change their career or move towards IT research the market for such IT skills that can be easily gained and has a lot of demand in the market, these skills and the related jobs differ in different parts of the world, so one might need to observe his/her local market’s job openings.
That being said some IT skills are generally higher in demand than others.
Some of the most in-demand IT jobs are listed below with average salaries.
- In-demand jobs (salary trends)
Web Developer
(average salary is $75,000) - App Developer
(average salary is $80,000) - Data Scientist
(average salary is $110,000) - DevOps Engineer
(average salary is $99,000) - Artificial Intelligence Expert
(average salary is $170,000) - Security Engineer
(average salary is $98,000) - Business Intelligence Analyst
(average salary is $94,000) - IoT Engineer
(average salary is $170,000) - SEO Engineer
(average salary is $60,000) - UI/UX Designer
(average salary is $80,000)
How to land an IT job
Landing an IT Job is much easier than what most people have in mind. Yes, it requires some skill sets but as long as you’re true to your work and have a never-ending eagerness to learn than your future in IT is secure.
What most interviewers look for while hiring is firstly the command and skills for the position and secondly some similar personality characteristics. Good command and skills over any IT skill come with time and dedication. But these personality characteristics anyone can build easily. Some of these are;
● Eagerness to learn more and adapt.
● Ability to strive and accomplish the impossible (out of box thinking)
● Firm grounds on their knowledge (knowing their limits and have confidence in their skills)
● A team player (can easily go along with different kind of people)
● An overachiever (gets things done on time and has time to add more to done tasks)
90% of the interviewers are looking out for these common personality traits while hiring. The first and foremost important thing is the skillset and expertise on the domain, but in rare cases, companies do hire people who have these strong personality traits and can enhance their skills along the way.
Other than this the most traditional way of landing an IT job is to get some degree or certification in the desired field. Then landing an internship for that skill and making use of / enhancing that particular skill in the real world.
Beginners should never focus much on the salary, rather on enhancing their skills. When doing that, they will in the future have more command over the skill at hand, and can easily switch to a better opportunity or get the right compensation where they are already employed.
How to make an impact in the interview and compensate salary
By showing the upper mentioned personality characteristics you can always make a good first impression on the interviewer. One of the most important things that most people don’t realize while giving an interview is that the person sitting in front of them is human too. They might be wrong on a few things, you might be wrong on a few things as well.
We should think of interviewers and ourselves as guests throughout the interview and always maintain a warm and happy conversation. Where nobody is being too harsh or looks too stiff, this way a calm and relaxed environment is created in which both parties can proceed with the interview with ease.
Some interviewers link to put you in a stressed scenario, just to examine how you will react. Always know that when giving an interview you have to be attentive and focus on solutions rather than questions. This way the interviewer gets the idea that you’re problem solver, and that is a huge plus point in interviews.
When it comes to salary negotiation, always know that it is, in fact, a negotiation. Unless the interview started with the words ‘Salary is not negotiable’, you mostly have a free hand at negotiation. You need to understand and research the average local salary of that particular position and then begin the salary negotiation. Typically there is no harm in asking for 10% to 15% above the average salary, as you might get paid more than you thought.
But the important thing to remember is never offending the interviewer or your boss through the salary negotiation.
In-demand skills and expertise (salary trends)
All the above mentioned jobs require some skills and a certain level of expertise in those skills for one to get hired on the desired position. Just like in any other industry, experience is valued in the IT industry as well, some skills along with the right amount of experience can earn you well as compared to lesser experience.
Here are a few in-demand skills along with the expertise level and average salary for those.
● Machine Learning
Beginner level ML expert earns around $80,000
Mid level ML expert earns around $120,000
Senior level ML expert earns around $140,000
● Python
The average payscale for a Junior level Python developer is $78,000
The average payscale for a Mid level Python developer is $89,000
The average payscale for a Senior level Python developer is $122,000
● Data Science
The starting salary of a data scientist is usually around $95,000
Mid-level data scientists earn around $128,000
Senior-level data scientists average salary is around $185,000
● Mobile Development
A beginner level mobile app developer can earn roughly $60,000
Mid-level mobile app developer can make an average annual salary of $90,000
A senior level or expert mobile developer can earn average salary of $122,000
● Block Chain
Block chanin is also high in demand, as a beginner level block chain developer earns an average of $130,000
Mid-level block chain developer can earn an average of $150,000
And Senior-level block chain developer average annual salary is $175,000
● Internet of Things (IoT)
Beginner level IoT developers can earn average of $145,000
Mid-level IoT earn a bit higher average salary of $160,000
Senior level IoT developer make a great annual salary of about $175,000