Highest Paying Developer Skills and Occupations
The lack of skilled IT workers is hurting the deployment of emerging technology, according to a new survey from Gartner. In areas from cloud to cybersecurity, this crisis is expected to last for years to come.
While the
survey goes into everything from the biggest workplace challenges to whether
developers prefer Star Wars or Star Trek (Star
Wars, unless you’re over 50), much of it concerns compensation. So
if you’ve ever wondered which tech jobs pay the most—as well as which skills
are most likely to bring in top dollar—you’ve come to the right place.
Specialty skills net big paychecks
In the U.S.,
ability with the computing framework Spark and the programming language Scala bring in the highest salaries, at an
average of $125,000. Database management system Cassandra, programming language F# and
open-source framework Hadoop were
also top-paying technologies, at $115,000.
The survey
also broke down the top-paying tech skills by occupation, identifying the most
lucrative specialties for full-stack developers, front-end developers,
mathematics developers and mobile developers. Full-stack developers who can
develop for the cloud and work with Redis or React are the best-paid in their field,
earning an average of $105,000. For front-end developers, expertise in React
($105,000), followed by Node.JS ($95,000) brings in the most money.
Meanwhile,
developers with a mathematics background who know Scala ($140,000), Spark
($130,000) and Hadoop ($125,000) get paid more than their peers. Finally,
mobile developers who specialized in Objective-C earned the most in their area
($100,000), while those with a strong grounding in iOS earned about $10,000
more on average than those who are primarily Android developers.
Mobile
developers are high earners
Stack
Overflow also looked at what positions pay the most. Unsurprisingly, the
highest paid roles in tech belonged to executives (VP of Engineering, CTO, CIO, etc.),
with an average salary of $150,314. They were followed by engineering managers, who hold an
average salary of $143,122.
While most of
the listed positions had a salary that exceeded or hovered around six figures,
the developer position that commanded the highest salary was mobile developer (specifically for iOS) at $115,460. Back-end web developers had an average salary of $108,580,
followed by full-stack web
developers ($100,273) and front-end web developers ($97,016).
Salary
varies by employment status, education and gender
Full-time
employees make up the bulk of the developer workforce. They also have the
highest average salaries, hovering around $98,949. Freelance contractors made
$92,311, while self-employed developers made $82,293.
According to
the survey, it also pays to have an advanced degree. A Ph.D. in computer
science (or a related field) brought in the highest average salary of $122,219.
A master’s degree in computer science (or related field) came in second, with a
salary of $118,803. Mentorship programs and full-time intensive programs also
resulted in higher-than-average pay.
The survey
also touches on the gender pay gap—a hot topic of discussion both in tech and
in the larger workforce. While there was not a detectable gender pay gap for
young developers under 30, male developers aged 30 or older make more on
average— sometimes more than $20,000 extra a year.
But there’s
less of a gap when focusing on experience rather than age. Among developers
with less than five years of experience, women make either the same amount or
more than men, with men earning slightly more once they reach six to 10 years
of experience and 11+ years of experience.
Share your comments on this Article:(0)
Leave a Reply
