Which IT skills pay the best?
Students and IT professionals compete in a fast changing environment, with skills shortages and over-supply changing at regular intervals. But which skills are currently hot property and which professionals can demand the largest paychecks?
For this investigation we look at three different surveys, one in South Africa, one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States.
South Africa
In South Africa specialists skills are currently in high demand, resulting in the highest salaries in the industry. According to the recently completed ITWeb salary survey, employees with the highest average income have skills in the fields of Enterprise architecture & SOA, Outsourcing / SLA management, ERP, Project management and IT governance.
Others that can demand high salaries are professionals in the fields of Systems integration / consulting, Business development / sales, Security – systems, network, data / VPN / firewalls, Telecommunications equipment and services, Business process management (BPM) / workflow, IP telephony / VOIP and Data warehousing.
According to the survey the tech certifications which result in the highest paychecks are Oracle Certified Professional (Java Technology Track), Cisco Certified Internet Engineer (CCIE), CISSP: Certified Information System Security Professional, Cisco Certified Developer Professional (CCDP) and Oracle Certified Professional (Database Administrator Track).
Other highly paid qualifications include IBM certifications, Lotus certifications and SAP certifications.
United States
In the United States the highest paying certifications are Systems Security Certified Pracitioner, Voice over IP Expert, CCIE Routing & Switching, NNCDS (Nortel Networks Certified Design Specialist) and ITIL Managers Certificate.
Other high earning certifications include Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Security Management Expert, PMI Project Management Professional, ITIL Practioners Certificate and Cisco Certified Voice Professional.
It is interesting to note that skills in Project Management or Security outweigh the value of 15 years (or more) of experience or a 4 year degree for higher salaries.
United Kingdom
In the UK the situation is not very different from the US with security experts and project managers demanding the largest paychecks.
According to IT Jobwatch, Credit Risk Project Managers, Chief Security Officers, Chief Information Security Officers and SAP specialists are the highest paid professionals.
Other highly paid skills include Excel VBA developers, SOA Architects and IT Program Managers.
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