If you haven’t heard by now, Dice.com, a national leading IT job board, recently released their 2017 Dice Tech Salary Survey which gave employers direct insights into 2017 staffing trends specifically around salaries. It’s become a universal tool for IT employers all over the US for setting competitive salary guidelines to attract and retain the market’s top talent. While the full 14-page survey is extremely helpful and in-depth with its findings, we thought we would help you out by summarizing the key take-aways in a few major categories (you’re welcome).
Over the last 10 years, the average salary increase year-over-year in the IT industry has averaged around 2.32%. There’s always a variety of factors that lead to this, but this year the top 3 reasons were: merit raise, changed employers, and internal promotion (in that order). These top three reasons not only ranked high, but make up a combined 70 percent of the entire survey results.
It’s no surprise to any hiring manager or staffing firm that highly-skill technology professionals remain in the most demand, especially those skills supporting industry transformation and growth. More specifically, we are talking about the storage and networking sectors a.k.a. anyone working on the cloud. With everyone undergoing this major disruption of migrating from hardware-based storage to cloud storage, this increased demand has led to a spike in average salaries. This can basically be held true against virtually any “hot” IT skill job, as the market is ever-changing and moving toward faster, more efficient products and services.
“Skills that were used a year ago may not be prominent today; skills that are relevant today will evolve tomorrow. This creates a marketplace where both tech professionals and employers must keep their fingers on the pulse of skills training and demand. The skills areas which garnered salary increases indicate where professionals and employers should focus their training and recruiting efforts,” said Bob Melk, President, Dice.
We could not agree more, Bob. The dynamic tech industry has set up these experienced IT professionals to remain confident in their career choices and relocate for the best opportunities. This sets up a whole new discussion for “the talent pool shortage” in your market, and whether your company should be considering relocation expenses as a new hiring attractor.
Of course, salary can be the absolute motivation for some, but not the case for most IT professionals. According to the 2017 Dice Tech Salary Survey, the top motivators were:
Time to rank who’s winning when it comes to highest paid salaries. The Dice survey does us the pleasure of breaking it down by a few different categories to give us a wide snapshot of averages. Here’s what we’ve got:
Metro-Areas:
| Metro | IT Salary | Metro | IT Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silicon Valley | $114,184 | Philadelphia | $90,414 |
| Boston | $103,368 | Charlotte | $89,215 |
| San Diego | $102,899 | Atlanta | $88,214 |
| Minneapolis | $99,404 | Houston | $88,166 |
| Los Angeles | $99,400 | Kansas City | $87,452 |
| New York | $99,345 | Orlando | $86,490 |
| Seattle | $99,290 | Portland | $85,588 |
| DC/Baltimore | $97,958 | Detroit | $85,400 |
| Denver | $96,530 | St. Louis | $83,717 |
| Dallas | $95,130 | Raleigh | $83,504 |
| Chicago | $94,610 | Miami | $82,478 |
| Austin | $93,962 | Tampa | $81,285 |
| Phoenix | $92,521 | Cleveland | $78,818 |
| Sacramento | $90,567 |
Job Titles:
| Job Title | IT Salary | Job Title | IT Salary |
| Tech Management (CEO, CIO, VP, Dir.) | $136,934 | Programmer/Analyst | $86,243 |
| Systems Architect | $125,946 | Network Engineer | $84,779 |
| Tech Management (Strategist, Architect) | $125, 360 | Security Analyst | $84,612 |
| Security Engineer | $115,946 | Web Developer/ Programmer | $82,781 |
| Project Manager | $112,339 | Systems Administrator | $79,583 |
| MIS Manager | $107,145 | QA Analyst | $78,089 |
| Software Engineer | $106,495 | QA Tester | $69,921 |
| Database Administrator | $106,495 | Technical Support | $56,346 |
| Developer: Database | $99,127 | Desktop Support Analyst | $50,508 |
| Developer: Applications | $94,793 | Help Desk | $45,693 |
| Business Analyst | $90,836 | PC Technician | $45,236 |
| QA Engineer | $88,089 |
Experience:
| Years of Experience | IT Salary |
| Under 1 | $47,389 |
| 1-2 | $54,414 |
| 3-5 | $66,681 |
| 6-10 | $82,223 |
| 11-15 | $94,693 |
| Over 15 | $111,620 |
Employment Type:
| Employment Type | IT Salary |
| U.S. overall average | $92,081 |
| Full-time workers | $91,067 |
| Consultant | $114,473 |
| Consultant (base rate per hour) | $69.05 |
Tech Skills:
| Skill Set | IT Salary |
| Big Data | $120,740 |
| Cloud | $120,826 |
| DevOps | $114,972 |
| Project Management | $113,356 |
| Design UI/UX | $117,263 |
| Mobile | $113,772 |
| Front End Dev | $106,377 |
Industry:
| Industry | IT Salary | Industry | IT Salary |
| Bank/Financial/Insurance | $103,860 | Telecommunications | $92,549 |
| Utilities/Energy | $103,492 | Internet Services | $92,079 |
| Aerospace & Defense | $99,992 | Manufacturing | $90,488 |
| Professional Services | $98,506 | Distributor/ Wholesale | $89,081 |
| Computer Software | $98,455 | Retail/ ECommerce | $88,771 |
| Computer Hardware | $97,569 | Government | $88,555 |
| Medical/Pharmaceutical/ Biotechnology | $97,077 | Healthcare Providers | $88,270 |
| Entertainment Media | $95,568 | Hospitality/ Travel | $86,805 |
| Consumer Products | $95,051 | Marketing/ Advertising | $86,669 |
We thought it would be helpful for hiring managers if we shed some final tips with what we (Agile) have experienced in our 14 years as an IT staffing company. After reviewing the 2017 Dice Tech Salary Survey and comparing this to our own industry standards and what we know about the market, we believe the following to be true:
For more information, thoughts, advice, or whatever else you may need regarding the average IT salaries of 2016 – please feel free to reach out to our team directly. We’d be more than happy to strike up a conversation with you!