Published on the 19/01/2017 | Written by Anthony Caruana
Technology marches forward, but a recent salary survey has found traditional roles in system administration, logistics and project management remain the most sought after and lucrative…
The survey was conducted by recruitment agency Robert Walters and included a review of jobs for IT professionals. Along with the sysadmin, logistics and PM roles, DevOps engineers and digital marketing managers are also seeing significant wages growth with projected salary increases of $20,000 to $40,000 forecast for this year.
According to Robert Walters, those planning to work in NSW will see the highest salaries and pay rises if changing jobs. The company’s ANZ MD James Nicholson said, “Overall, the recruitment market across Australia was more buoyant than expected in 2016, particularly in the areas of technology, corporate governance and infrastructure which should continue throughout 2017.”
Technology advances to enable and fast track productivity gains, regulatory pressures within the financial services sector together with the $50 billion worth of investment committed by Australia’s national and state governments are the main drivers for salary growth, Nicholson added.
Conspicuously absent from the list was anything to do with information security – but that might have more to do with where Robert Walters focuses its recruitment efforts rather than a true snapshot of IT roles and recruitment. CIO Cyber Security’s Andrew Constantine confirmed that these roles are in high demand. He suggested rates of around $1,100 to $1,550 per day for contractors and annual salaries for well-rounded information security professionals vary between $150,000 – $350,000.
Ashley Tietze, from Melbourne-based firm Podium IT, said “Everyone is talking about cloud networking and data centre migrations at the moment. If you are an expert within these disciplines, you will not be short of work in the future.”
And while the Robert Walters survey suggested salaries would vary from state to state, neither Constantine nor Tietze thought that would be the case for their specific areas of focus.
“Most of the work is done remotely and behind the scenes so location is not necessarily a huge factor. However, availability and being around to visit on site is always an advantage and may increase your personal worth. In all honestly, it wouldn’t matter if you were working from a beach in South America. If you can work remotely, that is what it is all about,” said Tietze.
In contrast, Karen Drewitt, GM at The Missing Link and CompTIA ANZ Community Chair said there will be regional factors as some sectors, such as mining and resources, will show a decline in their hunger for certain resources. Consultants and analysts who can translate business needs into and have great communications skills will be in demand. She also added that senior executives who can see beyond a specialised field will be valuable.
A free copy of the Robert Walters Global Salary Survey is available on request.
