As the world transitions from the industrial age into an era of technology, the tech industry is now, more than ever before, one that is very lucrative to qualified workers within the industry.
Recruiting company Michael Page recently released its 2019 South African salary trends survey, and there is no doubt that tech jobs are among the highest paying occupations in the country at the moment, as is the trend worldwide.
According to Michael Page, the IT industry looks to be one of the drivers of economic growth in the country, with wages and bonuses following “a consistent pattern over the past five years, with steady increases to reflect inflationary pressures”.
Should a candidate have niche skillsets or relevant experience, they are able to earn salaries that are even higher than the average amounts paid, due to a lack of candidates in this sector.
In multinational, as well as in small-to-medium enterprises, the IT sector seems to be flourishing.
Technical services
Within this sector of the market, the average annual salary of IT support engineers is R400,000 for employees working in small-to-medium enterprises, while employees of multinational companies earn an average annual salary of R500,000 per year.
Application support analysts can expect to earn R600,000 per annum, regardless of whether they are employed by SMEs or MNCs, while technical support managers earn an average salary of R650,000 (SME) and R700,000 (MNC).
Database administration
As the security and stability of their databases grow ever-more important to businesses, this sector rewards employees with higher-than-average annual salaries to protect the integrity of the databases of the companies they work for.
Data analysts are able to have an average annual income of R500,000 in SMEs and MNCs, while database developers earn R650,000 if they work for SMEs, and R750,000 if they work for a multinational company. Database administrators working for small-to-medium enterprises earn an average salary of R750,000, and that amount increases to R850,000 if they work for a multinational company.
Within the field of data administration, salaries increase significantly for data scientists (R800,000 in SMEs and R1.2 million in MNCs), data analytics managers (R900,000 in SMEs and R1.4 million for MNCs) and data architects (R950,000 in SMEs and R1.2 million in MNCs).
Applications
The development of applications remains a high-earning division of the IT sector, with IT consultants earning R900,000 on average in both SMEs and MNCs, app developers receiving average annual salaries of R650,000 when working for SMEs, and R700,000 when they are employed by MNCs.
Business applications managers are able to earn R850,000 per year if they are employees of an SME and R1.2 million if they work for an MNC, while IT applications directors may earn as much as R1.1 million if they work for an SME, and R1.4 million if they work for an MNC.
The IT sector certainly seems to be rewarding employees who are equipped with skills that can keep their businesses afloat in the sea of technology that is becoming the backbone of businesses across a range of industries. To view a full list of the highest-paying IT jobs in the country, click here.