In 2017 heightened concern around cyber attacks is expected to boost the starting salaries for information security specialists, with recruitment firm Robert Half forecasting year on year growth of 6.2 per cent.
The company today released the 2017 Robert Half Salary Guide, with IT wage growth expecting to outstrip the Australian average.
Robert Half said it is expecting a starting salary range of $118,000 to $160,00 for cyber-security specialists.
The company is expecting IT salaries to grow on average by 2.7 per cent during the year. That compares favourably to overall Australian wage growth of 1.5 per cent between December 2015 and December 2016, Robert Half said.
“The technology market continues to thrive,” Robert Half Asia Pacific senior managing director, David Jones, said in a statement.
“As the industry becomes more customer-centric, and concern over persistent cyber-security threats increases, demand for specialist IT skillsets is rising. Because of demand consistently outweighing supply, top IT talent in many functional areas are able to negotiate higher salaries, and sometimes even above-market averages.”
The company has produced a list of 10 “golden jobs” in the IT sector that are expected to see significant boost to starting salaries.
“As big data/machine learning, customer-centric technology, and cyber-security dominate the IT landscape, top IT candidates – especially those in the development and cyber-security/IT security space – will typically receive multiple job offers, leaving them well-placed to drive their salary negotiations,” Jones said.
“Employers will be faced with IT specialists leaving the organisation when they are offered a better remuneration package.”
Front-end developers and senior front-end developers, IT security specialists, and senior full-stack developers rounded out the top 10 for year-on-year increase in starting salaries. They were followed by junior back-end developers, business intelligence analysts, junior front-end developers, business intelligence managers, and database admins.