Which tech job titles tend to pull down the highest salaries?
The answer probably won’t shock you: according to the Dice Salary Survey (PDF), tech pros in upper-tier management positions such as CEO, CIO, and CTO earned an average annual salary of $136,934, topping the list.
Coming in second were systems architects, who earned an average of $125,946 per year. Again, that’s not surprising, considering how tech pros in these roles define and build out large and complex systems—earning correspondingly hearty salaries in the process.
Mid-tier tech managers such as strategists popped up in third place, with an average annual salary of $125,360, followed by security engineers with $115,946. Project managers came in fifth, averaging $112,339 per year.
Outside of that top five, job titles that earned six-figure salaries included software engineers ($106,495) and database administrators ($100,732). Here’s the full breakdown from the Salary Survey:
For tech pros, there’s some good news in this list. The highest-paid job titles aren’t clustered around a particular profession—for instance, the top fifteen slots aren’t different flavors of mobile developer. Indeed, there’s a fairly even spread between managers, engineers, administrators, analysts, developers, technicians, and support.
Second, these high-paying roles are found at every part of the development process, from creation (developers, engineers) through release (QA engineer, QA analyst) and maintenance (help desk, desktop support specialist). In other words, no matter what your particular tech skillset, there’s a high likelihood you can find a corresponding job that pays a very comfortable salary.
On average, tech pros working a full-time position pulled down $91,067 in annual salary last year, virtually unchanged from 2015. Consultants earned a bit more, averaging $114,473 (off a base rate of $69.05 per hour). Whatever your skillset or location, however, earning a high salary is contingent on having the skills and experience that employers need.