IT Salaries in 2023: Trends, Roles & Locations

IT roles have never been more in demand and IT salaries have never been higher, according to recent reports and data sources. Whether you are hiring, looking for a career change, or simply work in tech, it’s important to stay up-to-date on the state of employment in the industry. This blog post will review, roundup and summarize some of the latest trends for IT salaries and demand by role and location (among other variables) to help you get a clear view of the landscape.

IT Salary Trends Overview

Across roles and titles, IT jobs have been growing in recent years and are expected to continue to grow. One recent study from the US Government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics found a growing demand for many IT professionals. From 2019 to 2029...

• Software developers along with software quality assurance analysts and testers, should see growth of 21% to 26%.
• Information security analyst roles are expected to grow nearly 40%.

The BLS reports that Software Developers, Database Architects, and Computer/Information Research Scientists are currently some of the hottest job titles with highest salaries. According to the BLS, for 2021 the average salary for an IT professional was $99,860. Considering wages are rising in 2022, it’s reasonable to conclude that IT professionals are now earning more than $100k/yr on average.

In fact, the 2022 Dice Tech Salary Report suggests that the 2021 Average Tech Salary was around $104,566 (a 6.9% increase YoY compared with the prior year’s report). Of course, that doesn't really equate to what people in C-Level roles, like Chief Information Security Officers, might earn in a year.

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A quick note on average salaries

Before we look at the averages, it's important to remember how much swing an average doesn't really account for. An average salary is calculated by salaries reports for job categories, locations, demographics and/or other specifications. Because a lot of companies and employees do not publicly report out on their salaries, the average is always missing some pertinent information.

Of course, average numbers themselves also don't tell the whole story. As CompTIA explains, an average salary for a given role could be listed at $100,000. But where are the edges of that average? Depending on the percentile you might fall in, you could be in the 10th percentile of that salary, which would be closer to $62,000 annually. At the other end, employees earning in the 90th percentile or above could be making well above $160,000 on a job that averages $100K salary.

Now, onto the salaries!

IT Salaries by Role

The following list of roles and average North America salaries were noted in the most recent IT Skills & Salary Report by Global Knowledge. This data comes from a survey of more than 9,000 IT professionals, the 16^th annual edition, representing one of the largest and longest running surveys of its type.

IT Role	Average Annual Salary
Technology Management	$174,181
IT Sales and Marketing	$156,471
Cloud Computing	$144,533
IT Risk Management	$136,586
IT Architecture & Design	$132,941
Cyber Security	$132,163
Auditing and IT Compliance	$122,788
DevOps Engineering	$122,737
Project / Program Management	$121,666
Business Intelligence & Data Analytics	$119,321
Programming & Application Development	$110,260
Networking & Telecommunications	$93,278
IT Help Desk & Technical Support	$66,652

 

In addition to the annual Global Knowledge report, the 2022 Salary Guide from Robert Half includes a great deal of insight from its survey of IT executives, managers, and employees from all types of organizations across the United States. The following list of average annual salaries was published in that recent report.

IT Role	Average Annual Salary
Information systems security manager	$157,250
Network/cloud architect	$153,750
Security architect	$143,250
Big data engineer	$141,500
Network security engineer	$131,250
Site reliability engineer	$126,750
DevOps Engineer	$125,750
Network/cloud engineer	$118,750
Systems engineer	$111,500
Database administrator	$107,750
Cloud computing analyst	$106,000
Scrum master	$104,000
Systems analyst	$99,500
Systems administrator	$88,750
Hardware analyst	$78,250
Desktop support analyst	$62,750
Product support specialist	$57,750

 

IT Salaries by Location (State & Territory)

While IT and tech salaries are typically higher than most fields across the US, there are some states that have much higher averages salaries than others. The following average IT salaries were found in the May 2021 State Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates from BLS.

States and Territories	Average Annual Salary
Washington	$124,000
California	$122,200
District of Columbia	$113,720
Massachusetts	$112,270
Maryland	$110,790
Virginia	$110,510
New Jersey	$108,800
New York	$108,470
Colorado	$104,210
Delaware	$102,060
Rhode Island	$99,330
Connecticut	$98,490
North Carolina	$98,110
Oregon	$97,310
Georgia	$96,570
Minnesota	$96,290
New Hampshire	$95,250
Texas	$93,880
Illinois	$93,580
Arizona	$92,530
Hawaii	$89,800
Alabama	$88,510
Iowa	$87,740
Pennsylvania	$87,530
Utah	$86,600
Ohio	$85,970
Florida	$85,540
Michigan	$84,750
Vermont	$83,910
Wisconsin	$83,670
Alaska	$83,340
New Mexico	$83,170
Missouri	$83,150
South Carolina	$82,100
Kansas	$81,800
Maine	$81,790
Nebraska	$81,090
Indiana	$78,760
Idaho	$78,380
Oklahoma	$77,500
Tennessee	$77,490
Nevada	$77,470
South Dakota	$77,210
Arkansas	$76,340
Kentucky	$74,830
North Dakota	$73,050
Louisiana	$72,620
West Virginia	$71,360
Montana	$71,130
Mississippi	$70,870
Wyoming	$68,770
Puerto Rico	$44,890

 

 

IT Salary by U.S. Metro Region

Although less comprehensive than the BLS data, the Dice Salary Trends report on metro-level data correlates well with the government’s own state-level data. While there is a stark difference between the high and low metros for average salary, keep in mind there is a significant difference in cost of living for many of the higher-wage metros.

Metro Area	Average Annual Salary
Silicon Valley, CA	$133,204
Seattle, WA	$118,729
New York, NY	$115,510
Boston, MA	$114,959
San Diego, CA	$114,801
Denver, CO	$114,096
Los Angeles, CA	$113,658
Baltimore/Washington D.C.	$112,697
Austin, TX	$109,176
Atlanta, GA	$107,515
Portland, OR	$107,185
Philadelphia, PA	$106,725
Chicago, IL	$106,537
Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX	$106,113
Raleigh, NC	$102,375
Charlotte, NC	$100,691
Houston, TX	$100,341
Detroit, MI	$99,376
Pittsburgh, PA	$98,304
Tampa, FL	$97,098
St. Louis, MO	$95,241
Cleveland, OH	$95,120
Miami, FL	$92,004
Phoenix, AZ	$91,105
Colombus, OH	$86,375

Cloud Professional Salary Trends

One of the hottest IT fields of recent years has been cloud computing, and recent salary trend data shows that compensation for these roles is higher than ever. In April 2022, O’Reilly conducted a survey of nearly 800 cloud professionals based in the US with roles ranging from operations staff to software developers who build cloud-based applications and cloud services.  This survey found that the average salary for a cloud professional in 2022 was around $182,000 – a 4.3% increase from the prior year.

2023 IT salary trends

Among respondents, 20% reported changing employers in the past year and 25% are planning to change because of compensation. These figures are roughly in line with the wider Great Resignation trend occurring across industries, in which 20% of workers worldwide have recently quit.

One of the more interesting trends noted in the survey is that hybrid workers (31% of respondents) have the highest average salary, whereas remote workers (63% of respondents) have a slightly lower salary than hybrid, while completely in-office workers had the lowest salaries of the cohort.

The the gender pay gap was smaller for cloud professionals than was found in the data and AI salary survey published by O’Reilly in 2021. Among cloud professionals, women earn on average 7% less than men (whereas the gap for Data & AI was around 16%).

This survey shows a significantly higher average salary than Glassdoor’s estimate of $107,622. This is likely due to a combination of the O’Reilly survey having higher quality data as well as more experienced respondents overall (who could skew the data higher).

The O’Reilly survey found that some of the most important skills individuals need to succeed in the cloud job market are distributed computing, container orchestration, and cloud security. The training and certification most valued by employers are focused on the three major cloud vendors: AWS, GCP and Azure.

Cloud-related jobs are on the rise and expected to continue growing. According to Indeed, between March 2018 and March 2021 there was a 42% increase in job postings for cloud engineers, software architects, cloud consultants, and other in-demand cloud roles.  A study from CompTIA found that job postings using the phrase “cloud skills” grew by more than 40% from Q1 2019 to Q1 2021 with cloud engineer, architect, and senior engineer as the top roles employers are searching for.

Data & AI Salary Trends

While not as high as Cloud salaries, Data & AI salaries are on average far higher than the US average for annual pay (around $58,260 per the US Bureau of Labor & Statistics). According to the most recent O’Reilly survey on AI & Data salaries, consisting of more than 2700 US respondents, the average salary was around $146,000 in 2021.

• The majority of salaries were in the $100-150k range.
• The average salary range for Cloud professionals (albeit a year later) was in the $150-175k range.

While average salaries might seem lower for Data & AI compared with other area of IT, the top of the range is extremely high. According to AI Paygrades, some of the top positions in the US can exceed $1Million in annual compensation at top-tier companies like Facebook and Google, while Pinterest, Salesforce, Amazon and other major technology companies are compensating in the $400,000-$500,000 range.

(Learn more about being a data analyst.)

DevOps Salary Trends

DevOps roles have been growing at a more rapid rate than practically any area within IT. According to Bain & Company research, DevOps job postings grew by more than 440% from 2015 to 2019, and other sources indicate this trend has likely continued. This is a larger growth rate than other areas such as Data Science, and its likely that DevOps job postings could overtake Software Engineering altogether. As demand is increasing at a faster pace than new candidates can become qualified, wages are practically forced to increase in the competitive market to attract and retain top talent.

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Other sources have found that DevOps is one of the top IT jobs. Robert Half recently listed DevOps as the 2^nd highest paid IT role, with Randstad ranking DevOps near the top of its list of in-demand roles.  DevOps Engineer even made the Top 10 Best Jobs in America list from Glassdoor for 2021, ahead of Information Security Engineer, Mobile Engineer, Software Engineer, and even Dentist.

(Check out the state of DevOps today.)

Upskilling and Reskilling

One trend, noted by Randstad’s Technology Salary Guide, intended to counteract the imbalance between the growing need to hire DevOps and other IT professionals is upskilling and reskilling existing employees. In one recent study of 400 HR & workforce learning professionals, 42% of executives planned to launch new upskilling programs in 2022-23. Meanwhile, 79% of organizations are focused on closing the talent gap created by the growing demand for IT professionals.

Lack of internal skills and knowledge have become a major impediment for IT organizations. According to a recent report from A Cloud Guru, 80% of cloud leaders indicated that lack of skill is a top barrier to successful deployments. Skill shortage is also a major cause of cybersecurity breaches and incidents. Splunk’s 2022 State of Security report found that around the world, hiring and retention were major factors in cybersecurity readiness for more than 20% of organizations, although this number was significantly higher in countries such as Singapore.

For employees, the takeaway is clear: Focus on training & certification to acquire the skills and credentials needed to command a higher salary in the competitive market. Here are some great places to search out jobs:

• Indeed.com
• ITcareerfinder.com
• Coursera.org
• Payscale.com
• ZipRecruiter.com
• Glassdoor.com
  

Wrapping Up

Although its clear there is an IT skills shortage, there is no shortage of IT roles available or data sources to support this point of view! After reviewing more than a dozen recent surveys, this meta analysis can confidently conclude that IT salaries in general, and certain sub-fields in particular, are well positioned to growing while demand for these roles also rises.

Tech workers have the opportunity in the coming years to make a significantly higher wage than peers in other industries, and often with the ability to work remotely and take advantage of geographic arbitrage. Understanding these current dynamics and trends of the market will help hiring managers seekers alike better position themselves for a negotiation, to get the best deal possible.

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This posting is my own and does not necessarily represent Splunk's position, strategies or opinion.