Select few see IT salary boost

UK economic growth may be slowing, but the market for qualified software developers, IT security specialists and consultants is booming, according to some recruitment agencies.

However, the top jobs could be secured at the expense of others within the IT department: employers looking for high calibre staff may also be looking to make cuts elsewhere and squeeze the best value for money out of the people they take on.

Paul Winchester is managing director at recruitment consultancy Greythorn, which estimates there are currently around two million IT and telecoms workers in and around the UK alone.

He told Computing that current pay hikes are partially due to the relevant dearth of opportunities in the past 18 months as recession applied the brakes to recruitment, with employers now struggling to catch up.

"It is almost a two-tier market for talent. Companies are looking to re-invest in the IT department but whereas in the past they spent on headcount numbers, now it is the quality of the headcount," he said.

"If you are good there are jobs and you will get a significant increase – this is probably the worst market for counter offers I've ever seen, sometimes to the tune of up to £8,000 a time, with people sitting four to five interviews in the process. There are offers on the table but only for good candidates."

Greythorn estimates that IT and telecoms salaries rose by 7.5 per cent to an average £42,800 per annum in 2011, with bonus payments (based largely on company, rather than personal, performance) reaching a mean of 19 per cent or £8,740.

Another IT recruitment agency, CV Screen, estimated in April this year that permanent IT salaries have risen by five per cent over the previous 12 months, with the average now at a healthy £38,946.

Critics argue that it is no surprise these figures come from recruitment agencies whose business relies on enticing larger numbers of more experienced IT professionals dissatisfied with their current roles onto their books.

But the consensus of opinion appears hard to dispute, with a similar story coming from Chris Batten, managing director at Acumin Consulting, a firm that reviews the salaries of IT staff working in information security based on placements reported by the big four IT consultancies – KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and Atos.

Security has proved one of the boom industries in recent years due to prevailing corporate and consumer fears around compliance, corporate governance, data loss and identity theft, a situation which Acumin's latest quarterly index reflects.

"Demand has been increasing steadily for the last year, but bear in mind it has been pretty much rock bottom for the previous 18 months," said Batten. "Our clients are trying to get more out of the systems they have already and they need staff to advise on that. They are also starting to re-invest in training and we have not seen that for a while."

In all cases, it is experienced, knowledgeable staff, primarily on the software rather than the hardware side who are in demand, however, leaving operational and infrastructure-oriented roles to ponder their options.

Based on Greythorn's figures, a third of permanently employed IT and telecom professionals believe their employers will reduce headcount in the next 12 months.

Vacancies currently advertised at monster.com in the US suggest the top IT skills with rising pay are systems analysts, database administrators, software engineers and application developers and programmers (specific skills including C++, Java, J2SE, Python, UML, XML and Linux remain areas of big demand), with areas such as customer relationship management, mobile applications, network administrators and software quality assurance/testers also highlighted.

"They [those in demand] tend to be good software developers with 10-15 years' experience - techies with a lot of knowledge and business sense rather than just managers," said Winchester. "The infrastructure side is still there but all the expansion is on the software side."

Acumin estimates that even information security (IS) graduate starting salaries have increased to between £30,000-£35,000, a figure which will raise eyebrows in many quarters.

For newbies to start on that sort of money, however, they would need an masters degree (MSc) in information security and information risk management, however, and finding a job with a relative lack of experience is still difficult, if not impossible, added Batten.

Nor have widely anticipated cuts in public sector IT services resulted in the headcount decimation and subsequent jobs market deflation originally envisaged.

"About a year ago, there were worries that IT jobs would be lost in the public sector but that has not affected the market in my opinion," said Winchester. "As always job losses quoted tend to be big headline figures, but they never actually get rid of those amounts [of staff] - a lot of them leave through natural wastage."

"We have seen public sector demand decrease by at least half, but there is still huge demand in the private sector," said Batten.