Just like every year, tech pros want to make more money in 2019. For hiring managers and recruiters, that could set up some tense salary negotiations: How much should you offer a promising candidate, especially in a tight job market? What's a "normal" amount for a particular role or segment? According to the Dice Salary Survey, the top-paying job titles are (no surprise here) in the C-suite. Those with CEO, CTO, CIO, VP, or similar job titles can all expect to draw hefty salaries (not to mention some nice benefits and perks). We found the average income for someone at the executive-management level was $142,063. This is noticeably more than our second-place finisher on this list: systems architect. With an average annual income of $129,952, these architects make far above the average tech pro salary of $93,244. Third on our list, with an average gross annual salary of $127,121, was a more generalized “management” role (i.e., strategists and architects). In other words, if you're hiring managers, hopefully you had adequate budget, because it's really going to cost you.
Product managers are fourth on our list, making $114,174 per year on average. DevOps engineers sit in fifth, making $111,683 annually. Software engineers, hardware engineers, product managers, and security engineers all make just shy of $111,000 per year. Applications developer rounds out the top ten, dipping a solid $5,000 annually from the rest of the pack for an average income of $105,202. For tech pros, these salaries are very solid. As you can see in the chart above, the year-over-year changes are also notable. C-suite execs earned nearly four percent more than last year, while systems architects went in the complete opposite direction, dipping 3.8 percent year-over-year (YoY). Other tech roles that experienced negative YoY changes include product manager (a 4.2 percent slide), and project managers, who absorbed a 2.8 percent decline. A few titles had impressive YoY salary growth. The more generalized “management” category jumped eight percent, while “applications developer” crept up 7.6 percent. Software Engineers are also making 5.1 percent more than they were last year. We should also note that three of the top 10 tech jobs by income saw no appreciable salary change year-over-year. Taking an expanded view, seven of the top 25 job titles by salary had no change YoY, and 13 either had no change or less than three percent (positive or negative). For those companies trying to keep their talent budgets under control, that might come as a small relief.
