For many of us, the industry can feel like an impenetrable fortress of jargon and qualifications that seem just out of reach for most of us.
Whether it is the skills that the industry seems to demand from people who work in it, or just knowing the right people to get the best start.
It can feel head spinning just to wrap your head around it, especially for an industry that is arguably still just getting started.
But it is an industry that seems to have been able to carve out a niche for itself, despite all that.
Especially in our current times, where unreliable jobs and unprecedented automation, tech appears to be one place where people are still able to carve out successful careers in it.
There’s a strange poetic irony to that, in a somewhat bittersweet kind of way.
One of the industries most reliant on technology to be able to grow, develop, and expand, is one of the few sectors that seems, at least in part, to be immune to the job-destroying elements of automation.
This has led many people to wonder: If the tech industry is a relatively secure sector, what sort of salaries do the best paying jobs expect to make in an industry like this?
Well, that’s what we’re here to find out! In this article, we are going to cover what exactly some of the highest paying jobs are in tech these days.
Product Manager
Starting this list, we have a role that most people will have at least a passing familiarity with.
Any technology product will need at least some level of management to understand and determine what exactly the outline and parameters of the product you are making should entail.
A product manager won’t just help establish the design brief for a project, but also will help guide the process of development, from the original conceptual stages, through each step of development, until the product is ready to be launched.
A tech product manager should be a guiding hand throughout the entire process.
Think of virtually any tech-based product, whether they are software or a piece of hardware, you use.
Asana, Slack, JIRA. All of these products will have had at least one production manager that was a vital part in establishing the schedule of project release making time management a key trait to have, as well as having excellent communication and analytical skills.
Interestingly enough, this is probably one of the roles on this list that has the least interaction with technology as a whole, being a people-oriented role.
And it’s a people-oriented role that pays well, with salaries reaching 6 figures, at over $100,000.
Big Data Engineer
The sheer amount of data that is generated across the internet every day is mind-boggling.
With users on the internet generating over 3 quintillion bytes of data every day, being able to manage and interpret vast amounts of statistics and information like this is an invaluable skill to have for any tech business.
This is exactly what the role of a big data engineer is in a company.
Their role is to take large amounts of information, be able to extract the most important pieces of this data that are important to your company, and turn it into an effective, being able to gain insight from screenfuls of data that would confuse or frustrate others is a vital skill.
Most big data specialists also have some expertise in programming themselves, to read and translate that information in the first place.
Not only that, but being able to translate that information into a strategy for your business, as well as communicate that to others, requires some excellent decision-making and communication skills too.
With so much to juggle and so many skills needed, it’s no wonder that many roles in the field will earn around $140,000
Software Architect
Of course, like in any tech business, you’re going to need someone who can interact with and develop software themselves, as well as be able to judge whether a piece of software is up to a high technical standard.
This is where the role of the software architect comes into play.
A software architect will be able to assess what the needs of the company’s customer base are, as well as understand the briefs that their product managers establish, to create the framework and architecture that the rest of the product will be built around, hence the name.
With strong programming and analytical skills, as well as the ability to model data, software engineers earn a high salary, with many roles earning around $114,000 annually.
DevOps Engineer
A DevOps engineer is effectively the connecting link between understanding coding and engineering.
Roles such as this are vital to fine-tuning software systems for customer and commercial use, meaning that plenty of analytical skills are required for this role.
A DevOps engineer can expect to earn anywhere between $90,000 to $140,000 annually.
Blockchain Engineer
Blockchain is a term that virtually anyone in the cryptocurrency market will have at least heard of, as it is the system of programming that effectively maintains their value, by making these markets incredibly difficult to hack into or cheat.
And with spending in this market set to make billions of dollars in the coming years, the ability to create blockchain tech for this will only get more intense.
Creating software to accomplish this requires a deep level understanding of security software protocol, as well as methodologies to reach these targets.
With salaries of $150,000, you can expect to be earning plenty with a role like this!
Final Thoughts
These are just a few of the highest-earning jobs that you’ll be able to find out there in the tech industry.
There are plenty more out there where these came from!
