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Cyber security specialists beat out AI and software engineers, as Melbourne makes the top 20 list of cities to find a software role globally.
New research has analysed the wages of software professionals around the world to find out just which jobs are the best in terms of their pay, and cyber security has come in well inside the top ten.
The role of cyber security specialist ranks sixth overall, with an average global wage of US$62,310, or just a shade over $90,000 in Australian dollars.
The top paying role, however, is enterprise architect, which brings in an annual salary of US$83,886 – a whopping $128,000 in dollarydoos. Technical program manager, chief technology officer, software architect, and site reliability engineer round out the top five above cyber security, with site reliability engineers only getting paid a few hundred dollars more.
AI engineer, software engineer, devops engineer, and cloud engineer make up the rest of the top ten, with cloud engineer bringing in US$51,528, or almost $80,000 locally.
The new report, from Indian software company NSoft, was created from a seed-list of 30 cities known for their tech industries. Average salaries were sourced from job search firm Glassdoor, while the survey also looked at the number of roles and software firms, broadband speeds, and quality of life factors to determine the best city to find a software-related role in.
And, unsurprisingly, the best city is San Francisco, where Silicon Valley dominates the global tech space.
Only one Australian city makes it into the top 20, and it only just scrapes in at that. Melbourne ranks 20th in terms of places to find a software-related role, with 1,942 open positions at the time of the survey, paying an average of US$72,727 at just over 2,000 software companies.
Compare that to San Francisco and the difference is stark. There are almost 2,500 open roles at over 6,900 companies, and the average yearly wage is north of US$137,000.
“In the tech world, one thing is certain: software professionals are always on their toes, adapting and evolving as quickly as the technology they work with,” Darko Marić, NSoft’s Team Lead for Recruitment said in the report.
“And with the world becoming more reliant on technology, there is more need for these professionals than ever before.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.