Good news for IT pros who've seen their weekly salaries languish or even shrink over the past couple of years: Hiring companies are loosening the purse strings. Not everyone is going to see a paycheck bump, but the spoils of economic recovery, an overflow of venture capital dollars, and overall pent-up IT demand will translate to bigger bucks, especially for application developers and network admins.
These are the findings of Bluewolf, an IT consulting and staffing agencies with branches in New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Philadelphia. The company released a report this week forecasting which IT pros are likely to see a pay raise in 2011, which ones will see their pay remain flat, and even which ones might need to brace for a little belt tightening.
According to the report, 2011 will be a good year for developers. Fueled by an influx of venture capital, demand for new skill sets are surging, including iPhone, iPad, Facebook, and Android development chops, as well as expertise in Flash, Flex, PHP, Amazon Web Services, and Salesforce.com.
In-demand jobs for 2011 and their anticipated average salary ranges (in the areas Bluewolf covers, anyway) are as follows:
- Flash developers: $80,000 to $100,000
- Flex developers: $85,000 to $110,000
- PHP/LAMP developers: $75,000 to $110,000
- Ruby on Rails developers: $85,000 to $110,000
- CRM Developers: $90,000 to $120,000
- iPad developers: $98,000 to $120,000
- iPhone developers: $94,000 to $115,000
- Android developers: $97,000 to $120,000
Coders aren't the only IT professionals poised to reap higher rewards for their skills. According to the report, positions like systems analyst (estimated salary range is $60,000 to $100,000), applications architect ($90,000 to $120,000), junior business analyst ($50,000 to $85,000), and developer/programmer analyst ($70,000 to $105,000) are likeliest to earn more moolah this year.
Networking staffers are also in line for a salary boost this year, according to Bluewolf, which will put their salaries back to pre-recession levels. Network admins will see average salaries rise to the $60,000 to $90,000 range, network managers are looking at a range between $80,000 and $100,000, and network engineers' salaries will surge to the $65,000 to $90,000 spectrum.
As for high-level IT professionals, vice presidents of IT will see salaries jump 7.1 percent in 2011, with a range of $120,000 to $155,000. C-level IT executives, meanwhile, enjoyed a similar hike in 2010, according to Bluewolf, but can expect a flat change this year.
Database specialists may be in for the most disappointment this year. Although the overall salary range for database developers will increase to a range of $55,000 through $95,000, database admins ($70,000 to $120,000) and database architects ($90,000 to $125,000) can expect no change, while data modelers ($85,000 to $105,000) and warehouse analysts ($80,000 to $100,000) will see an overall decrease in salaries.
This story, "Report: Salaries on the rise for mobile developers," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.