Professionals and managers working directly with artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are seeing their compensation shoot upward. These workers also experience greater job satisfaction.
That’s the word from Dice’s latest tech salaries report, based on the responses of 2,835 tech professionals conducted in the fall of 2024.
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More opportunities
The research also shows how tech workplaces are evolving. Women respondents, who trailblazed in a male-dominated field, say that opportunities and workplace cultures have opened up. Female professionals who have worked in tech for more than two decades are 1.5 times more likely than men to say tech culture has improved over the past 20 years (64% versus 46%).
Salary and rate increases
The average technology professional now earns $112,521 a year across all disciplines, reflecting a 1.2% year-on-year increase. IT executives and managers lead the pack by a wide margin, earning almost $170,000 annually on average. Developers tend to earn close to $130,000 annually.
Here are the average annual earnings by job title:
- IT management (CEO, CIO, CTO, VP, and director): $168,345
- Software developer: $128,386
- Project manager: $121,237
- Other IT: $114,423
- Business analyst/intelligence analyst: $102,500
- QA engineer/tester: $96,917
- Systems administrator: $93,783
- Data analyst: $83,990
- IT support: $67,746
- Helpdesk technician/computer or desktop support specialist: $57,234
At the same time, salaries and rates of increase vary considerably by specific skill areas. It comes as no surprise that compensation for AI and cloud-related skills is rising quickly. Salaries for people skilled in natural language processing rose 21% over the past year, followed by increases for those with Amazon and AWS-related capabilities.
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Here are the skills that had the largest average salary increases over the past year:
- Natural language processing: $131,621 (+21%)
- AWS CodeWhisperer: $117,821 (+16%)
- Amazon Redshift: $134,103 (+15%)
- BigQuery: $120,434 (+15%)
- COBOL: $130,243 (+15%)
- Ruby: $136,920 (+13%)
- AI: $130,277 (+12%)
- Blockchain: $113,143 (+12%)
- Oracle eBusiness: $121,227 (+12%)
- Application delivery: $123,336 (+11%)
Overall, AI skills command nearly an 18% premium over other tech roles. “We expect to see managers and executives at the top of the salary charts,” the survey authors said. “The arrival of artificial intelligence as a critical business capability is creating another significant compensation disparity within tech roles.”
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The report authors said professionals in senior roles are more likely to be involved in AI work, which partially explains the disparity in salaries.
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Higher job satisfaction
Tech professionals involved in AI initiatives also have “notably higher job satisfaction compared to their counterparts, even when controlling for salary levels,” the Dice team said in their analysis. “This satisfaction gap persists even as non-AI focused roles see salary increases, suggesting that involvement in AI work may offer intangible benefits beyond monetary compensation.”
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The good news is the Dice authors said that high wages aren’t the preserve of AI masters: “Keep in mind that you don’t need to necessarily master the nuances of deep learning; for many in the tech industry, getting a solid handle on prompt engineering is more than enough to unlock the benefits of AI.”
The Goldilocks Zone
The survey also suggests a “Goldilocks Zone” for job hopping – not too frequently, not too static, but a more rewarding middle ground. Professionals who changed jobs six to nine times over their careers showed the highest earning potential, with average salaries reaching approximately $142,000.
Meanwhile, professionals who changed jobs 10 or more times saw a decline in average compensation. The authors said this drop indicates that “excessive job hopping might eventually impact earning potential. Strategic job changes – neither too few nor too many – may be the best pattern for salary growth.”
While perspectives on workplace culture vary, “the sense of improved gender equity and remote work flexibility is reshaping tech workplaces in ways that would have been hard to imagine two decades ago,” the survey’s authors said. “These mixed responses from seasoned tech professionals tell an important story: we are making progress, but there is still work to do.”
