News

Open Source Tech Dominates Top Paying Skills

• By David Ramel
• January 26, 2016

Cloud and Big Data tech skills still pay off the most, according to the latest salary survey from careers site Dice.com, with open source technologies dominating the 2015 list.

Completely contrary to that notion, though, is the No. 1 top paying skill: HANA, a proprietary in-memory platform for data analytics from SAP. Listed in the "Databases" category, HANA skills provide the top average salary of $154,749.

Beyond that, though, the top 10 list is chock full of open source technologies, ranging from OpenStack and CloudStack in the "Cloud" category to a bevy of Big Data-related skills, such as MapReduce, Pig, Cassandra and Cloudera.

The top 10 list is:

Some might take exception to the classifications, as Chef is kind of a joke as an "esoteric" programming language, but is a perfectly serviceable configuration management tool, as is Puppet.

Among "real" programming languages, Tcl is said to be the top paying skill, coming in at No. 11 ahead of more likely candidates such as R, the new Big Data darling that was even edged out by the ancient Fortran.

Dice said HANA, OpenStack, CloudStack and Puppet made its Top 10 list for the first time.

Other highlights of the report listed by Dice include:

• The average tech bonus in the U.S. rose 7 percent year/year to $10,194.
• Contract rates rose to $70.26 per hour.
• Silicon Valley tech professionals were again the highest paid, earning $118,243 (+5 percent yr/yr).
• Seven other markets hit six figures for the first time ever: New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Baltimore/Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and Portland, Ore.
• 67 percent of tech professionals believe they could find a favorable new position in the year ahead.

"The wage hikes paint a picture of an overall solid environment for technology professionals with 62 percent earning higher salaries in 2015," Dice said today in a statement. "Almost half of respondents reported a salary increase as a result of upward mobility at the same company, with 38 percent receiving a merit increase and 10 percent receiving an internal promotion. The second most common reason for a rise in salary was a result of the professional changing employers (23 percent)."