Wellington IT pros… What are YOU earning?

The first half of the year saw certain areas in demand in Wellington in IT, widely renowned as the tech capital of New Zealand.

According to recent Robert Walters' findings, these included business analysts, project managers and architects, while technical roles were less busy.

This was due to the fact that many projects were in the planning stages.

Similar to that of Auckland, there was high demand for skills in Windows 7/8 upgrades, security and privacy consulting and integration delivery.

"Outsourcing and the continued move to cloud solutions was also a key trend in the first half of the year, particularly in the infrastructure and testing fields," reports Adam Barratt, Manager, IT Wellington.

"Cloud solutions were generally more cost effective and helped to drive efficiencies.

Looking forward…

Barratt says a common theme in the recruitment market during the last six months was the impending election, which meant some larger and higher risk projects were put on hold.

In the next six months, he believes there will be continued need for integration specialists across Government, as there is still a lot of work to be done in consolidating systems and applications from the merger of a number of ministries and departments.

"Permanent business analysts are increasingly tough to come by, with the contract market being so strong," he adds.

"There is also a distinct shortage of experienced enterprise and solutions architects, particularly in the applications space due to the fact that lots of projects are still in the planning stages and in desperate need of these kinds of skills.

"In terms of salaries, we are seeing technical roles such as developers, engineers and testers hold reasonably steady, with the high-demand areas of business analysis and architecture seeing an increase of around 10-15%.

Key trends…

• The market will be fairly quiet prior to the election, with things picking up for the last quarter of the year

• There will be an increase in technical roles, as the first half of the year was busy for those skills that shape and plan project delivery

• There will also be a continued trend towards improved information management strategies using Cloud, data centers and electronic document management systems

Earnings…

According to the findings, for those working in Wellington on a permanent salary, here is a brief rundown of the forecast salary expectations for 2014:

ICT:

• Chief Information Officer 150 - 250k

• Chief Technology Officer 140 - 190k

• Enterprise Architect 140 - 180k

• Programme Manager 135 - 175k

• Manager - Development 100 - 140k

• Solution Architect - Infrastructure/Applications 110 - 140k

• Release Manager 100 - 125k

• Project Manager 90 - 140k

• Security Specialist 90 - 130k

• Business Analyst 90 - 125k

• Manager - Service Desk 75 - 95k

Development/Testing:

• Senior BI Specialist 90 - 120k

• UX Developer 90 - 125k

• Web Developer 70 - 90k

• Developer- .Net, Java 70 - 120k

• Test Analyst 60 - 100k

Infrastructure:

• Database Administrator 75 - 120k

• Network Engineer 65 - 120k

• Systems Administrator 65 - 90k

• Service Desk/Desktop/Apps Support 55 - 85k