Top-Paying Tech Jobs: Walk In the Door, Get $90K or More

It's no secret that skilled professionals in key IT job roles draw a much bigger salary than people from many other walks of workplace life. Businesses and other organizations are eagerly competing for certain computer and data skills in 2015 and will pay handsomely for the right line items on your resume. What may be a little stunning, however, is just how richly some skills are compensated.

This week a report popped through at Business Insider UK that runs down 14 IT job titles with average base salaries of more than $90,000. Come again? Suddenly that 50 large you're getting to take phone calls and tell people where to find the power switch probably feels a little like flipping burgers at McDonald's. What's more, there are literally thousands of such high-cheddar jobs available.

For example, if you've got the skills to work as a Software Engineer, then there are more than 90,000 listings on job search sites, with an average base salary of $96,392. There are considerably fewer opening for Computer Hardware Engineers (just 1,264), but the average base salary is even sweeter: How would you like to take home $101,154 per year?

The top dogs in IT, at least by this particular measure, are Software Architects. There are presently more than 3,000 jobs available, and the avaerage annual salary is $130,891. That's offset at the bottom of the list by Sales Engineers, who can only expect to pull down $90,899. Interestingly, there aren't all that many more openings, with just 5,508 jobs presently available.

A lot of the top money goes to managers — Product Manager ($113,959), IT Manager ($115,642), Analytics Manager ($115,725) and Software Development Manager ($123,747) are all exceptional options. And of course Security Engineers ($102,749) and Data Scientists ($105,395) are highly sought after.

There's certain to be competition for many, if not most such high-paying positions, so if you've been waiting for a good reason to pursue that next certification, this could be it. You might need to stack up a couple of certs just to get your name in the mix.

For those wondering where the data originated, the Business Insider feature references a list compiled by job search service Glassdoor. Being in the employment referral business, Glassdoor doesn't just list the job titles and average compensation, either. You can jump straight through to actual employments listings and start flashing your resume like a college student at a career fair.

It's also worth noting that job listings at online sites are sometimes double-posted, expired, and so forth. So there may not be quite as many actual openings as there seem to be. Still, if you're a skilled IT pro and you're in search of employment, then there are plenty of places to at least start looking.