ZDNet Asia IT Salary Benchmark 2012

With the global economy in uncertain times due to the situations in North America and Europe, ZDNet Asia conducted its annual online survey to look into how macroeconomic factors have impacted employment trends and the accompanying pay packet IT professionals here have been getting.

A total of 945 IT executives from seven Asia-Pacific markets were polled between March 2011 and March 2012, with job functions varying from administrators and support to IT management and systems development. The countries surveyed include Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, China, India, Philippines, and Indonesia.

Besides salary trends, the survey also zoomed in on areas such as which IT certifications are most sought after as well as how certain IT skills, job functions, and years of experience affect the overall value of an IT professional within the industry.

Hong Kong continued to stay ahead of its regional counterparts in terms of average annual salary earned, topping the list at US$76,672 and representing an increase from 2010's US$63,990. Malaysia came in at second with US$23,562, which is an improvement from the US$20,612 registered two years' back.

At the other end of the spectrum, Indonesia's IT professionals earned an average of US$9,884 while the Philippines placed just above them with US$10,981.

The average annual salary across the seven Asian markets came up to US$25,530.

As for average annual salaries according to job function, IT management executives in Hong Kong were the highest paid at US$106,029, followed by their project management counterparts at US$78,747, the survey showed. It also meant nothing has changed since 2010, when both job functions came up tops then too.

Communications executive in Indonesia were the lowest paid at US$1,736, with the next lowest paid job in Indonesia's administration sector in which professionals earned US$4,728, it noted.

"Positive" hiring outlook in Singapore
While Singapore was not featured in ZDNet Asia's survey, recruitment agency Robert Walters' annual global salary survey for 2012 pointed out that the highest paid role in the country's IT sector belonged to the Chief Information Officer or Chief Technology Officer, who received an average of between S$320,000 (US$256,373) and over S$400,000 (US$320,467). This figure is likely to remain the same over the course of 2012, it noted.

By contrast, the lowest-paid job in the market is helpdesk and desktop support professionals with five or more years' of experience, the Robert Walters survey showed. They received between S$40,000 (US$32,046) and S$60,000 (US$48,070) in 2011.

It also predicted a "positive" IT hiring outlook for 2012, particularly for professionals with prior experience in managing large-scale projects focusing on development or infrastructure as companies here look to implement significant transformation programs such as the moving of central data.

"We anticipate that certain issues such as data security and storage, virtualization and cloud computing will continue to be key concerns for employers and there will also be active hiring in these areas," the agency said.