Growing up, my vision of the future was shaped by Disney channel original movies. Unfortunately Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century wasn’t as prescient as my childhood brain hoped it would be. But Smart House, the movie about a family whose entire life is enhanced (then taken over) by technology, was pretty spot on. From entertainment to healthcare, it’s hard to think of an area of our lives that hasn’t been touched by technology in the years since I watched Zenon save the space station from a flash-animatedcomputer virus and rock out with Proto Zoa.
So the salaries above have piqued your interest—how do you get some of that in your bank account? It should come as no surprise that positions like CTO and principal software engineer are unlikely to be your first stop in tech. So how do you get on the path to the highest-paying positions?
We’ve got descriptions of the highest-paying tech career paths—leading to the highest-paid jobs—below. Keep in mind that for any of these job functions, you can also choose to specialize in a certain type of tech—such as cybersecurity, web development, cloud computing, hardware, video games, or databases just to name a few.
1. Software engineering
Software engineers and developers write computer code, which is the backbone of all things tech. The code they create is used to build or update applications, websites, or other technical programs and tools. If you love solving problems and working as part of a team, software engineering may be a good fit for you. In addition to being one of the highest-paid jobs in tech on its own, working as a software engineer is a stepping stone to more senior positions that pay even more, whether you want to manage people, have more technical and creative input on products, or master a specific type of coding, for example.
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2. Systems administration
While engineers and developers write the code that dictates what any given tech does, IT (information technology) professionals, like systems administrators (sometimes called sysadmins) make sure that the code is running correctly, a company’s hardware and networks are functioning properly, and users can access the company’s tech and all its features. Sysadmins may be responsible for setting up hardware and software, troubleshooting issues for employees or customers, optimizing performance, and maintaining security. Network administrators and database administrators are similar to sysadmins, but they unsurprisingly focus on networks and databases respectively.
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3. DevOps
Short for development operations, “DevOps is a set of practices revolving around bringing software development and IT operations closer together, ideally within a single team,” according to Muse writer and software engineer Joy Ebertz. There are a wide variety of DevOps jobs, but most will include some aspect of both coding and IT operations. For example, a DevOps engineer may be responsible for identifying ways that a tech company’s product could operate better and coding a fix for that issue.
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4. Systems architecture
You’re probably familiar with the architects who design buildings and other offline structures. In a similar fashion, systems architects conceive of, plan, implement, and manage the different computer systems and networks that admins oversee. For example, systems architects might design a database that securely and efficiently stores a company’s data, figure out how all the components of a new application will fit together, or be responsible for managing and overseeing the servers of a tech company.
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5. Data science
For better or worse, we’ve all had those times when we thought about how some product might be cool to maybe consider possibly buying sometime and then had an ad for that product pop into our social mediafeeds. This happens because tech companies have massive amounts of data (and not all if it is used this creepily!). Data science professionals are the ones who figure out the best ways to collect, track, analyze, and use this data to answer questions and solve problems for businesses in the tech sector and beyond.
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6. Project management
Project managers plan, coordinate, and oversee initiatives from start to finish—and tons of them work in tech. They’re responsible for using resources—including budget, time, and other tech workers—in the best way possible to reach goals and build new features and products while taking into account the input of stakeholders across a company or even among multiple companies. They also ensure a project stays on track and respond to changes and issues along the way. Some project management professionals, like Scrum masters, focus on the more technical aspects of a project using certain methodologies.
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7. IT and computer support
Technical support specialists maintain systems and help users with hardware, software, network, and other technical issues. Some support workers focus on helping coworkers—think of the colleague you call when your computer keeps freezing or left your laptop charger at home (guilty!). Other technical support workers help clients of a company over the phone, in a text chat, or even in person.
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8. Quality assurance
Those who work in quality assurance test and analyze technical products to identify issues and ensure they’re working properly. They identify risks and bugs so that they can be fixed before they affect users. They’re also responsible for identifying what’s causing issues, but if you like the idea of using tech knowledge to intentionally break things, QA could be for you (but, you know, remember the ultimate goal is to make those things you’re trying to break better).
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9. Systems analysis
Like the name implies, systems analysts monitor and evaluate different technical systems to look for issues, vulnerabilities, and areas for improvement. They may also work with other parts of a company to come up with requirements and figure out how new products or initiatives fit into an existing network, tech stack, or other system.
As with many of the careers on the list, you can specialize in certain kinds of analysis, but one of growing importance is information security. Information security analysts make sure that an organization’s network and software are secure and that any private information belonging to the company, their clients, or their customers can’t be hacked. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that the demand for information security analysts will grow 35% over the next 10 years—compared to 5% for all occupations and 15% for all computer occupations.
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10. Design
Put simply, designers are responsible for how things look. A graphic designer might create logos, layouts, templates and the other visual elements for anything from marketing campaigns to software products. There’s also user experience design (or UX design) which specifically focuses on creating interfaces that make it easy and intuitive to use a piece of technology.
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