KEY POINTS:
It's a seller's market out there for information technology skills.
The latest Robert Walters remuneration survey has found a buoyant market for qualified, experienced and skilled candidates, with rates moving up for salaried employees and contractors.
"Clients need to realise the power has shifted over the past two years to the candidate," says Steve Gillingwater, the head of the Robert Walters IT recruitment team.
"If we have a good candidate, they get multiple job offers and it comes down to which client impresses them most.
"They want flexible hours and ongoing training. A lot of them have worked overseas doing huge hours and they've come back for the lifestyle.
"They may be raising families, they may want to work more from home. Clients pander to it."
There is also variation in the amount paid between Auckland and Wellington, with many specialities showing no or only slight increases in the capital.
"It's typical supply and demand, driven by a number of major projects," Gillingwater says.
The starting salary for a chief information officer in the Auckland market is now $150,000, up $10,000 on last year. Smaller Wellington organisations may still pick one up for $120,000. Last year, programme managers fell into the $100,000 to $160,000 range. They're now commanding upwards of $150,000.
Infrastructure and datacentre managers can expect between $100,000 and $130,000 in Auckland.
A project manager with one or two years' experience would be aiming for $75,000 plus and, after five years, more than $110,000.
Business analysts now start on $65,000 and would go up to $110,000. Wellington rates for these sorts of positions tend to be $5000 to $10,000 lower.
There has been an increase in pay for ERP skills in both markets, with ERP business analysts expecting to start on $85,000 and technical consultants on $100,000.
Gillingwater says the big driver there is German business software giant SAP, whose packages are now being implemented in a much wider range of organisations.
"There's SAP projects, upgrades and new installations going on in utilities, local government, telcos and FMCG [fast moving consumer goods] areas," he says.
"I did a poll of my consultants and said: 'If you are looking for one skill, what would it be?' They said 'SAP, those skills are like gold dust'."
He says the market for SAP specialists is also coming under pressure from Australia, especially in the mining sector, where there are some major implementations.
"Some guys are getting $1500 a day over there. It's difficult to retain staff in those conditions."
Salaries at the higher level are a reflection that IT is an international market and high pay is needed to attract people from overseas or retain them here.
At the lower level, migration has actually put a dampener on some rates, with starting pay for help desk and desktop support staff still around the $40,000 to $50,000 mark, depending on experience.
"A lot of migrants coming into the country want work experience and they take entry level roles," Gillingwater says.
Starting pay for .Net and Java developers has shot up from $35,000 to $50,000, a reflection of the amount of project work on, with experienced developers able to command more than $100,000. Gillingwater says the demand tends to be for Microsoft rather than Unix or open source skills, because of the stronger presence Microsoft technologies have in the business software environment in this country compared with overseas.
"A lot of clients are moving from Unix because of the support costs."
He says for those organisations running Unix boxes, Sun's Solaris accounts for more than 90 per cent of sites.
Some occupations, such as developing and testing, are now dominated by contractors, as people with those skills exert their market power.
The top hourly rate for a developer has gone up to $100, and an experienced tester would be pushing for $80 an hour.
Contract rates for experienced database administrators are running at $70 to $100 plus an hour, and a security specialist may also command $100 an hour.
Gillingwater says the IT recruitment market changes quickly, as major projects can affect the supply of different skill sets.
"This survey would already be out of date in some areas. If I was requiring staff, I would review my rates every six months," he says.
