by Jeff Yong
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 19: Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Analytics, regarded as in-demand jobs in the digital industry, were the main drivers of salary increases over the past year, says PIKOM, the National ICT Association of Malaysia.
And the top-paying industries for digital talents in Malaysia were that of computer software and hardware, reveals PIKOM’s Economic and Digital Job Market Outlook for 2023.
The outlook, prepared by PIKOM’s research committee under the chairmanship of Woon Tai Hai, shows that the advertised rates of the top paying industry for digital professionals were in computer/information technology (software) at RM14,463 a month.
This was followed by electrical and electronics (RM14,310); contact centre/IT-enabled services/business process outsourcing or BPO (13,619), computer, hardware (RM13,377) while those in oil, gas and petroleum were at RM12,928.
PIKOM also included CEO salaries in 22 industries that showed a range of between RM30,000 amd RM65,000 in basic wages. The highest paying industries for CEOs were in business processing, IT hardware, financial services and banking.
For example, the average monthly salary estimates of CEOs by industry in 2023 showed that those in electrical & electronics earned the highest at RM64,602.
Those working at Call Centre/IT-enabled services /BPO received RM59,920 compared with banking at RM53,135, wholesale/retail/trading at RM32,236 and agriculture/plantations/aquaculture at RM46,417.
As for earned salaries among technology jobs, the Pikom report shows that the overall monthly salaries for solutions architects were way ahead of the other 34 positions and almost doubled the remuneration of the next highest — development operations engineers.
At the highest position level, four other jobs aside from solutions architects and DevOps engineers exceeded the RM10,000 ceiling in monthly salaries: software engineers, network engineers, network administrators and data engineers.
In the managerial category, top earners include senior project managers for IT and senior data scientists. Again, the overall averages of the top two in managerial positions were considerably higher than the other 16 jobs.
At the late career stage, the three jobs in this category with the highest jump in salaries through the years were database administrators, senior software engineers, developers or programmers and project managers for IT.
Salaries of digital talents in cybersecurity have also increased across the board, Pikom explains. At the highest job position level, annual salaries for the chief information security officer (CISO) increased by an estimated 6.2 per cent.
Lower down the scale, a security specialist now takes home an annual average higher by 6.9 per cent over the previous year.
The PIKOM study acknowledges that salaries of jobs in AI and data science showed universal growth, with the highest for software engineers in machine learning, rising on an average of 7.8 per cent.
As for earned salaries of digital talents sourced from Payscale, the study says they were on the average 20 to 30 per cent less than advertised salaries.
Among technology jobs, overall montly salaries for solutions architects were way ahead of 34 other positions and almost double the remuneration of the next highest – development operations engineer.
At the highest position level, four other jobs aside from solutions architects and DevOps engineers exceeded the RM10,000 ceilng in monthly salaries: software engineers, network engineers, network administrators and data engineers.
In a comparison of advertised salaries between 2013 and estimates for 2023 and 2024, the study shows an entry level digital talent would have received RM2,438 10 years ago and would have received RM4,098 this year and RM4,315 next year.
A digital talent junior executive would have received RM3,459 some 10 years ago and RM6,603 by next year while a senior executive would have started at RM5,744 a decade ago and stood to receive RM10,635 next year.
A digital talent manager would have started at RM8,986 some 10 years ago and stood to earn RM17,082 next year.
As for digital talent senior managers, they would have started at RM14,681 a decade ago and would take home RMRM26,619 next year.
The PIKOM report forecasts that the advertised salaries of digital talents were poised for double digit growth of 13.9 per cent in 2023, driven by the 8.7 per cent GDP growth in 2022 but salary growth in 2024 was expected to ease slightly.
The current growth trend was in line with PIKOM’s view that healthy economic growth of the preceding year would translate into more jobs and increase in salaries in the following year, with a lag time of six to 12 months.
A number of factors may have precipitated this outcome, including increased competition for talent workforce, the return of brain-drain after two years of pandemic, the weakening of the ringgit, higher digital transformation in the private sector and greater impetus from more proactive government policies.
–WE