What are the best paying tech jobs to have in 2025?

It’s no secret that IT professionals tend to earn higher salaries than non-IT roles, but not every discipline or role pays the same. That’s why every year, Pluralsight puts together a list of the top paying IT roles broken down by field, role, and experience, so you can get a feel for the hottest careers to potentially chase in 2025.

The list below is created from a meta-analysis of industry research sourced from thousands of tech professionals across the United States, as well as key insights from Pluralsight’s 2025 Tech Forecast Report. Keep in mind that salary ranges will differ significantly depending on your country and state. The figures below are in USD. 

NOTE: For the below charts, Novice means someone starting out in this role (Bottom 25%), professional are those well-adjusted to this role (50%), and Expert is someone who excels in this role and is likely ready to step up into a new position (75%).

For the second year in a row, being an AI Architect pays the most out of any non-executive profession, with seasoned architects making over the $200k mark. This is likely not a surprise for anyone who’s opened a newspaper lately. 

According to Pluralsight’s 2025 Technical Skills Report, only 12% of IT professionals have significant experience working with AI, and four in five AI projects fail due to a lack of internal knowledge and preparation. As a result, we estimate that AI professionals are only going to become more in demand, not less. And, of course, the higher the demand, the greater the bargaining power.

As we predicted last year, cybersecurity is rising in importance among enterprise and public sector organizations. This is for a number of reasons, mostly to do with AI. Threat actors now require less skill to conduct a cyberattack, and can do it at greater scale using AI. On top of that, companies have inadvertently increased their cyber risk exposure by implementing AI (and often poorly), making cybersecurity professionals even more valuable.

We also predict that data and cloud professionals will continue to grow in importance as organizations realize both clean data and a strong, resilient architecture are both key to the success of their AI projects, as well as just empowering them overall. 

Senior software development roles still pay exceptionally well, such as being an application architect, software and applications manager, or senior software engineer. Even as an entry-level software developer, it’s still possible to get that six figure salary, depending on your region.

However, according to Pluralsight’s 2025 Tech Forecast Report, it will be increasingly difficult for junior developers to find roles in the future. This is due to two factors: companies are still hurting post-Covid due to a downturn in customer spending, and AI can be used to substitute for junior developers. The silver lining will be that the lack of junior developers will lead to a shortage in senior developers, making it easier for experienced professionals to find roles.

Cloud computing and networking are literally the foundation of a modern business, and they’re intrinsically connected to other IT fields like AI, cybersecurity, and software development. That means if you’re a master at architecting and working in these environments, you can make a lot of money. 

According to Pluralsight’s 2025 Tech Forecast Report, 85% of organizations have adopted multicloud strategies, but only 9% have multicloud experience, leading to awkward implementations. On top of this, many organizations are stuck with half of their infrastructure in their own data centers and the rest in the cloud. Long story short: there’s a high demand for anyone with experience in multiple cloud technologies and running hybrid environments.

According to the World Economic Forum, there is a global talent shortage of cybersecurity professionals which is predicted to reach 85 million by 2030. As a result, when companies find security professionals, they tend to offer generous salaries.

Only 12% of IT professionals have significant experience working with AI, according to Pluralsight’s 2024 AI Skills Report. Meanwhile, there’s a high level of recognition among executives that they need people with these skills—95% of executives believe AI initiatives will fail without staff who can effectively use AI tools. As such, AI practitioners are in demand, and paid exceptionally well compared to other IT fields.

The need for well-handled data will only grow in 2025 as organizations realize data is the foundation of a successful AI project. Wages are only rising in this space, with data architects sitting at the top in terms of earning capacity.

QA managers naturally make the most out of anyone in the field, followed by IT auditors and automation engineers. We predict QA will become more important as a quality control measure as organizations try to leverage AI in their workflows, and realize they need to thoroughly check their outputs.

Out of all the IT disciplines, IT Ops tends to offer lower salaries, though still favorable compared to non-IT roles. Working on a help desk continues to be seen as an entry point for professionals rather than a long-term career.

If you’re going for the big bucks, you can’t go any higher than the salary of a CIO, which averages over $250k. Note that these are averages, and many C-level executives make a lot more than this depending on their region. They also enjoy many benefits not reflected in these figures.

It is worth pointing out that this chart does not include the Chief AI Officer (CAIO) role, which made our 2024 list of top tech leadership jobs to have. We have omitted it from this list since there are not enough of these roles to have properly averaged statistics, but we believe that will change in the coming years.

The figures above are a meta-analysis of 2024 salary figures from Robert Half and Talent.com, sourced from thousands of respondents (technologists and hiring managers). These included small, midsize and large private, publicly listed, and public sector organizations across the United States. This was supplemented by consulting Pluralsight and World Economic Forum research to establish wider employment trends and market demand.