Highest paying ISP jobs in SA
Software developers, networking professionals and virtualization experts are not only the most desired professionals in the South Africa Internet Service Provider (ISP) industry, but also earn the highest salaries.
It is well known that IT skills are not easy to find in South Africa. We asked some of South Africa’s top ISPs which skills are most in-demand and which IT professionals take home the most money.
Afrihost director Greg Payne said that they are battling to find suitably skilled software developers, system administrators, experienced call centre agents, social media experts and experienced managers. Payne expects these skills to remain in high demand for the next few years.
Afrihost’s highest paid staff members are software developers, system administrators and managers – a clear indication of the value of technical skills.
Web Africa’s HR manager, Cherzaan Perumal, said that engineering and development skills are hard to find, and expects the shortage in developers to last for a few more years.
When it comes to the best paid IT professionals, Perumal said that the engineers are earning the most, followed closely by developers.
Cybersmart CEO Laurie Fialkov said that they find it challenging to recruit skilled call centre staff who are familiar with using custom software.
Like Web Africa and Afrihost, Cybersmart also struggles to find skilled software developers. This, Fialkov said, is aggravated by the fact that they opted for Perl as a programming language.
“We made the mistake of choosing a programming language (Perl) which no longer enjoys the same kind of following as other languages such as PHP,” said Fialkov.
Fialkov predicts that there will be a massive demand for professionals with skills in cloud services and virtualization in the next few years.
“This (cloud computing) is the ‘new thing’ – similar to having a MCSE a few years ago. If someone wants to work themselves up into any kind of managerial position, they need these skills as part of their technical portfolio,” said Fialkov.
Considering Cybersmart’s challenges it is not surprising that the highest earners in the company are network design and routing professionals, software developers, and of course their virtualization expert.
“The guy that does virtualization trumps both software developers and networking professionals because this skill set is virtually non-existent in South Africa,” said Fialkov.
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