The certifications and other credentials after tech professionals’ names often resemble alphabet soup, making it difficult to determine which skills matter most. To an employer, certifications and skills mean having a worker who can meet challenges head-on. For employees, those letters can mean big increases in salary. A survey from Global Knowledge found that 83 percent of IT professionals in the U.S. and Canada hold an IT certification — and in the U.S. the average salary for a certified IT professional is on average $8,400 (or 11.7 percent) higher. The following tech skills and certifications can give you a robust resume and a bigger paycheck:
Top-Paying Tech Certifications
- Certified Information Security Manager (CISM): $128,156
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate: $125,091
- Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA): $115,471
- Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC): $111,470
- Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP): $109,650
Top-Paying Tech Skills
- Software Engineers Using Java: $168,000
- HBase: $123,934
- Cassandra: $123,459
- Apache Kafka: $122,728
- Structural Query Language (SQL): $110,000
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