A data analyst has revealed how he landed a $50,000 pay rise – as the tech sector faces a huge labor shortage.
Dulitha Piyasena, 32, quit his job at Bank of Queensland and is now making more than $200,000 a year after being poached from Queensland University of Technology as a senior data analyst earlier this year.
He arrived in Australia five years ago on a salary of $85,000 – meaning his salary is up 135 per cent since 2017.
Mr. Piyasena is a former engineer who graduated with a Masters in Data Science. He is now a permanent resident on his way to citizenship.
“The demand has always been there, but with COVID-19 restrictions and people returning to their home countries, it’s only grown,” he said Australian Financial Report.
His huge raise comes as the tech sector struggles to fill vacancies.
According to the Australian Computer Society, 1.2 million Australians will be employed in the sector within five years – but it still faces a projected shortage of 280,000 workers.
Dulitha Piyasena, 32, quit his job at the Bank of Queensland and is now making more than $200,000 a year after being poached from Queensland University of Technology
“We will clearly miss demand,” said new ACS CEO Chris Vein.
“The domestic pipeline just doesn’t produce enough tech talent. We need over 60,000 new tech workers annually to meet demand, but we only produce 10,000 tech graduate and postgraduate graduates each year.
“Theoretically we would try to fill that gap with foreign talent, but we can’t do that and we might not be able to catch up two, three or five years. Australia competes with the US, Israel and every other country in the world for that talent.”
The ACS also revealed that the federal government is struggling to find anywhere near the 1,900 cyber experts it needs for the new $10 billion Project REDSPICE program.
The project aims to double the size of the country’s top cybersecurity agency and help Australia compete in cyber warfare with other nations like Russia and China.
Normally the sector sees skilled migrants fill vacancies but Covid has seen this stutter leading to the high salaries.
Mr. Piyasena’s $50,000 raise appears to be the new threshold for the deal.
This week Shell announced it was forced to decommission its floating LNG ship Prelude after workers making more than $200,000 a year turned down an offer for a $30,000 pay rise.
The ACS report, prepared for Digital Pulse by Deloitte Access Economics, found that wages for technology workers grew 10.4 percent between 2019 and 2022, matching the 6.9 percent wage growth for non-ICT occupations have surpassed.
The ACS said a senior .NET/Java developer in Sydney can expect to make between $120,000 and $170,000 a year before retirement — a jump of up to 28 percent from last year.
According to the Australian Computer Society, 1.2 million Australians will be employed in the sector within five years – but it still faces a projected shortage of 280,000 workers, pushing up wages
Meanwhile, a tech network admin in Melbourne can earn around $130,000 a year on average, up 34 percent.
The ACS has called for a $100 million program to help schools improve students’ digital literacy and raise awareness of tech careers.
And the ACS has also proposed a business tax credit of up to $10,000 per employee for vocational technology training.
Boards are also increasingly considering using employee share plans to encourage workers to invest in a company’s long-term success in an attempt to stem the spiraling wages.
