Being a tech professional is a good career with plenty of high-paying jobs.
But it’s an ever-changing job market. One day a skill is hot and the next it’s not.
Tech-job-hunting site Dice.com recently published its 2015 Salary Survey, which named the highest-paying tech skills. Dice surveyed 23,470 IT professionals in the fall of 2014 to come up with this list.
Of course, skills alone won’t always lead to a high salary. Work experience counts, too.
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No. 30: RDBMS is worth $114,100
RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) is the full-jargon term for the thing otherwise known as a database.
This is the traditional kind of database that uses the structured query language (SQL) used by databases like Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and IBM DB2.
While noSQL databases are growing extremely popular for new applications, most companies still use this kind of database to their most-important business apps.
There are currently over 1,300 job listings on Dice for RDBMS-related jobs.
No. 29: JDBC is worth $114,234
JDBC is a Java-based technology from Oracle. It helps a database connect to an app written in the Java programming language.
Java is a super popular language for writing apps, so lots of skills associated with it pay well and this is one of those skills.
Pay for JDBC-associated jobs has climbed 11 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 880 job listings for it.
No 28: Sqoop is worth $114,328
Sqoop is one of those skills that has zoomed into popularity thanks to the big data craze.
It’s a free and open source tool that lets you transfer data from popular big-data storage system, Hadoop, into classic relational databases like the ones made by Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.
It’s a command-line interface tool, meaning you have to know the commands and type them directly into the system, rather than click on them with a mouse.
Pay for Sqoop-associated jobs has climbed 24.5 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 220 job listings for it.
No. 27: UML is worth $114,372
Software today is really complicated.
Enter the Unified Modeling Language (UML). This is a visual language for turning complex software designs into an easier-to-understand diagram.
Pay for UML-associated jobs has climbed 6.5 percent over last year, Dice says, and there are currently over over 1,300 job listings on Dice for it.
No 26: Documentum is worth $114,494
EMC Documentum is an “enterprise content management” system, meaning it lets enterprises store and search for all kinds of documents.
While big-data options like Hadoop are the new-age way of dealing with data, Documentum remains a popular tool in industries that still use a lot of paper or electronic forms, like legal, medical, insurance, and so on.
Dice has over 140 job listings for Documentum-related jobs.
No. 25: Arista is worth $114,657
Arista makes a computer network switch used in big data centers.
Its claim to fame is its operating system software which users can program to add features, write apps or make changes to the network.
Dice has over 50 job listings for Arista-related jobs.
No. 24: OmniGraffle is worth $114,667
OmniGraffle is a diagramming tool just for Macs – like the Mac version of Microsoft Visio.
It may seem odd that knowing this tool could be something wanted in a $110,000 job. But it’s also a popular tool for complex diagramming tasks like website wireframes and graphic design.
Pay for OmniGraffle-associated jobs has climbed 3.3 percent over last year, Dice says, and there are currently over 120 job listings on Dice for it.
No. 23: CloudStack is worth $115,043
Cloud computing is a big trend and there’s a battle over the different “cloud operating systems.”
Several of them are free and open source, but they’re mostly built by vendors who want to sell a commercial version along with cloud computing software or equipment.
One such example is CloudStack, run by the Apache Software Foundation (keeper of many open source projects) and backed by Citrix, who sells a commercial version of it.
Pay for CloudStack-associated jobs has climbed 24 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 70 job listings for it.
No. 22: R is worth $115,121
Above: This Mandelbrot image was written in R.
At the center of the massive new tech field called “big data” is something called “analytics,” the ability to sift through the data to answer questions and create graphs or charts.
R is the language of choice for that sort of thing, for statistical analysis and graphics/visualization. As such it is seeing a huge surge in popularity.
Although pay for R-associated jobs didn’t climb over what R programmers earned last year, Dice has over 1,180 job listings for it.
No. 21: CMMI is worth $115,467
CMMI is a sophisticated method for performance management. It helps companies predict costs, create schedules, and ensure quality.
There’s a whole CMMI culture that can train someone on the CMMI models and how to use them.
Pay for CMMI-associated jobs has climbed 8.4 percent over last year, Dice says, and there are currently over 740 job listings on Dice for it.
No. 20: OpenStack is worth $116,047
Above: OpenStack
Another free and open source cloud computing operating system is OpenStack and by most accounts, it’s the one that’s winning.
Many vendors are supporting it and selling their own commercial versions of it, such as IBM, HP, Red Hat, Ubuntu, lots of others.
Pay for OpenStack-associated jobs has climbed 8.5 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 520 job listings for it.
No. 19: Big data is worth $116,414
Above: CEOs of big data startups
Big data is the buzzy term for a new kind of software that analyzes large volumes of data.
It can handle massive amounts of information in all sorts of formats — tweets, posts, e-mails, documents, audio, video, whatever.
There are a growing number of technologies that make up the “big data world” including all sorts of analytics, in-memory databases, NoSQL databases, Hadoop and so on. Startups, big tech vendors, companies big and small are all jumping on the big data craze.
Pay for big data-associated jobs has climbed 9.3 percent over last year, Dice says. It has nearly 35,000 job listings for it.
No. 18: Data scientist is worth $116,936
A data scientist used to be called a “data analyst” but thanks to the big data trend, this job is bigger and more in demand.
There are data scientists that work on the tech side, the marketing side, and just about every other area of business these days, and in just about every size company.
The job involves figuring out how to get meaningful numbers and information from large volumes of data.
Dice has nearly 33,000 listings for data scientist jobs.
No. 17: Solr is worth $117,394
Above: Apache Solr
Solr is a free and open-source enterprise search platform that is extremely popular with large websites.
Some of its users include eHarmony, StubHub, and BestBuy, plus many others.
Dice has over 400 job listings for Solr-related jobs.
No. 16: Data Architect is worth $118,104
A data architect is another in-demand job thanks to the big data craze.
It involves designing the IT systems that store the data, including figuring out which data a company keeps, how long, how, where, what business units get access to it, and so on.
Dice has over 36,500 job listings for data architect-related jobs.
No. 15: SOA is worth $118,518
SOA is actually an old term for a software concept that’s grown more popular thanks to cloud computing.
It stands for “service-oriented architecture” and pracitioners of it write their code in small bites, making little “services” that can be shared among multiple apps. Instead of every cloud app needing its own way of dealing with passwords, for instance, a “password service” can be shared by many.
Pay for SOA-associated jobs has climbed 8.7 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 3,600 job listings for it.
No. 14: Zookeeper is worth $118,567
Above: Apache Zookeeper
Zookeeper is a free and open-source project that also came from the big data craze, particularly the uber popular tech called Hadoop.
Hadoop is a way to store all kinds of data across many low-cost computer servers. Zookeeper is like a file system, a way to name, locate, and sync files used in Hadoop. But now it’s being used with other big-data technologies beyond Hadoop.
Pay for Zookeeper-associated jobs has climbed 21 percent over last year, Dice says. It has nearly 200 job listings for it.
No. 13: NoSQL is worth $118,587
Above: Couchbase CEO Bob Wiederhold
NoSQL is a new kind of database that is part of the big data phenomenon.
NoSQL has sometimes been called the cloud database. Regular databases need data to be organized. Names and account numbers need to be structured and labeled. But noSQL doesn’t care about that. It can work with all kinds of documents.
There are a number of popular noSQL databases including Mongo, Couchbase and Cassandra.
Pay for noSQL-associated jobs has climbed 3.3 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 1,850 job listings for it.
No. 12: Puppet is worth $120,072
Above: Puppet Labs founder and chief executive Luke Kanies
Puppet is “IT automation” software from Puppet Labs, one of a handful of young companies ushering in a huge new tech trend called “DevOps.”
DevOps is when the developers creating software (“dev”) and the teams responsible for deploying that software (“ops) use speedy techniques so they can deploy technology as fast as it’s released. Puppet helps them automate tasks that keep computer servers running efficiently.
Pay for Puppet-associated jobs has climbed 15.5 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 1,300 job listings for it.
No. 11: Hive is worth $120,873
Above: Hive
Hive is yet another skill in high demand because of the big data craze and the popularity of a tech called Hadoop.
Hadoop is a way to store all kinds of data across many low-cost computer servers. Hive provides a way to extract information from Hadoop using the same kind of traditional methods used by regular databases. (In geek speak: it gives Hadoop a database query interface).
Pay for Hive-associated jobs has climbed 17.6 percent over last year, Dice says. It has nearly 800 job listings for it.
No. 10: Hadoop is worth $121,313
Above: Doug Cutting, who created Hadoop while at Yahoo, now works for Cloudera
Hadoop is a super important technology at the center of the whole “big data” craze.
Hadoop is open source software used to gather and store vast amounts of data and analyze it on low-cost commodity hardware. For instance, banks may use Hadoop for fraud detection, and online shopping services could use it to analyze customers’ buying patterns.
Pay for Hadoop-associated jobs has climbed 11.6 percent over last year, Dice says, and there are currently over 2,220 job listings on Dice for it.
No. 9: Flume is worth $123,186
Above: Flume
Flume is yet another skill spawned from the “big data” craze and the popularity of Hadoop.
Hadoop is a way to store all kinds of data across many low-cost computer servers. Flume is a method to move massive amounts of data from the place it was created into a Hadoop system.
Dice has over 150 job listings for Flume-related jobs.
No. 8: Chef is worth $123,458
Above: Chef Software chief executive Barry Crist
Chef is “IT automation” software from Chef Software, one of a handful of young companies ushering in a huge new tech trend called “DevOps.”
DevOps is when the developers building applications (“dev”) and IT people deploying them (operations or “ops”) work together to use speedy techniques so they can deploy technology as fast as it’s released. Chef helps IT professionals automate tasks that keep computer servers running efficiently.
Dice has over 1,200 Chef-associated job listings.
No. 7: ABAP is worth $124,262
Above: SAP founder and chairman Hasso Plattner
ABAP stands for the “Advanced Business Application Programming” and it’s the software language developed by SAP used for building business applications on top of SAP’s software.
SAP makes a very popular suite of financial applications and its been pushing into mobile apps and the database market. Businesses often want to write custom apps that make use of the data stored in SAP. Developers also write commercial apps for SAP.
Pay for ABAP-associated jobs has climbed 24 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 450 job listings for it.
No. 6: Pig is worth $124,563
Above: Pig
Pig is another hot skill thanks to the “big data” craze and the popularity of a tech called Hadoop.
As we’ve mentioned, Hadoop is a way to store all kinds of data across many low-cost computer servers. Pig is a programming language that lets you extract information from Hadoop find answers to questions or otherwise use the data.
Pay for Pig-associated jobs has climbed 13 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 570 job listings for it.
No. 5: HBase is worth $126,369
Above: HBase
HBase is yet another project based on the popular Hadoop technology.
Hadoop is a way to store all kinds of data across many low-cost computer servers. Once that data is stored using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), Hbase can sort through that data and group bits of data together, somewhat similar to how a traditional database organizes data.
Pay for HBase-associated jobs has climbed 20 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 660 job listings for it.
No. 4: Cloudera is worth $126,816
Cloudera is a company that makes a commercial version of Hadoop.
Although Hadoop is a free and open-source-project for storing large amounts of data on inexpensive computer servers, the free version of Hadoop is not easy to use. Several companies have created friendlier versions of Hadoop, and Cloudera is arguably the most popular one.
Pay for Cloudera-associated jobs has climbed 20 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 200 job listings for it.
No. 3: MapReduce is worth $127,315
MapReduce has been called “the heart of Hadoop.”
MapReduce is the method that allows Hadoop to store all kinds of data across many low-cost computer servers. To get meaningful data of Hadoop, a programmer writes software programs (often in the popular language, Java) for MapReduce.
Pay for MapReduce-associated jobs has climbed 11 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 500 job listings for it.
No. 2: Cassandra is worth $128,646
Above: Prashant Malik, creator of Cassandra
Cassandra is a free and open source “noSQL” database.
That’s a kind of database that can handle and store data of different types and sizes of data and it’s increasingly the go-to database for mobile and cloud applications. Apple uses Cassandra in a big way to store over 10 petabytes of data. Netflix uses it, too, among many others.
Pay for Cassandra-associated jobs has climbed 14.5 percent over last year, Dice says. It has over 780 job listings for it.
No. 1: PaaS is worth $130,081
PaaS, or “Platform as a Service”, is a type of cloud computing. It hosts everything a developer needs to write an app, which, once written, would live on that PaaS cloud.
It’s a huge trend right now in app development, with every big tech vendor, every hosting company, and every maker of app development tools looking for game in the PaaS market.
Dice has over 370 listings for PaaS-related jobs.
This story originally appeared on Www.businessinsider.com. Copyright 2015
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