5 Surprising High-Paying IT Jobs

Working in IT offers tremendous opportunities. Speciality-wise, you have numerous choices from AI, development and robotics to cybersecurity, server administration, and analytics. Salary-wise, there are also a lot of options.

Here are five roles that pay surprisingly well that you might want to pursue!

1. QA Engineer

Most people go into software development thinking the only roles are developer or manager, but there's so much more to software teams. All development teams should send their code to quality assurance (QA). There, the QA team tests software code to ensure it meets requirements and no bugs are found before deployment.

QA engineers have become increasingly responsible for implementing test automation coverage to help streamline operations. So, If you're good at finding bugs, and you can put yourself in the user's shoes, you might find QA interesting. Guess what? According to PayScale.com/, a QA engineer can make up to almost $100,000 per year.

2. Security Engineer The cybersecurity industry is desperate for security professionals. Many people understand IT at a superficial level, but it's much more difficult to find someone who understands underlying system security. Both operations and development teams need security experts. The base salary depends on the size of the organization, but according to PayScale.com/, most security experts can make between $87,000 and $125,000 each year.

Pursuing a career in IT security not only can be lucrative, but also challenging and fulfilling. If you like the idea of being a problem solver and saving the day, start honing your skills. We've got plenty of security training to get you going.

3. Data Scientist

The world of IT is increasingly data driven, and as a result, it's led to a bevy of scientific and analytical positions. Data scientists are good at statistics, finding trends, and offering insights based on raw data collected from an application, and they make on average about $91,000 per year according to PayScale.com/.

Data scientists also are popular in marketing and product development organizations. So, if you like analytics, data science could be a great fit for you. Interested in pursuing a career in data science? You'll need a strong foundation in databases. And then you can move into more specific or advanced data technologies such as Hadoop.

4. Product Manager If you have good people skills and understand IT products, then making the move to product manager can be pretty lucrative. Product managers make some of the highest salaries in IT because they drive development and engineering of branded company products. In fact, according to PayScale.com/, the average product manager position starts at about $89,000.

And when you think about it, because they are in charge of everything from development, prototyping, and launch, it's a high-stress position. The good news is that it pays off well for managers who help build successful products.

5. Solutions Architect and Analyst

Companies often know what they want, but they don't know how to get there. Enter solutions architects and analysts. They design and develop systems, and platforms that provide storage, security, and network resources for employees.

You need a good analytical mind and you need to understand how to design a platform that's perfect for each industry. This means that you must understand government guidelines and industry standards for security and storage. It's a rewarding career, especially if you enjoy building networks, servers, and applications from the ground up. According to PayScale.com/, solutions architects can earn up to nearly $174,000!

These are five lucrative IT careers, but there are plenty more to choose from. What makes IT interesting for newcomers is that you have so much to learn and changing your career path isn't difficult. If you can't decide your specialty, you could always consider the careers we just talked about!