Barcelona, the city with the highest salaries for technology professionals
Technological professionals in Barcelona
Barcelona has become the city that offers the highest salaries for technology professionals, according to the Tech Cities study conducted by Experis IT, the company of the Manpower group specialized in the sector, with a difference of around 5% compared to Madrid, and more than 20% compared to the rest of the Spanish capitals.
According to José Manuel Mas, general director of Experis, “the difference between the salaries of Madrid and Barcelona compared to the rest of Spain is typical and has been maintained for decades, but in recent months a difference has been consolidated in favor of Barcelona, which It occurs although there is more demand for professionals in the capital, because there are the headquarters of large companies, which are the engines of employment in the sector. ”
Less attractive power
The salary difference in favor of Barcelona has occurred, in his opinion, because there has coincided an increase in the demand for professionals in the Catalan capital, by the growing fabric of technology companies and start-ups, with a lower arrival of professionals from the rest from Spain, that the attraction of international professionals does not compensate.
“In Spain there are very good faculties and technological schools, but students who end up prefer to go to work in Madrid, rather than Barcelona, because of the geographical centrality. The political situation has accentuated this phenomenon, reinforcing their perception that here they may have problems with the language, for example, even if it is not true. ” Barcelona, on the other hand, attracts many more foreign professionals than Madrid, but they are not enough.
“There is more shortage of talent in Barcelona, especially in niche professionals such as SAP and advanced data analytics” notes the Experis study. This situation harms the small Catalan technology companies, acknowledged Domingo Ruiz, founder and general manager of Adtel engineering. Local firms, says Ruiz, can not compete with large companies or multinationals, because they operate with much smaller margins. “While the projects are systematically bid downward, the shortage of engineers and programmers puts pressure on us,” he admits.
High salaries harm the competitiveness of local companies
Experis explains that companies are taking measures to stop this cost inflation, for example by using teleworking to have professionals in other cities cooperating in centralized projects in Madrid or Barcelona. Or opening work centers in medium-sized cities with good schools. This is the case, for example of Seidor: the firm, which has offices in 19 medium-sized Spanish cities, has opened a cloud technology center in Valencia, in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of that city and a R & D laboratory in Vic , where the company has its headquarters, in collaboration with the University of Vic. As explained by a spokesperson
of the company, “in this sector, where we have a chronic shortage of qualified personnel, implanted in locations far away from Madrid and Barcelona, but in university environments that generate talent, we are able to hire staff
what we need with less competition. ”
The use of teleworking by IT professionals and the decentralization of teams, and the increase of students in technological careers, attracted by good professional opportunities, has meant that salaries in the sector, in general, have not skyrocketed, explains Experis. But in some specialties, where demand has increased a lot, salaries have grown much higher than those of the rest of the workers.
The largest salary increases
Manpower developed its first Tech Cities study in the fall of 2016 and since then until the end of 2017 the highest salary increases have taken place in mobile technology experts (they charge an average of 38,000 euros per year, 26% more than 15 months ago), in cybersecurity (with 47,000 euros, earn 20% more), and experts in SAP (45,000 euros, 10% more). The Experis study points out that these are average salaries, but that for highly specialized professional profiles they can exceed 70,000 euros per year, without even treating them as “senior” professionals with managerial positions.
“There are positions for which the demand has been triggered” -recores Mas, and highlights especially the experts in digital transformation, known as “DevOps”: according to the study of Experis, analyzing 30,000 job offers, the demand has doubled in the last year. The demand for cybersecurity experts has also grown strongly, following the waves of computer attacks last year, as well as experts in cloud computing and the SAP business management system. For this last profile, in which demand for the migration of these systems to the cloud has skyrocketed, most professionals are needed in Barcelona.
The improvement of the labor market has not only been reflected in wages: it has also temporary contracts, projects or ETT in favor of stable contracting by the company itself, which now accounts for more than 90% of the recruitment of the sector. Difficulties to fill vacancies Engineering and technology professions monopolize jobs more difficult to cover by Spanish companies, according to the study Epyce 2017 prepared by the business school EAE in collaboration with the Human Age Institute, one of the brands of the Manpower group. According to this study, based on surveys of human resources managers, these profiles monopolize nine of the 20 most difficult jobs to cover, followed by vacancies of commercial, medical and skilled workers (factory, maintenance and replacement). Computer engineer was the hardest job to cover.
