2014’s Hottest IT Certification

With more than half of 2014 behind us, it’s that time of the year where we look at IT certifications standings in real world IT. The right certifications can help earn tech workers premium pay or land the job they’ve been aspiring to. That’s why knowing what is “hot” with employers is important when considering your professional development.

Every quarter Foote Partners compiles their data in the IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends Report, and they speak with over 2600 employers to bridge the disconnect between job titles, job content and compensation. Read on to find out where the heat is in regards to IT certifications, salaries and employer needs.

“Generally speaking, the market is responding to anything that has to do with architecture,” says David Foote, Co-Founder, Chief Analyst and Research Officer with Foote Partners. These items are in demand and employers are willing to pay a premium for them. In fact all three of these IT certifications made it into Foote Partner’s highest paying IT certifications. TOGAF9, for example, has increased 25 percent in the last 6 months.

Amazon is the heavy in the cloud wars right now, and as a result, “skills pay” for these certifications are on the rise. AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional is another new entry to Foote Partners research and already it’s made the highest paying IT certification list.

“These have just been added to our list. Amazon is hot right now. So many companies have adopted that [Amazon Cloud] solution,” says Foote.

VMware cloud certifications are all pretty hot right now according to Foote Partners data. Premium pay for VCDX increased 28.6 percent in the last 12 months while VCP-Cloud also saw a premium pay increase of 12.5 percent over the last year.

While there hasn’t been significant growth over the last year, recipients of the VCAP-CID certification, according to Foote Partners data, are receiving 8-13 percent of base pay salary as a “skills pay” premium from employers.

It’s no secret as to why the next two certifications have made the list; security is on everyone’s mind these days with each day bringing another news story of a major data breach.

In fact, EC-Council’s Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator certification, a new entry to the highest paying IT certification list, gained an astounding 66.7 percent over the 12 months.

The Professional: Data Scientist has only been recently included in Foote Partner’s research. In the time they have been tracking this cert its hit the top of the highest paying IT certifications, coming in tied for number 5. “We just added this to our “Skills Pay Index” because people were asking for it. It includes a pretty tough lab/practicum where you have to really do the stuff not simply complete a written test,” says Foote.

Number six on the list of highest paying certifications is Certified Developer for Apache Hadoop. Hadoop development and big data are both areas increasing in demand as organizations use them to simplify processes, decrease time to production and gain a competitive advantage.