Highest Paid Enterprise IT Jobs in Demand for 2011

by Don E. Sears

The complexity of managing infrastructure requires a combination of team management, vendor management and technology know-how in the data center and everything that touches it, including trends in virtualization, data warehousing and best practices in disaster recovery.

From RHT: “As firms analyze more complex data and create custom applications, they require skilled modelers who can design methods for handling, processing and evaluating material.”

From social media to mobile applications for smartphones such as the iPhone, the Droid and HTC devices, Web development continues to be in high demand, especially in customer-centric front- and back-end frameworks and systems.

Higher-level application design skills that focus on clean, easy and useful user experiences are a hot job commodity now and next year.

A messaging admin generally has overlapping roles in areas across e-mail, text messaging and instant messaging domains, much of which has to do with managing audit and internal compliance issues. As more of these technologies advance and become Web-enabled, the messaging administrator’s job has growing demand and a decent salary lift.

So many data sources, so little time. Enter the data architect who understands data behavior in a multitude of environments and how they can interact to obtain a desired result.

Data management jobs are some of the hottest on this list, and those managing the ever-increasing storage demands with the rise of video, enhanced Web graphics and larger archiving demands.

Customer relationship management technologies require consistent and constant tweaking and customization to meet customer need and align them with business goals. Keeping customers satisfied and aligning them with increased product loyalty and sales are key to a CRM business analyst’s daily grind.

A CRM analyst needs a technology expert to help translate the functional demands of customers and business users. The CRM tech developer is seeing a nice little bump in salary in 2011.

From RHT: “Companies need analysts who can guide decision-making processes in a constantly changing business environment, and help reduce costs and better evaluate internal and external clients.”

There has been so much investment in ERP in the enterprise, but every company environment needs a business analyst to define the business processes, and configure and deploy them, as well as set up the reporting structures.

When you don’t have the expertise in house, you find those that do. In the last year, IT contracting and consulting has been one of the only major real growth areas, according to data from the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. SI work is an important piece of??íthe deployment phase of many major application and customization projects.

From RHT: “ERP enables organizations of all sizes and types to improve efficiency and cut costs. Since no two companies are alike, developers are in steady demand to customize software according to specific organizational needs.”

Higher-level networking skills are not only important in the network operations center, but they are also an essential part of the sales process for networking vendors, resellers and telecommunication companies.

Web design continues to evolve as Web functionality rises through the value chain.??íDrawing users to your site and keeping them there is as important as how the system works behind the presentation layer.