Reports that those working in artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber security in Singapore have started to overtake software engineers in terms of pay are an indication of how the tech industry is valuing talent. The pay of software engineers dipped 0.99 per cent in 2023 compared with an 11.3 per cent surge for data scientists and an 8.24 per cent rise for cyber-security engineers, according to a report by tech talent platform NodeFlair. Data scientists include AI engineers, machine-learning specialists, deep-learning experts, natural language processing practitioners, and computer-vision specialists. Skills that are going to be in demand are cloud computing and data engineering, both critical to the functioning of AI.

It is not as if software engineers are doing badly, but that others are doing better. Software engineers – front-end, back-end and full-stack engineers in NodeFlair’s count – brought home median base salaries of $5,000 a month as juniors in 2023 and $11,000 as managers here. Those salaries suggest that they make more than their peers in other industries. However, workers in AI and cyber security are faring better than even software engineers. One reason for this is that in the field of digital services, where software engineers are prized, generative AI (gen AI) writes code faster and with fewer errors. Cyber-security experts, on their part, will be in increasing demand correspondingly because of their role in detecting and responding to cyber threats that target AI infrastructure, which includes servers, networks and cloud platforms.