The Straits Times / ETHRWorldSEA / Inquirer.net
February 22, 2022
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SINGAPORE - Competition for tech talent in Singapore will continue to heat up this year, with firms raising salary offers as a bargaining chip.
Software engineers enjoyed the highest raises among various technical specialisations surveyed in a new report by tech talent platform NodeFlair and venture capital firm Quest Ventures, with an average increase of 22 per cent year-on-year in 2021.
More senior software engineers who hold lead roles saw an even sharper raise, with increments of up to 32 per cent, said NodeFlair’s Tech Talent Compensation report.
The report analysed more than 30,000 data points from NodeFlair’s database, including user-submitted salaries backed by documents such as pay slips and offer letters, as well as advertised salaries on job portals.
Salaries can vary widely even at the same level of seniority.
The report said the median monthly income of junior software engineers is about $4,750, while those at the 90th percentile can make about $7,500 a month.
The median for lead software engineers is about $9,000. This goes up to almost $16,000 at the 90th percentile.
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Foreign tech companies with deep pockets and ambitious plans for expansion in Singapore and the region are a major reason for the intense talent hunt here.
Many of the top hirers are offering pay packages well above the industry average, according to NodeFlair.
American tech giants such as Amazon Web Services, Facebook owner Meta Platforms, Apple and Google are dangling some of the highest salaries - 39 per cent to 56.5 per cent more than the market median.
Other popular companies paying more than 25 per cent over the median include TikTok owner ByteDance, investment banks Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, and food delivery platform foodpanda.
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Local firms looking for tech talent, including the public sector and small and medium-sized enterprises, are not shying away from the competition either.
The Government Technology Agency (GovTech) took the top spot in NodeFlair’s ranking of companies most searched by job seekers, beating Shopee, ByteDance, Grab, Google and Facebook.
Mr Alwyn Tan, a hiring manager at GovTech’s Open Government Products division, told NodeFlair he benchmarks compensation packages to big tech firms such as Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Google and Apple.
Mr Julius Uy, chief technology officer at local learning technology company Kydon Group, said it is important to “always pay top dollar for top talent”.
The best engineers can outperform their peers significantly, so firms can actually save money by shelling out to attract and retain them, he said.
