Salaries For Business Intelligence Professionals Continue To Rise

Is your solution provider company looking to hire professionals with business intelligence expertise to expand its business analytics services? Be warned, it won't come cheap with average salaries for such professionals hitting six figures, according to a new survey.

Full-time business intelligence employees earned, on average, $109,933 in annual salary in 2014, according to The Data Warehouse Institute's annual survey of data warehousing and business intelligence professionals. That's up 3.5 percent from $106,216 in 2013.

The 2015 TDWI Salary, Roles and Responsibilities Report is based on survey responses from 1,057 qualified data warehouse and business intelligence professionals in the U.S. and Canada. The survey was conducted last fall.

Business analytics is a fast-growing segment of the IT industry and demand for BI expertise is pushing up wages, both for businesses that need that expertise in-house and for solution and service providers with BI practices.

Salaries for full-time employees have generally been rising every year, from $102,601 in 2010, to $104,412 in 2011 and $106,818 in 2012. The 0.6 percent drop to $106,216 in 2013 was the only recent decline.

Independent contractors with BI expertise, not surprisingly, earn higher average sales – $132,879 in 2014, according to the survey. When the data for full-time and contract workers are combined, the average annual salary for qualified data warehousing and business intelligence professionals reached $111,388 in 2014, up 4.5 percent from $106,762 in 2013.

Eighty-three percent of the survey respondents said their salaries increased in 2014 – the highest percentage since 2008. Only 3 percent reported a salary decline in 2014.

The survey also looked at specific jobs and found that BI directors earned the most (averaging $140,939) followed by lead information architects ($125,382) and BI program managers ($121,149). Earning the least were business requirements analysts (averaging $95,241) and data analysts/data modelers ($88,147). BI project managers reported the biggest salary gain (6.7 percent) in 2014 to an average of $108,889.

BI professionals in the consulting and professional service industries earned the highest average salary in 2014 (up 10.8 percent to $128,256) while those working in state and local government agencies earned the lowest average salary ($82,234).

The survey also found that professional certifications continue to be important in calculating salaries. On average, employees with four or more certifications earned $20,000 more per year.Solution providers looking for affordable business intelligence talent might want to hire young: The average salary for BI professionals under age 25 was $69,154 compared to $121,582 for BI professionals age 46 to 55.

The 26-page report is available at the TDWI web site.