IAPA

SKILLS &
SALARY
SURVEY
Insights into business
analytics in Australia

20
15

VALUE

LEADERSHIP

KNOWLEDGE

PROUDLY
SPONSORED BY

INNOVATION

IAPA

20
15

Digital disruption and machine learning-enabled automation

continues to change the world we live in. Analytics is creating
driverless cars, autonomous drones, and reducing the friction
that goes along with making millions of decisions live in
real-time across the Internet of Things. At the centre of this
transformation is the analytics professional, the person who
makes the magical real through the power of data science,
storytelling, and a vision of the world they want to create.

INTRO
While much has changed over the last 12 months, the relevance of the IAPA Skills and Salary
Survey to Australia has not. It represents the most comprehensive data point available about the
state of play within the industry, how trends are affecting hiring patterns, and the pulse of whats
hot and not within the industry.
As with prior years, demand for those with the right skills continues to rise with median salaries
up yet again. Unlike prior years, Australia finally appears to be adopting big data and cloud
technologies with a noticeable increase in respondents who are actively working with these
technologies.
However, it appears Australian corporates still have a way to go yet to fully realise the power of
our analytics professionals. While this years survey strongly indicated the importance of analytics
to competitive differentiation and innovation in an information economy, a full third of this years
respondents felt that their organisations were substantially underutilising the full breadth of their
skills.
This presents concerning challenges, ones we as leaders need to consider and overcome. They
also present significant opportunities in the face of a consistently tight labour market.
As the peak and largest body for analytics professionals in Australia, IAPA looks forward to helping
analytics professionals build the skills they need to be successful and solve hairy problems through
2016. As the clearest voice for our members, we look forward to working with our members
organisations and government agencies to help them innovate, differentiate, and improve through
fully leveraging the exciting and rare talent they have access to.
Jodie Sangster
CEO, IAPA
Evan Stubbs
Author of IAPA Skills and Salary Survey 2015
Antony Ugoni
Chairman, IAPA
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
REFERENCES THROUGHOUT THE
REPORT
Analysis throughout this report uses
the terms Supply and Industry to
identify differences in characteristics of
respondents. Supply-side organisations
include IT vendors and consulting
organisations.
The results of this report reflect the
opinions primarily of IAPA members,
but also the wider Australian industry.
Throughout the report, reference is made
to two key sources regards Salary and
Industry Growth. These reports can be
found at:
*http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.
nsf/mf/6306.0/
Median fulltime Australian salary is
$70,720 (May 2014)
**http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.
nsf/mf/6345.0/
Salary refers to the amount paid to
respondents that includes base salary
plus bonuses plus superannuation.

Powered by the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA), the Institute of Analytics
Professionals of Australias goal is to support, promote and progress the analytics profession in Australia. With
over 5,500 members, six active Chapters in major cities and representation from every industry sector, IAPA is
the premier industry association for the analytics profession.
Infrastructure to collect responses was provided by SAS. Thanks are given to Jason Tamara Widjaja, Vyas
Venugopalan, Jenny Liu, and Rebecca Wilson (Master of Business Analytics students at Melbourne Business
School) for their hard work in collating and writing this years results and for soliciting input from Australias
industry leaders. Thanks are also due to Bart Watson and John Kershaw for their assistance in cleansing and
preparing the data for analysis as well as providing analytical segmentation support. Recognition must also be
extended to co-writers Kathryn Buttler and Coert du Plessis.
It is with special thanks to Seek that we have been able to develop and deliver the 2015 IAPA Skills & Salary
Survey.

SEEK is proud to sponsor the IAPA Skills & Salary Survey 2015.
World class data analytics capabilities are critical to the success of our
business, and we support IAPAs research to intimately understand the
landscape of human capital across this sector.
SEEK aggressively invests in its people, product and technology
capabilities to leverage the data assets we have. Through this we are
delivering more value to both jobseekers and hirers in Australia, and
globally.

WWW.IAPA.ORG.AU

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SUMMARY
In mid-2015, IAPA conducted
Australias third comprehensive
analytics-focused industry salary
survey. Open to all analytics
professionals actively employed in
Australia, the survey saw over 600
practitioners respond (449 valid)
about their education and experience,
employment and seniority, and skills
and salary.

SURVEY RESPONDENTS BY LOCATION

QLD
50

The insights and trends in this report

continue to chart the evolution of the
analytics industry in Australia and cover
roles available, the impact education and
experience has on salary, and skillsets in
demand. These help analytics professionals
compare their career progression and
aspirations and help business decisionmakers gauge the challenges and
opportunities of embracing analytics in their
organisations.

WA
39
SA
29

449

NSW
151
VIC
154

ACT
24

RESPONDENTS
TAS
2

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The following themes have emerged

from 2015s results:

HAS
LITTLE TO
DO WITH

CONTRIBUTES

40% of respondents say analytics is

critical or enables differentiation

...OUR ORGANISATIONS SUCCESS.

NOT AT ALL

37% of respondents say their

organisation isnt benefiting

MY ORGANISATION IS...

NOT REALLY

Presentation and communication skills

continue to be the most frequently applied
soft skill among respondents. There has also
been a marked uptick in the use of agile
and accessible visualisation tools including
Tableau, SAS Visual Analytics, and QlikView
with usage of all three having increased by
50% since last year.

ENABLES

SOMEWHAT

2. APPROACHABLE ANALYTICS
CONTINUES ITS MARCH
ACROSS AUSTRALIA

IS CRITICAL TO

MOSTLY

Despite approximately 40% of respondents

feeling that analytics either enables or is a
critical part of their businesss differentiation,
a staggering 37% felt that their company
was either not really or not at all getting
the benefit of the full breadth of their skills.

ANALYTICS...

DEFINITELY

1. THE AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY

MAY BE UNDER-LEVERAGING
ITS ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES
AND MISSING SIGNIFICANT
OPPORTUNITIES

...GETTING THE FULL BENEFIT OF MY SKILLS.

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3. AUSTRALIAN BUSINESSES
ARE FINALLY ADOPTING
CLOUD & BIG DATA, BUT THE
SKILLS DONT COME CHEAP
This years survey finally shows an increase
in the number of analysts working with
cloud technologies or big data with the
number of industry respondents saying
theyve used Hadoop-related technologies
increasing by 300% compared to last year.
However, their skills arent cheap supplyside respondents with big data skills have
a median salary of $200,000 while industrybased respondents with Amazon Web
Services related skills are drawing a median
salary of approximately $172,000.

IN-DEMAND ANALYTICS SKILLS PUSH SALARIES HIGHER

Big Data Skills

Teradata
SAS Enterprise Miner
Amazon Web Services
Spark
HBASE / Cassandra / MongoDB
R Commander

INDUSTRY

Text Mining

SUPPLY
$50K

4. OPEN SOURCE ADOPTION

IS SLOWLY BECOMING
MAINSTREAM

$100K

$150K

$200K
Median Salary

MEDIAN
SALARY OF ALL
RESPONDENTS

The use of open-source analytics tools and

languages across the board are on a steady
increase with the number of analysts having
used tools such as R and Python increasing
between 50% to 100% year-on-year among
industry respondents.

$130K

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5. HOWEVER, FRICTION
CONTINUES TO EXIST IN
TAKING INSIGHT TO ACTION
Timely access to data (39%), Getting
the organisation to act on insight (38%),
Executive level understanding of data
and analytics (47%) and Convincing the
organisation of the value of analytics
(38%) point to the need for Australian
businesses to improve data access and build
management understanding of how to get
value out of analytics.

MY BIGGEST CHALLENGES HINDER INSIGHT TO ACTION:

Executive-Level understanding
of data & analytics

47%

46%

Developing my skills into new areas

Timely access to high quality data

39%

Convincing the organisation

of the value of analytics

38%

Getting the organisation to

act on insight

38%
31%

Finding out best practices

30%

Developing the skills of my team

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Percent of respondents
nominating that challenge

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DISRUPTION
INNOVATION AND DIFFERENTIATION

Not at all

This year, the IAPA Skills and Salary survey focused on the degree to which disruption is
occurring and how much analytics contributes to competitive differentiation. It was left to
respondents to interpret disruption in their context but common interpretations include
shifting business models, reshaped markets, and the emergence of non-traditional
competitors.

Somewhat

Disruption is seen as a common trend, with 54% of respondents saying that they felt
their industry was either being quite or substantially impacted by disruption from
competitors, suppliers, or their customers expectations.

EXTENT OF
ORGANISATIONAL
DISRUPTION

54% of
respondents
say industry
is quite or
substantially
disrupted

Quite a bit

Significantly

Equally, analytics is seen as a common response to disruption. Eighty one percent (81%)
of respondents felt that their organisation was effectively and actively using analytics
to either contribute, enable, or as a critical part of their organisations ability to enable
innovation and drive differentiation. A full 25% felt that analytics was in fact a critical part
of their organisations ability to enable innovation and drive differentiation. See page 6.
However, a staggering 37% of respondents felt that that their organisations were either
not really or not at all getting the most value out of the full breadth of the skills
they could offer. This represents a very real problem, both in terms of international
competitiveness as well as national productivity.
By far and away, the most commonly cited skill needed to be successful over the next
twelve months by respondents was Big Data Analytics (55%), closely followed by
Business Leadership and Management (48%). Of lesser but still substantial importance
were Marketing Analytics (33%), Cloud Storage, Architecture, Distributed Methods (28%),
Value Engineering and Business Case Development (26%), and Lean and Agile Methods
(25%). More on page 17.

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IAPA

20
15

I think what we are seeing in the market at the moment is a

significant increase in the capability of tools and technologies
to make it easy to solve problems of easy to medium
complexity. I think where companies are still having issues
and challenges is where they have multi-channel, multiproduct and multi-technology integration issues. Thats where
the biggest problems and opportunities lie. The inhibiters
are fundamentally to do with the diversity and integration of
technology. There is a necessity to have good strategy around
technology to ensure that the integration is fundamentally
fixed before you get to breaking it.
Marc Giretto, Head of Analytics, ANZ Bank

IN AUSTRALIA
As with last years survey, this years survey
results saw response rates from diverse
industry sectors across broad functional
groups with a strong spectrum of seniority in
Australia.
Approximately 30% of respondents work for
Supply (i.e. professional services, hardware
providers, software or other supply-side
organisations) with the remainder working
in Industry (i.e. banks, telecommunications
or government etc.). These proportions are
consistent with results from both 2013 and
2014.
The median salary for analytics professionals
continued an upward trajectory since 2013,
rising 4% year-on-year from $125K in 2014
to $130K in 2015 despite ongoing entry of
low-experience and junior employees to
the industry. This entry-level cohort, with
less than two years analytics experience,
accounts for almost 60% of all respondents.
Over a three-year horizon, this represents
an 18% increase in the surveys median
salary despite the proportion of less-senior
respondents (analyst, senior analyst, or team
lead) having increased by 14%. Overall,
this strongly points to ongoing labour
market pressure with the Australian Bureau
of Statistics reporting an average industry
wage growth rate of 2.3%**.

THE ANALYTICS
INDUSTRY

MEDIAN SALARY FOR RESPONDENTS BY SECTORS

Sectors
Finance & Insurance
Electricity, Gas, and Water
Information Media & Telecommunications
Information Technology (HW or SW)
Professional Services / Consulting
Public Administration & Safety
Education & Training

MEDIAN
SALARY OF ALL
RESPONDENTS

Professional, Scientific & Technical Services

$130K

Health
Retail trade

$20K

$40K

$60K

$80K

$100K $120K $140K

$160K

Median Salary

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The notable high paying sectors remain

finance, insurance and information
technology, in line with 2014 results. While
only 5% of respondents are employed in the
Electricity, Gas, or Water sector, their median
salaries are comparable to those offered in
finance and insurance, an interesting change
since last year. Also interesting was a decline
in both the number of respondents who
work in Professional Services / Consulting
as well as their median salary, down from
22% to 19% and $131,000 to $122,000
respectively. Given the rise in respondents
from Media and Telecommunications from
6% to 10%, this may suggest a movement
towards internalising analytical capabilities.

RESPONDENTS DOMAINS
Marketing
Advisory / Consulting
Shared Service Business Intelligence
Insights Team
Research and / or Development
Data Warehousing
Sales
Credit Risk

2015
2014

Finance-related Functions

2013

Actuarial-related Functions
Operational Risk
2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

Percent of respondents

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IAPA

20
15

(Data and analytics) is absolutely creating

and enabling disruption. At Optus, its
certainly one of our key sources of
competitive advantage. We are using it to
change how we do business pretty much
across the board.
Russell Hunter, Director of Analytics, Optus

SALARY
Continuing the trend set in 2013 and
2014, the median respondent earns
184% of the Australian full-time
median* salary. Approximately 90%
of respondents+ earn more than the
median Australian salary.
The upper quartile of respondents earn
approximately two and a half times the
median Australian salary, with this group
experiencing the largest increase in
median salaries compared to 2014 results.
Higher salaries are associated with tenure,
experience and a breadth of both technical
and soft skills.
The median survey respondent across both
Industry and Supply has 10-13 years of work
experience. It takes on average 10 years of
experience to reach the industry median
salary with salaries continuing to rise with
up to 20 years experience. By comparison,
supply-side organisations offer lower
median salaries to entry-level employees
($75,000 vs. $85,000) but higher median
salaries to those with more than 14 years
experience.

THE ANALYTICS
PROFESSIONAL
REPORTED SALARY FOR ALL RESPONDENTS

MEDIAN
AUSTRALIAN
SALARY

$71K
Top 5%

$278,800

Top 10%

$225,000

Top 25%

$170,000

Median

$130,000

Bottom 25%

$97,000

Bottom 10%

$71,900

Bottom 5%

MEDIAN
SALARY OF ALL
RESPONDENTS

$130K

$66,000
$100K

$200K

$300K
Median Salary

excluding outliers and invalid entries

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However, 51% of Industry respondents

and 60% of Supply respondents have
under 6 years of analytics experience. This
suggests an ongoing inflow of students and
professionals from other domains moving
into analytics roles
Approximately 8 in 10 of all analytic
professionals responded that they are
satisfied or more with their profession.
Less than 5% felt that they were markedly
unhappy. Interestingly, median salaries for
those across satisfaction categories are
relatively consistent within the industry
but heavily biased within the supply side
of the market. Those who felt they were
markedly happy within supply were
earning a median salary of $150,000,
far higher than the median salary of
approximately $110,000 for those who felt
they were either slightly happy, satisfied,
or slightly unhappy. It is possible that
satisfaction drivers between industry and
supply might be quite different, with the
industry drawing proportionally more
satisfaction from non-financial factors such
as challenge, opportunity, or simply working
on interesting problems.

RESPONDENTS HAPPINESS LEVELS - INCLUDING SALARY LEVELS

Percent of respondents
10%

20%

30%

$150K

Markedly happy

$138K

Median
Salary

$118K

Slightly happy

$130K
$110K

Satisfied

$130K
$100K

Slightly unhappy

$125K
$70K

Markedly unhappy

$110K

INDUSTRY
SUPPLY

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EDUCATION

Interdisciplinary backgrounds are frequent

with the most common combinations
seen across business (including finance,
commerce and management), mathematics
(including statistics), and/or information
technology (including information systems
and computer science). The strength of
these synergies have already been identified
by the academic sector with institutions such
as Deakin University, University of South
Australia, Melbourne Business School and
LaTrobe University all offering Business
Analytics or Data Science qualifications that
are run from Business or IT faculties and
not the more traditional Mathematical or
Statistics departments.

HONOURS

MASTERS

PHD

4% 7%

BACHELORS

51%
DIPLOMA

Half of all respondents hold an Honours,

Masters, MBA, or PhD level degree whilst,
at the other end of the spectrum, just 11%
of respondents hold a Diploma or High
School Certificate as their highest level
of education. Interestingly, compared to
2014 results this is down from 60% with a
5% increase in the Bachelor (highest) level
qualified respondents.

HALF OF RESPONDENTS HOLD AN HONOURS DEGREE OR HIGHER

HIGH SCHOOL

The analytics field is dominated by

highly educated professionals with joint
and higher degrees.

THE ANALYTICS
PROFESSIONAL

38%

10%

31%

10%

FORMAL QUALIFICATIONS OF RESPONDENTS

Business

32%

Mathematics / Sciences

30%

IT

21%

Computer Science

18%

Finance / Commerce

16%

Science

10%

Management

10%

Economics

9%
More than one response allowed

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While education appears to have little

impact on respondents median salaries in
Industry sectors (holding everything else
constant), Supply organisations continue
to appear to place a premium on higher
degrees. As expected, salaries increase with
seniority of job title.

SKILLS TARGETED FOR IMPROVEMENT IN 2016

Clearly the industry has talented,

educated professionals and analysts
are seeing the value of up-skilling. But
industry is saying they still need more
in particular those who can step into
leadership roles - those with multifaceted skills. This creates a massive
opportunity for analytics professionals
who can gain these skills to differentiate
their capability.

Marketing analytics

Big data analytics

Business leadership and management

Cloud storage, architecture, and

distributed analytical methods
Value engineering and business
case development
Lean or agile methodologies
Change management
Programming, source control, or
data application development
Risk analytics
Enterprise analytics & scoring pipeline architecture
Retail analytics
Policy and / or service delivery analytics
Fraud and / or financial crimes analytics
10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Percent of respondents

More than one response allowed

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IAPA

20
15

The supply around the labour market needs to recognise that

the world is changing quickly and a lot of the activities of the
past will disappear and their associated skills will become
less valuable or can be outsourced. Organisations need to
work on developing commercially astute individuals who also
have strong technical skills and can generate clear actionable
insights.
Leif Evensen, GM Business Performance and Analytics, Westpac

EXPERTISE
Analytics professionals use a variety
of business tools, programming
languages, technical tools and soft
skills in their daily work.

THE ANALYTICS
PROFESSIONAL

CLOUD & BIG DATA SKILLS IN HIGH USE

Median salary by
skill & industry
$131K

Flat Files (CSV, XLS, XML, etc)

Compared to 2014, this years survey

suggests that analytics professionals
are using a broader range of tools,
demonstrating the need for a strong
technical capability due to rapid
technological innovation.

$145K
$135K

Microsoft SQL Server

$139K
$140K

SAS

$151K
$135K

Oracle

The results of the survey suggest that

analytics professionals increasingly need to
become skilled across multiple technologies
and be able to adjust to the environment
provided to them by their employer.

$135K
$125K

Microsoft Access

$125K
$135K

Teradata

As noted, Business leadership and

management and Value engineering and
business case development are areas
respondents found challenging, however
gaining knowledge and experience in
these areas will further aid analytics
professionals in differentiating their value
to business.

$183K
$130K

MySQL

$100K
$148K

Hadoop / HDFS

$200K
$171K

AWS-related technologies

$108K
$130K

PostgreSQL

$115K

20%

40%

INDUSTRY
SUPPLY

60%

Percent of respondents
using the technology

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IAPA

20
15

We are proud of our team which has become highly

specialised in understanding what matters to customers.
Innovation is really important to us as a team and we aim to be
a centre of excellence. Weve changed our position description
and our qualification and recruitment criteria to make sure we
find a broad range of candidates best suited to the role. The
impact has been really positive on the business as a whole.
Jane Eastgate, Head of FlyBuys Analytics, Coles

SEGMENTS
To better understand the trends behind
this years responses, IAPA segmented
the responses using the same iterative
clustering techniques developed in
2014.
As with last year, respondents were
classified into four broad types of analytics
professionals:
BI & Visualisation Focused (49%)
Traditional Analysts (23%)
Data Science Professionals (22%)
Analytical Integrators (6%)
Across the four segments, the BI &
Visualisation segment has increased
substantially since last year at the
expense of the Analytical Integrators.
These data journalists and data science
citizens appear to be at the forefront
of approachable analytics. However,
their median salary has also dropped in
comparison to last years survey.
In contrast, both Traditional Analysts and
Data Science Professionals have seen their
median salaries increase over 2014, likely
reflecting their increasingly in-demand skills
and experience.
Median Salary varies by organisation type. The
first median is Industry and the second Supply
organisations.

THE ANALYTICS
PROFESSIONAL

49%

23%

$106 - $120K
MEDIAN SALARY

$130 - $130K
MEDIAN SALARY

BI & VISUALISATION FOCUSED

TRADITIONAL ANALYSTS

More likely to use Tableau

More likely to use SAS Enterprise Miner, SAS

Enterprise Guide and Visual Analytics

Most popular technical skill is BI, less

likely to use predictive analytics

Most common technical skills include inferential

statistics and predictive analytics

22%

6%

$140 - $160K
MEDIAN SALARY

$125 - $139K
MEDIAN SALARY

DATA SCIENCE PROFESSIONALS

ANALYTICAL INTEGRATORS

A full range of technical skills & broadest

tool usage of all segments

Very limited usage of analytical tools such as

SAS or R

More likely to use big data and cloud

technologies

Technical skills include operational analytics,

business intelligence, data governance, and
systems integration
Use SQL more than the average respondent

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SKILLS
POPULAR BUSINESS TOOLS

More than one response allowed

Excel continues to be the most popular

tool of choice with Tableaus continued
rise placing it second. Compared to 2014
results, Tableaus popularity across Industry
organisations rose 15% while almost half
of Supply organisations use it as the most
preferred reporting and visualisation tool.
This continues the trend from previous
years, showing ongoing movement away
from traditional enterprise reporting tools
(Business Objects and Cognos).

70%

40%

INDUSTRY
SUPPLY

RStudio and SAS products (SAS Enterprise

Guide, SAS Enterprise Miner and SAS Visual
Analytics) remain popular with both groups
with increased usage across all analytics
professionals compared to 2014 respondent
results. The industry appears to place the
highest premium on those with experience
using SAS, QlikView and R Commander
where they are paying over a 10% premium
for this experience mix over the other
technology salary medians.

30%

20%

$103K

$168K

$125K

Social Media
R
Analytics Commander

$100K

$138K

$107K

Cognos

$155K

QlikView

$122K

Microsoft
Analysis
Services

$142K

$178K

SAS
Enterprise
Miner

$154K

$135K

Business
Objects

$136K

$138K

$145K

$132K

$125K

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SAS Visual
SAS
Enterprise Analytics
Guide

$140K

RStudio

$110K

Tableau

$135K

$120K

Excel

$135K

10%

$130K

Compared to 2014, there has been

significant uptake in Tableau and SAS Visual
Analytics with the number of respondents
having said theyve used one or the other
in the three months prior to completing the
survey having increased 50% year on year.

Percent of respondents

80%

$106K

BUSINESS ANALYTICS TOOLS

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This strongly emphasises the ongoing

march towards approachable analytics, and
the need for hiring managers to understand
the subtlety of hiring a great analytical
resource, and not necessarily seeking the
best technical practitioner.

MOST POPULAR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

50%
Percent of respondents
that have used the
language in the last
three months

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

40%

SQL remains the industry standard for data

manipulation, with half of all respondents
having actively used some variety of SQL
in the three months prior to the survey, a
result that is consistent with previous years
respondents. R is the next most commonly
used language among Industry respondents
with those having used it in the three
months prior to the survey increasing from
28% to 35%.

20%

10%

INDUSTRY
SUPPLY

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$130K

Java

$115K

$132K

Python

$139K

$98K

Web
programming
$130K

$125K

$128K

$145K

SAS

$140K

$130K

Visual Basic /
VBA
$110K

$132K

SQL

$124K

Overall there is a strong trend towards

increasing use of open-source languages
such as R, web programming and Python
across Industry organisations. In contrast,
the number of respondents who have
recently used commercial languages such
as Visual Basic, SAS, and SPSS has dropped
in comparison to 2014. However, unlike
those who have recently used open source
programming languages, salaries for those
with who have recently used commercial
languages like Visual Basic, SAS, and SPSS
have increased by approximately 12%.

30%

Median salary by
skill & industry

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Percent of
respondents

MOST POPULAR TECHNICAL SKILLS

60%

The most commonly applied technical

skills span business intelligence, data
manipulation, exploratory data analysis,
programming and predictive analysis.

40%

20%

Business
intelligence

Data
Exploratory
manipulation data analysis /
descriptive
statistics

Predictive
analytics

Programming

Data
governance

Forecasting
and time
series
analysis

Text-based
search &
querying

MEDIAN SALARY OF RESPONDENTS BY TECHNICAL SKILL

$200K

INDUSTRY

SUPPLY

WWW.IAPA.ORG.AU

Predictive analytics

Operational analytics

Text mining

Median
Salary

Systems integration

$50K

Big data skills

$100K
Data governance

Forecasting and time series

Inferential statistics

Cloud technologies

$150K

Systems integration

This trend is mirrored in Industry among

those who have had experience working
with Amazon cloud storage technologies
such as RedShift. Respondents who met this
criterion are earning approximately 32%
more than the median respondents salary.
This may suggest an emerging movement
towards cloud-based storage over
traditional warehousing technologies.

SUPPLY

Operational analytics

Of great interest this year is the emergence

of a massive median salary differential for
those in Supply-side organisations with
big data skills (Hadoop, Teradata, NoSQL
etc). These respondents are earning
approximately 50% more than the median
respondents salary, including their Industry
counterparts. This potentially demonstrates
the skills and resources shortage to pursue
Big Data analytics initiatives in Industry
organisations, in which case they are
turning to the Supply organisations for the
solutions.

INDUSTRY

Natural language processing

TECHNICAL SKILLS, SOFT

SKILLS AND DATA USAGE

IAPA SKILLS AND SALARY SURVEY 2015

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Equally, the number of respondents

that flagged working with big data as a
challenge from Industry-based organisations
has increased from 15% in 2014 to 21% in
2015.
Amongst soft skills, the most commonly
applied were core communication-based
skills such as presentation, writing and
documentation, and attempting to apply
influence or persuasion. These trends were
consistent across Industry sectors and
Supply organisations, with both paying
the most for staff management skills
which suggests an inclination to grow and
develop analytics professionals within the
organisation.

MEDIAN SALARY OF RESPONDENTS BY IN-DEMAND ANALYTICS SKILLS

Big Data Skills

Teradata
SAS Enterprise Miner
Amazon Web Services
Spark
HBASE / Cassandra / MongoDB
R Commander

INDUSTRY

Text Mining

SUPPLY
$50K

$100K

$150K

$200K
Median Salary

MEDIAN
SALARY OF ALL
RESPONDENTS

$130K

WWW.IAPA.ORG.AU

IAPA SKILLS AND SALARY SURVEY 2015

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IAPA

20
15

There is no doubt that analytics is enabling significant disruption

analytics is not just helping us meet the demands of our end
users but also understand how to delight them with tailored
products. We are at the beginning of an amazing time in history
where we now have the ability to share information and make
sense of that information to drive action that enables us to deliver
a better citizen outcome. We have been trying to set a pathway
where information or data is publicly available so that people can
(use their creativity) to do something positive that we (might not be
able to) envisage on our own.
Greg Williams, Deputy Commissioner, Smarter Data Program, ATO

WHERE TO?
We are living in interesting times.
The onward march of disruptive forces (many of them powered by data and analytics) leave little
option for current and future leaders but to get on the analytics train or be left behind.
Unfortunately, there remain knowledge, application and communication hurdles for many in the c-suite before
they can even start combatting disruption. Likewise analytics professionals should feel obligated to help
overcome these hurdles by improving the presentation of analytics results in terms of business outcomes.
While its heartening to see many boards open to in-depth discussions (and action) on data and analytics-led
initiatives, for the vast majority theres a whole new world of understanding, implication and immediate action
that has barely been scratched. The knock-on effects impact recruitment and if mismanaged, can create a
mismatch of skills, expectations and deliverables. In this new world, a whole new breed of analytics professional one that is more attuned to business - is in demand.
As the peak body for analytics professionals, 2016 will see IAPA help analytics professionals be more businesssavvy and by doing so, better showcase their analytics skills and data-led thinking to the business. Well also
engage the c-suite and management to boost their understanding of the value of analytics to business (and in
extreme cases, to survive).

IAPA

20
16

Stay up-to-date
This is just the start of the
discussion. IAPA will be
exploring key findings in
more depth during 2016.

Becoming analytics-savvy is just a first step, for business to thrive there needs to be a data-led culture and
process embedded into business-as-usual - we will be encouraging this kind of ecosystem thinking during, and
beyond, 2016.
Interesting times indeed!

Bookmark the IAPA

Magazine now so you
can stay up-to-date and
participate in the ongoing
conversation about
analytics and analytics
professionals in Australia.

http://www.iapa.org.au/magazine
WWW.IAPA.ORG.AU

IAPA SKILLS AND SALARY SURVEY 2015

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IAPA

20
15

It is certainly creating and enabling disruption. In the family

and community services space, where we are trying to help
people, having data driven insights around where disadvantage
is greatest or what might be causing that disadvantage rather
than just anecdotal evidence is fantastic. Looking at data more
frequently and at a much finer level is also allowing us to
understand variability better.
Marilyn Chilvers, Executive Director Analysis & Research, NSW
Family and Community Services

APPENDICES
RESPONDER PROFILE
In mid-2015, IAPA conducted Australias third
comprehensive analytics-focused industry salary survey.
Open to all analytics professionals actively employed in
Australia, the survey saw over 600 practitioners respond
about their:

Education and experience

Employment and seniority

Skills and salary

Respondents self-selected from an invitation distributed

by email and social media to IAPA members. This
invitation could be freely distributed and was open
to any individual actively working in Australia either
analysing data or managing those that do at the time of
the survey.
The survey received a total of 609 responses, of which
449 qualified for analysis. It included over 25 questions
covering information related to demographics, work
history and focus, salary, tools, and current challenges.
Approximately 30% of respondents work for Supply
(i.e. professional services, hardware providers, software
or other supply-side organisations) with the remainder
working in Industry (i.e. banks, telecommunications or
government etc.). These proportions are consistent with
results from both 2013 and 2014.

WWW.IAPA.ORG.AU

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