2022/2023 salaries & top 10 in-demand skills across roles in Singapore

As unemployment rates decline and job vacancies start to rise, Singapore is seeing a strong growing demand for STEM professionals in IT and engineering roles.

A recent Singapore Salary Report 2022/2023 by GRIT revealed statistics on the year’s recruitment trends, market outlook, and a full breakdown of the types and skills required for the relevant digital and technology jobs.

Highlighting current and future trends to take note of, companies in Singapore are notably considering extending ‘remote working’ as an option. 

In tandem, they are increasingly keen to hire international talent, with a 227% increase in employing remote employees and contractors in Asia Pacific.

Referencing the Ministry of Manpower's Labour Market Report First Quarter 2022, the GRIT report acknowledged the recorded improvement on all fronts in Q1 2022 - "signs of a tight labour market as Singapore recovers from the pandemic". Particularly, the unemployment rate for the overall labour force continues to enjoy a downward trend to pre-pandemic levels, where it dropped from 3.6% to 2.2%.

Per the report, with the downward trend in the unemployment rate in mind, and an uptick in the number of job vacancies, employers and employees should remain competitive.

Further, the report shared how Singapore is particularly seeing tech and digital jobs in heavy demand across a myriad of sectors — the nation is "rapidly gaining a reputation in Southeast Asia as a regional technology hub", with tech and digital jobs in heavy demand across a myriad of sectors. However, it is also facing a tech talent shortage, which is caused not only by the COVID-19 pandemic that has restricted travel into the country, but also because the government tightened its hiring policies for foreign skilled workers.

For professionals, managers, executives, and technicians (PMETs), there was a strong growing demand for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals in IT and engineering roles.

Overall, the report noted the key insights from the Singapore Salary Report 2022/2023:

• In 2021, a hybrid work environment of work-from-home and face-to-face working was preferred (34%) in the world, while 45% of Singaporeans worked remotely.
• A meta-analysis of 22 high-quality studies was conducted and remote working was found to improve:
  • Increase in productivity
  • Securing employee retention
  • Strengthening organisation commitment
  • Performance within the organisation
• Factors decreasing productivity amongst WFH employees include:
  • Less ability to focus (67%)

With these insights, the report provided a salary snapshot for 

Business Development

Top 10 skills:

1. Communication & collaboration
2. Technical literacy
3. Critical thinking and problem solving
4. Artificial intelligence (AI)
5. Data literacy
6. Empathy
7. Teamwork
8. Cybersecurity
9. Creativity
10. Adaptability 

Marketing

Top 10 skills:

1. Data analysis & analytics
2. Project management 
3. Research
4. SEO/SEM
5. Social media
6. User lifecycle
7. User experience
8. Marketing technology
9. Content management system (CSM)
10. Data collection & visualisation

Data Science 

Top 10 skills:

1. Statistics 
2. Programming knowledge (Python, R)
3. Data manipulation
4. Data visualisation
5. Machine learning
6. Deep learning 
7. Big data
8. Model deployment
9. A/B testing 
10. Reporting

Infrastructure & IT Security

Top 10 skills:

1. Scripting 
2. Networking & system administration
3. Network security control
4. Operating systems & visual machine familiarity 
5. Cyber threat intelligence 
6. Cloud security
7. Multiple programming languages (e.g, Python, JavaScript, PHP, GoLang)
8. Blockchain security
9. Internet of Things (IoT)
10. AI

Software Engineering

Top 10 skills:

1. programming language knowledge
2. Agile development methodology
3. Design thinking
4. Product testing
5. Code debugging
6. Pre-processing
7. Application scaling
8. Server interaction & administration
9. Web architechture
10. UX

DevOps & Cloud

Top 10 skills:

1. SDLC knowledge 
2. Code management monitoring and testing
3. Linux and web scripting
4. Cloud platform & cloud environment knowledge
5. Application programming interfaces (APIs)
6. Continuous Intergration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
7. Machine learning & AI)
8. Multiple programming languages (e.g, Java, C+ PHP, Ruby)
9. Mobility and mobile environment
10. Specific frameworks (e.g NET, CSS, AJAX, SOA)

Lead image & infographics / Singapore Salary Report 2022/2023

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