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Tech salaries climb slowly after turbulent 2024
SINGAPORE: After a challenging 2024 marked by widespread layoffs and hiring slowdowns, Singapore’s tech job market is showing early signs of recovery, according to the latest Tech Salary Report 2025 by NodeFlair.
The report, which analysed over 130,000 verified data points, points to a rebound in hiring activity and modest salary growth across several key roles. Notably, demand is rising in gaming, tech sales, and platform reliability, driving significant pay increases in those areas.
Among the top gainers were Game Engineers, who saw their salaries surge by 28%, followed by Solutions Engineers with an 11.3% rise, and Site Reliability Engineers whose pay climbed 10.5%.
“2024 was yet another turbulent year for tech,” the report noted, referencing the regional impact of restructuring and hiring freezes. However, a shift in sentiment has taken hold entering 2025, fuelled by a resurgence in AI-related innovation, return-to-office mandates, and continued pushes for salary transparency.
Traditional roles like Software Engineering and Product Management also experienced moderate gains. Software Engineers saw a 3.3% increase in median pay, while Product Managers earned 3.5% more compared to the previous year. Entry-level compensation remained largely unchanged, while senior professionals in these roles maintained or slightly improved their earnings.
Yet, the report also highlighted several areas of concern.
Data-focused roles, once considered among the most lucrative in tech, saw salaries dip or plateau. The median monthly salary for Data Engineers fell by 1.5% to $9,000. Data Analysts experienced a sharper 2.4% decline, while Data Scientists saw stagnant growth despite a still-high median pay of $10,500.
Analysts suggest this cooling trend may be linked to a market correction following a period of aggressive hiring in data teams, as well as a pivot toward applied AI and product-led data solutions over exploratory analytics.
Cybersecurity professionals were also impacted, with Cybersecurity Engineers experiencing a 4.6% decline in median salary to $7,000.
Meanwhile, junior and mid-level roles in DevOps, QA, and infrastructure reported pay cuts in some cases reaching double-digit percentages.
Despite the softening in some sectors, Singapore remains the highest-paying tech hub in Asia. While not all sectors have rebounded, the overall trend points to a stabilising job market with renewed growth potential in strategic areas of tech.
