The digital wave is rising globally and changing the very core of the economy.  Jobs in IT are expected to grow by 12% in the U.S. by 2028, as businesses move towards Cloud, AI, machine learning, data analytics and automation.  

According to U.S. bureau of labor statistics, the average salary of IT jobs is higher than the median annual wage for all occupations. As a result hundreds of thousands of people are changing their careers and moving into tech.  

Are IT Certifications Worth It in 2020? 

Here’s another new reality, doing a four-year degree program in Computer Science to get an IT job is no longer required. According to a survey by StackOverflow, over 86% of developers in the IT world took some sort of online course or certification to learn new technologies and languages instead of taking a formal degree. Certifications are the quickest and most economical way to move into the technology sector and upskill yourself for the changing world.  

According to the Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report, here are the highest paying IT certifications in 2020 which can provide you with a lucrative and growing career.  

Highest Paying IT Certifications in 2020 

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional  

$120,136 

Amazon Cloud is used by thousands of big companies worldwide, including Netflix, Facebook, and LinkedIn. As more and more companies deploy AWS, they want people to help them find the best solutions and architecture to solve problems. AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification will validate your skills on AWS CLI, AWS APIs, AWS CloudFormation templates, the AWS Billing Console, AWS Management Console Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and Amazon S3. With this certification, you will be able to design, implement and monitor high-performance, fault-tolerant systems with analytical and scaling capabilities.  

Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect  

$118,756 

There’s a shortage of competent Google Cloud architects as Google Cloud services are relatively new in the industry, but growing rapidly. Through the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect certification, you will be able to prove your expertise in Cloud Kubernetes, Cloud APIs, Cloud AutoML, Cloud Compute and more. 

Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)  

 $116,573 

The Certified Information Systems Security Professional certification will help you get top jobs in the lucrative cybersecurity sector.  Jobs like chief information security officer, network security consultant, and network security architect. The CISSP syllabus includes key and in-demand areas of information security, including security and risk management, asset security, identity and access management, testing and security assessment.  

Google Certified Professional Data Engineer  

$114,888 

The Google Certified Professional Data Engineer certification will prove your expertise around in-demand and growing skills like BigQuery, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud Dataproc, Apache Beam, Hadoop, Apache Kafka, deep learning, neural networks, machine learning, BigTable and Dataflow. At a holistic level, this certification provides you with an understanding of data ingestion, software fidelity, scalability and deployment of secure and legally compliant systems. 

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate  

 $114,800 

After deploying complex Cloud solutions that cost billions of dollars, companies want to consistently monitor these systems for continuous improvement, redundancy, and optimization. This is where the AWS SysOps Administrator comes in. This certification will help you validate your skills with Amazon CloudWatch, the primary tool used to monitor AWS systems. You will also learn how to deploy optimized systems and services across the AWS ecosystem, estimate AWS costs, configure and automate CloudFormation, perform load balancing, and much more. 

TOGAF 9.1  

$111,984 

The Open Group Architecture Framework 9.1 certification validates your skills in data modeling, architecture design, and development in enterprise environments. TOGAF 9.1 helps you find the best solutions to solve problems in a diverse range of sectors. With this certification, you will learn ADM, ArchiMate, developing information systems architecture, problem solving, cost and risk management. 

Project Management Professional (PMP) 

$111,196 

PMP is one of the most famous certifications in the world, with over 932,720 active PMP certified members across the globe. PMP validates your project management skills, with a special focus on risk management, cost, quality, integration, requirements, failures and more. PMP readies you for high-level jobs on the project management career path.  

AWS Certified Developer Associate  

$111,178 

The AWS Developer Associate certification is ideal if you want to prove your skills as someone who has a strong grasp on AWS core services, architecture, related frameworks and stack. With this certification you can validate your expertise in development, deployment, and debugging of AWS applications. With this certification you will learn Amazon Identity Access Management (IAM), EC2, S3, Elasticache, DynamoDB, KMS, encryption services in AWS, and Cloud monitoring. 

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate  

$110,429 

The AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification will prove your skills around problem solving in Amazon Cloud at an architectural level. You will learn how to build, develop, and optimize Cloud applications. With a special focus on architecture and problem solving, this certification includes specific modules on Route53, EC2, S3, CloudFront, Auto Scaling, Load Balancing, RDS, RedShift, DynamoDB, EMR and VPC. 

Google Certified Professional Associate Cloud Engineer  

$106,044 

This certification validates your skills in application deployment, enterprise solutions development, and optimization in Google Cloud. The certification also includes Google’s special Cloud console training on, on-premise solutions, public, and hybrid Cloud platforms.  Having this certification will help you get a Cloud engineer job in top companies as the industry is swiftly embracing Google Cloud platform. 

Here we come to the end of the end of the top 10 most lucrative IT certifications in the market.  If you are interested in increasing your skills or earning potential, getting an IT certification is the way to go.