The skills so valuable they pay up to R76,000 per month and can get South Africans into Europe

ICT is becoming South Africa’s most in-demand scarce skill, with data, software, and IT roles now earning top salaries and giving professionals the opportunity to work overseas.

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) skills are so sought after that they have dethroned engineering as South Africa’s most in-demand skill.

According to findings from prior annual Xpatweb Critical Skills Surveys up to 2025, corporates needed chemical and mechanical engineers.

They were also looking for electrical and maintenance engineers and were even turning to international recruiting to find industrial and mining engineers.

Xpatweb Managing Director Marisa Jacobs said that preliminary data from the 2026 Critical Skills Survey, currently underway, suggest a shift in the skills employers find hardest to source locally.

“Since the survey was first conducted in 2017, engineering occupations have consistently featured among the top sought-after skills. Although still in high demand, they are no longer at the front of the queue.”

This shift is emerging from responses received from sectors including agriculture, healthcare, transport and logistics, professional and business services, construction, wholesale, ICT and telecommunications, and tourism.

Engineering remains in high demand in South Africa, with 38% of respondents in 2025 reporting they struggled to find these professionals, Jacobs said.

This was up from 23% in 2024 and a dramatic rise from 2018, when only 14% reported difficulty in attracting engineering talent.

With that said, the biggest skill shortage businesses are currently experiencing is in ICT specialists.

“Note that these preliminary results refer to ICT skills excluding Artificial Intelligence (AI) occupations,” Jacobs said.

In prior Xpatweb Critical Skills Surveys, ICT has consistently ranked among the top scarce skills in high demand, but the category previously included AI specialists.

The 2026 Survey introduced AI occupations as a separate role category for the first time. In the 2025 Xpatweb Critical Skills Survey, 22% of participants said it is hard to find ICT specialists.

The percentage jumped from 14% in 2024 and continues to climb. Sought-after ICT specialist roles include data analysts, data scientists, software engineers, IT engineers and ICT systems analysts.

High salaries and international job opportunities

Depending on the ICT speciality, roles can pay very well in South Africa. For example, data from Payscale shows that, in 2026, the average salary for a data scientist is R488,984.

An experienced data scientist with 10-19 years of experience can earn an average total compensation of R915,628, based on data from 19 salaries. This translates to R76,302 per month.

Payscale also reported that the average 2026 salary is R306,377 for data analysts and R410,541 for software engineers.

While it should be noted that the Payscale data is based on a limited pool, it nevertheless provides valuable insight into the earning potential of these fields.

ICT specialists are in demand not only in South Africa. In fact, the search for ICT professionals is a global phenomenon.

According to ICT-VET Switzerland, the national organisation responsible for all federal vocational qualifications in the IT and digital professions, Switzerland could face a shortage of 400,000 ICT professionals by 2030.

In July 2026, Eurofound, a European Union agency providing information and advice on working conditions, sustainable work, industrial relations, and labour markets, reported a similar finding.

The organisation said Europe is set to fall 5 million jobs short of its Digital Decade target of employing 20 million ICT specialists in the EU by 2030.

This means that for local professionals, ICT skills not only mean they have high earning potential in South Africa but could also be their ticket to finding work internationally.

Global data also shows that skilled professionals are not sitting still. Boston Consulting Group’s semi-annual report on global talent mobility reported that 2.4 million highly skilled workers have been on the move in the previous 12 months.

In an article for the International Monetary Fund, Harvard Business School professor William Kerr also wrote that exceptionally talented people migrate at higher rates than the general population.

“Some 5.4% of workers with a college education live outside their home countries, compared with 1.8% of high school graduates.”

“In many immigrant-receiving countries, an elevated and rising share of the skilled workforce is foreign-born, especially in fields related to science and engineering.”