LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs Report Australia reveals top 15 up and coming jobs

These seriously high-paying roles would be a dream for most of us – and the good news is, there’s more of them available than ever before.

The fastest-growing jobs for 2020 have just been revealed – and it turns out most of them come with seriously impressive pay packets.

Professional networking platform LinkedIn has just crunched the numbers to reveal Australia’s top 15 emerging jobs for the year ahead in its 2020 Emerging Jobs Report.

The jobs on the list have seen “tremendous growth” over the past five years – although they’re not necessarily brand new roles.

The definition of an “emerging job” is one that might have grown out of a more traditional position, or could also be a completely new one which has been created to address business needs.

While at the moment there might not be a large pool of talent currently holding these jobs, the year-on-year growth of professionals being hired in them signals a “long term trend”.

This year, Artificial Intelligence Specialist, Cybersecurity Specialist and Marketing Automation Specialist have emerged as the top three positions for 2020 – but LinkedIn’s senior director of APAC talent solutions Adam Gregory told news.com.au there has also been rise in non-tech roles such as Growth Manager, Chief Strategy Officer and Anti-money laundering specialist.

An analysis of LinkedIn Salary data also revealed examples of salary ranges for each of the top jobs, representing the median salary to the highest salary for each role.

The top emerging job was Artificial Intelligence Specialist – a role which can comes with a salary range of $106,000 to $153,000.

Australia's emerging jobs also happen to be very well paid. Picture: iStock

Next came Cybersecurity Specialists at $102,000 to $153,000, Marketing Automation Specialist at $95,000 to $140,000 and Robotics Engineer (software) with $83,000 to $117,000.

Other emerging jobs and approximate salary ranges include:

•Site Reliability Engineer: $128,000 – $184,000

• Customer Success Specialist: $90,000-$145,000

• Data Scientist: $111,000 – $160,000

• Data Engineer: $111,000 – $160,000

• Growth Manager: $100,000-$150,000

• Chief Strategy Officer: The salary range for a C-suite executive varies according to the industry

• Anti-Money Laundering Specialist: The median salary for a Fraud Analyst ranges from $72,000-$92,000

• Product Owner: $124,000-$180,000

• Service Designer: $97,000 – $191,000

• Full Stack Engineer: $97,000 – $191,000

• Automation Consultant: The median salary for a Control System Engineer is $95,000-$126,000

Mr Gregory told news.com.au while some of the jobs on the list sounded technical and “terrifying”, there was actually a good mix of hard and soft tech skills which all of us can take advantage of.

“There’s a great deal that can come out of reports like this and it provides young people the opportunity to really spot trends early and see how roles are changing today,” he said.

“There’s such a lot happening with tech, but it’s not just within the tech industry, it’s happening with every type of role.

“A young person can look at this, look ahead and see the skills they will need and the great opportunities it will bring.”

He said while jobs needing hard tech skills “aren’t for everybody”, the report proves it was important for all employees to bulk up their “soft skills”, especially in areas like customer service, which was becoming more and more crucial to most businesses.

“There are a lot of those tech-type roles in the list but there’s also customer-centric ones that are coming to the fore,” Mr Gregory said.

“With the number of channels businesses can speak with their customers o now, they have to start putting customer service at the centre of everything – it’s an absolute priority, because people now expect answers immediately.”

He said it wasn’t surprising that the top emerging jobs came with such generous pay packets.

“These types of roles would have attractive salaries as supply is not yet meeting demand at the moment, so it’s a great opportunity for the average Australian,” he said.

He said the arrival of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a key skill was the standout shift from this year’s list, with all of Australia’s top five emerging jobs featuring automation or AI skills, with AI now spreading to all organisational areas, from IT to finance to marketing.

Mr Gregory said strategic roles are also on the rise, with businesses looking for talent to analyse market trends and develop strategies that deliver growth across the business, while customer-centric jobs were also in demand.