Washington - Being a "scrum master" may sound
like something a rugby player does, or a job that does not sound all that
inviting to many. But for people who know how to run software projects
according to certain quick-changing, small-group management principles, it is
one of the 25 highest-paying jobs in the United States, and there are more than
2 000 openings for it.
That is according to Glassdoor, the jobs and salary
website, which released its third annual list of the best-paying jobs in
America late Tuesday. In addition to the obscure-sounding scrum master, the
list includes 10 other technology-related jobs, as well as six health-care job
titles and three finance-industry careers. Indeed, very few of the jobs among
the top 25 are not solely related to those three industries.
"High pay continues to be tied to demand skills,
higher education and working in jobs that are protected from competition or
automation," Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain said in an
emailed statement. "That is why we see several jobs within the technology
and health-care industries."
Yet while jobs from the tech industry dominate the list
once again, not one tech job ended up in the top five. Instead, health-care
jobs showed up in four of the top five spots.
For the third year in a row, "physician" took
the top slot, with a median base salary of $187 876. Pharmacy managers ($149 064)
and pharmacists ($125 847) popped up at number 2 and number 5. "Medical
science liaisons" ($132 842) - specialists who work for pharmaceutical or
biotech companies to establish relationships with medical experts - came in at number
4 Patent attorneys rounded out the top five, at number 3.
Other health-care jobs that were new to the list this
year include nurse practitioner (Number 14, $104 144) and physician assistant (Number
7, $112 529, which also showed up in 2015).
Creating the list
To create its list, Glassdoor relies on salary reports
from US employees who filled out information on its site over the past year,
and only considers job titles that have at least 100 salary reports for the
list. Therefore, the list is limited in scope by who submits reports, and to
some extent, by how they choose to describe or categorize their jobs. As a
result, the list is meant to be more of a general snapshot than a comprehensive
study.
"For the everyday job-seeker, it provides more of a
guide," Glassdoor spokeswoman Allison Berry said. "It certainly is
not a perfect science."
undefinedTo try to improve the data behind the list, Berry said
the company developed a statistical algorithm this year that controls for
factors such as location and amount of experience.
"It strips some of the biases we might have for our
data, such as if we're getting a lot of salary reports for data scientists in
San Francisco, or data scientists with six years of experience," Berry
said.
Glassdoor also attempts to "normalise" various
job titles into groups to help with variation in how people define their roles,
which makes it difficult to compare job titles across different years. The
analysis excludes C-suite level jobs, Glassdoor said in its methodology, and
only examines base pay.
Other new jobs on the list for 2017 included plant
managers ($97 189, number 21) and nuclear engineers ($94 852, number 24).