The 4 Best-Paying Tech Jobs in Hawaii

So, what are the best-paying tech jobs in Hawaii? Hawaii itself tends to trend higher for overall annual salaries for tech professionals.

As such, higher-level and specialized positions might trend towards paying higher than the rest of the continental United States. If you’re looking for an excellent salary, Hawaii might be the place to check.

Now, some of these positions will require some specialized skills, a wealth of experience, or a combination of both.

These aren’t your typical break-fix IT jobs, but rather positions that go beyond entry-level work. If you’re curious about the best-paying tech jobs in Hawaii, let’s dive in and see what there is to see.

Software Engineer Manager: $134,156 Average Annual Salary

Software Engineer Managers wrangle the development teams that drive applications and websites. It is one of the best-paying tech jobs in Hawaii due to its room for growth. This is, however, a more senior position.

You’ll be expected to have a good amount of experience in the field before thinking of applying to jobs in this particular position.

With the requisite experience, you can look at earning well over $100,000 a year in this position. Some companies, like Meta, for example, start at around $173,000 a year for the starting salary. Growth potential is high for this particular position and you can look forward to a plethora of benefits.

Responsibilities

Software engineer managers are expected to combine technical knowledge with leadership skills. You’ll have to be an expert on the products in your particular industry.

Being a software engineer manager is being an effective project manager in addition to being a developer. You’ll be called upon to lend technical expertise to the design and roadmap stages of any project.

This is a demanding position, both due to the experience requirements and the overall technical knowledge needed to excel. If you’re up for the task, however, you can expect any of the FAANG companies to come knocking at your door.

Skills Needed

Before applying for any software engineer management position, you’ll likely want to have at least five years of experience in your field. That means five years of leadership experience and five years of experience as a developer.

Multiple programming languages are usually given for this field. Specializing in more common ones like C++, Python, and Java could give you a competitive edge. A bachelor’s in computer science might be a requirement, but many companies will accept relevant experience in lieu of a degree.

Information Systems Security Manager: $153,677 Average Annual Salary

Cybersecurity is still one of the top fields for best-paying tech jobs in Hawaii. As such, being an information systems security manager is a position with plenty of growth potential. This isn’t an easy job by any means, however.

As an information systems security manager, you’re the head honcho over the sanctity and integrity of all the data running through your organization.

You’ll be expected to be kept up to date on the latest threats, as well as fully aware of the latest technologies. If you’ve been in the field for some time it could very well be worth pursuing.

Responsibilities

Being an information systems security manager isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ll have to be an effective manager and team leader, as you will have subordinates handling the daily operation of your systems.

Whatever standard operational procedures have been developed, along with metrics, will be adhered to as well.

Developing safe and effective policies and planning for eventual breaches or compromises is another key responsibility. Depending on the company, you might be expected to develop scripted tasks to guarantee each system in the organization is operating effectively.

Some organizations will also require these tasks to be done while adhering to compliance standards. Cybersecurity is one of the few tech-related fields with some government oversight, so it is paramount to maintain customer confidentiality for their personal data.

Skills Needed

Five years of relevant experience is going to be the lynchpin to your success in this position. The aforementioned experience should ideally be centered around business continuity and cybersecurity alike.

Ideal candidates should have some degree of shell programming languages, like Bash, Powerscript, or Perl.

Experience and knowledge of SQL are always handy, and given its status as a common attack vector, a must for this job. College degrees are preferred, with information technology or computer science being the more common choice.

You can typically circumvent this with relevant experience, training, and technical certifications, however. Certifications vary from organization to organization, but the security suite from CompTIA is a safe bet. Those will help for establishing a baseline qualification for any potential cybersecurity position.

Data Scientist: $150,000 Average Annual Salary

Data scientists are always safe candidates for high salaries. As such, this particular position is another of the best-paying tech jobs in Hawaii. Data scientists take all of those raw data points companies receive and turn them into readable and actionable information.

This is typically done for taking greater details and turning those into high-level reports for executives and management for supporting or making decisions.

Responsibilities

Data scientists are equal parts mathematicians and computer scientists. As such, a data scientist will be expected to develop and then perform deep statistical analysis of data.

Leveraging emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are also becoming a requirement for this sort of work.

You’ll also be expected to give high-level presentations, cutting through the fat of technical jargon to give usable points to your superiors.

Skills Needed

Ideal candidates for data science will likely have a master’s degree in computer science, mathematics, or a comparable field.

Working familiarity with R or Python is usually heavily recommended, thanks to these being some of the primary languages used for data modeling. You might also have luck if you have some knowledge of MATLAB.

Data science is a position where education and experience are paramount, over something like experience. While most IT positions you can skirt by with just technical certifications and experience, you’ll need a degree along with experience to get into the field properly.

Application Developer: $80,000 Average Annual Salary

Application developers do the actual nuts and bolts programming necessary for the creation of web applications, desktop software, and mobile phone apps. That said, application development has massive potential for growth, making this one of the best-paying tech jobs in Hawaii.

Those who keep on the career path will find themselves in management positions after a time. From there, you can expect even more explosive growth in salaries.

Responsibilities

An application developer is expected to be able to understand the demands and requests of a client or project manager and turn that into usable code. These days, most development firms adhere to the Agile methodology, so turn around from concept to prototype to finished product is quite swift.

If you don’t mind the rigors of a high-impact work environment and you enjoy being a team player, application development might be for you. It isn’t the only career path for growth potential in Hawaii, however.

Skills Needed

You’ll need to have a firm grasp of one or more programming languages to get into this career path. Education is a bonus, especially degrees in computer science, mathematics, and software development. That said, it isn’t a hard requirement to have a degree.

Equivalent experience is readily accepted, and if you’re self-taught this is an easy pathway into the field. You could potentially gather this experience through contributions to open-source projects or building applications on your own as a portfolio.

Aside from programming knowledge, you’ll want to have a firm grasp of Agile or DevOps methodology. Having good communication skills for presentations and documentation is also a must.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock.com.