Career Path: IT Managers

Information Technology managers or IT project managers or Computer and Information System managers are responsible for planning and coordinating the day-to-day computer related work in an organization. They set the technology goals of organizations and upgrade or install computer system to meet the goals.

Responsibilities

The IT managers typically do the following activities:

• Analyze the IT goals of the organization and upgrade the computer systems accordingly.
• Research on the latest trends in information technology and check the feasibility of implementing the same in their organization.
• Suggest new IT solutions to the top management, which would improve the performance of the company.
• Manage the personnel needs – short-term and long-term in the IT department.
• Manage the work of other IT professionals including computer system analysts, software developers, information security analysts and support personnel.
• Manage the IT security of an organization and protect the organization from cyber attacks.

Qualifications

Most of the IT managers start their career after a bachelor’s degree in information technology or computer science as team member in the IT department. This degree takes about 4 years to complete. Then they gradually learn the technology and become an IT manager after gaining 3-4 years of work experience. Few organizations require an MBA for this role.

Career Advancement

Initially they begin as a lower level manager in the IT department and after gaining experience they become Senior Managers in IT department. Then based on the performance, exposure of the individual and skillful execution of IT strategies, they become IT directors. After few years of gaining international experience, they become CTOs – Chief Technology Officers. CTOs with business related mindset and skills go on to become the Chief Information Officers – CIOs who is responsible for all IT-related decisions in an organization.

Salary Range

The Bureau Of Labor Statistics (BLS) states that IT managers received a salary of $120,950 in May 2012.

The median annual wages for IT managers in various industries is as follows:

 

 

Job Prospects

Employment of IT managers is expected to grow at 15% from 2012 to 2022. It is expected that the healthcare industry would deploy many IT managers in the coming years. With Cloud computing becoming a major trend in the market, there would be a greater demand for the IT managers in the coming years. The projected growth rate is shown below: