UAE Salary Guide 2023

Our 2023 UAE Salary Guide and Market Report provides the latest salaries you can expect within Telecommunications & Mobile Infrastructure; Software, DevOps & Digital Commerce; Smart Technologies & Data Sciences; and Cloud Technologies. Alongside the salary figures are short market overviews, highlighting the main factors impacting recruitment within each sector. The salaries within this report are displayed as monthly earnings in UAE dirhams and are based on our experience of what businesses are willing to offer, as well as what candidates are expecting when making their next career move. I hope you find this report a useful guide and should you have any questions please contact Ahmed Khan.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS & MOBILE INFRASTRUCTURE

The UAE is actively adopting 5G and firmly making it part of its future. A study by research firm YouGov put the UAE in second position, after China, as the leading country where respondents claim to be using a 5G enabled smartphone. Despite the demand for 5G services, salaries for Technical and Operational positions within 5G telecoms currently remain either stationary or with small increases. This is due to most of the 5G implementations being complete, and with the introduction of 6G for commercial launch delayed, it’s expected that salaries will remain at similar levels throughout 2023. For sales positions, however, remuneration can be very generous as they are largely incentivized for winning large, multi-million dollar contracts mainly for the value-added services (VAS). Overall, salaries for Technical, Operational and Sales roles are still at good levels, and we expect more of a demand for the latter in 2023.

CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES

In March 2022, Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and Intel joined forces with operators from across the Middle East to establish the region’s “first Open RAN centralized test lab”. This lab aims to provide a space for companies to deploy open and disaggregated technologies into their networks to optimize the online experiences of businesses and consumers. This growing sector saw Amazon Web Services (AWS) launch its second Middle East cloud region after Bahrain in August 2022. All trends point towards more companies (of all sizes) taking their operations, or at least some of them to the cloud. This increased activity is being reflected in recruitment activity and we expect the demand for technical and sales positions within cloud to increase in 2023.

SOFTWARE, DEVOPS & DIGITAL COMMERCE

Social media usage is growing exponentially in the Middle East whether it’s personal entertainment, shopping or increased business activity. This has resulted in an increase in digital commerce, which in turn, has resulted in more businesses investing further and fueling recruitment hiring. Devices are evolving at a very fast rate and technologies such as AR/VR devices are being used more to give life-like experiences. With this increase in usage we fully expect recruitment in software, DevOps and digital commerce to increase not just in 2023 but in 2024, 2025 and beyond! The metaverse is truly here, growing rapidly. The future for recruitment in this space looks very exciting.

Click here to download our salary guide that shows the salaries for jobs in telecommunications and network technology.