Mobile application development — a job that barely existed a decade ago — has rocketed to the top of software salary charts. A recent Network World survey found that app developers now earn more than wireless network engineers and data modelers, with a projected average salary range this year of $92,750 to $132,500 up 9% from 2012.
Not all app developers are employed at startups or even at traditional software companies; telecom operators report a growing demand for app development skill sets. AT&T in particular has focused on software skills as it has worked to grow its strategic services for business customers. “We are getting those skills from companies like Google or Facebook or we’re getting those skils from other software companies that are the next startup or … a traditional software company like an SAP,” said AT&T’s Laura Merling. The nation’s second largest carrier hired Merling, formerly Alcatel-Lucent’s senior vice president of application enablement, to head up its effort to transform its network into a software platform.
“It’s taking everything from the underlying core network infrastructure – think your wireless accesss all the way through to what we talk about as typical voice-type communication or messaging – to the underlying quality of service,” said Merling. “Across all of those, how do you make those programmable assets where AT&T may not be the provider of the finished service or finished product; someone else may be. That really means a mindset change for AT&T and how we approach product development.”
Merling said that when AT&T is enabling a customer to solve a business problem, app developers often bring the right mindset to the task at hand. “You need someone that has that ‘what are we trying to solve [mentality],” she said. “What’s the related app and how does that work back, back into the core network, and what’s the value that we want to make available?”
Merling, who works in San Francisco, said the competition for software skill sets in Silicon Valley seems more intense now than it has been since the 1990’s dot.com boom. Nonetheless, she said that strong software skills alone are not enough to land a job in her business unit. “There is a lot of competition for those sklll sets but we want to make sure they have more than just the app development skills,” Merling said. “They have to be able to solve a business problem versus thinking about technology for the sake of technology.”
