AI skills pay off, engineers earn up to 25% more

Most tech roles saw salary growth, but not all benefited equally

2025 marked a turning point for the tech industry. After several years of layoffs, cautious hiring, and uncertainty, the sector is showing signs of recovery across the region.

At the same time, companies are rethinking how they prioritise and value talent. Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just a talking point—it’s now embedded in hiring priorities, day-to-day workflows, and compensation, as highlighted in Nodeflair’s latest annual tech salary report.

This year’s data, released today (May 4), shows that engineers with AI skills are earning meaningfully more than their peers, with some seeing pay bumps of up to 25%. At the same time, senior engineers continue to pull ahead, as companies place greater value on judgment, architecture, autonomy, and the ability to work effectively with AI tools.

In effect, AI is reshaping the tech career ladder and rewarding stronger problem-solvers at every level. Here is a breakdown of the report and the overall compensation changes for tech roles in Singapore, detailed by role and seniority:

[Disclaimer: Salary data are derived from Nodeflair’s proprietary database of over 130,000 data points, including user submissions that are verified by documents (payslips and offer letters) as well as job advertisements from various job portals. While a majority of the entries are backed by a sizeable amount of data, Nodeflair has flagged out entries with less than 200 data points as potentially lacking accuracy.]

Data scientists are the highest-paid, earning up to S$25K per month

Based on salary data from NodeFlair’s proprietary database, lead data scientists are the highest-paid role. Despite an overall 8.3% decline, they still command a median monthly salary of S$25,000.

Meanwhile, software engineer managers earn up to S$20,100 per month, marking a 10.8% increase as compared to the previous year.

Senior solutions engineers earn a median monthly salary of S$18,500, followed closely by senior product managers at S$18,100. Other top roles include lead mobile engineers at S$16,900, lead data engineers at S$16,000, and platform (DevOps & SRE) leads at S$15,200.

Roles at S$15,000 and below include lead cybersecurity engineers, lead data analysts, systems & IT leads, and senior quality assurance engineers.

On average, senior roles saw the strongest salary growth, with pay rising 12.6%. Lead roles followed at 11.6%, while manager roles increased by 10.8%.

By contrast, mid-level and junior roles recorded more modest gains, with average salary increases of 1.7% and 5.3%, respectively.

AI skills pay off

Beyond providing salary data, NodeFlair’s report highlighted a widening pay gap between engineers with and without AI skills.

Its analysis of 50th percentile software engineers shows that AI-native talent is being paid a clear premium.

The data found that junior software engineers (zero to two years of experience) with AI skills saw a 25% pay bump at the median, earning S$6,000 per month compared to S$4,800 for those without AI skills.

Among mid-level engineers (two to five years of experience), those with AI skills earned 13% more at the 50th percentile—S$8,000 versus S$7,100 for their non-AI peers.

At the senior level (more than five years of experience), engineers with AI skills earned 18% more at the median, taking home S$10,000 compared with S$8,500 for those without.

AI fluency is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s now a salary advantage

Ethan Ang, Nodeflair founder

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“With the rise of tools like Claude Code and a broader wave of agentic coding workflows, engineering teams are now rethinking how software gets built around AI, including placing greater value on engineers who are truly AI-native,” he added.

• Read more articles we’ve written on Singapore’s job trends here.

Featured Image Credit: Shadow_of_light/ depositphotos