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Intro from the editor: before you ask, what the image has to do with the IT salaries in Romania, I must explain. The photo is of the fridge magnet set, custom-made by Zitec, Romanian outsourcing company, whose founder and CEO Alexandru Lapusan I’ve met at various entrepreneurial conferences. Humor is one of the more powerful weapons against boring multinationals competing for talent in Romania. At the moment Zitec retains over 40 employees.

Despite the global economic difficulties, the Romanian IT-sector doesn’t seem to suffer at all. IT is still one of the best-performing Romanian sectors, where companies are rivaling for the best specialists, and the salaries are generally well above the Romanian average monthly net salary of 450 USD (approximately 330 EUR).

Earlier this fall there were news that big league players such as IBM, Oracle, Dell and Ericsson are considering to further expand their operations in Romania, and there is no sign that the healthy growth of this sector will have to suffer anytime in the near future.

According to a survey conducted by the Qualia head hunting agency, there were no salary cuts in the IT field during the difficult year of 2010. Instead of reducing their salary expenses, IT companies were trying to compensate their outages by replacing less productive employees with new, well-qualified staff.

Qualia points out that international companies rely more and more on outsourcing, therefore future looks good for the Romania’s outsourcing industry. Romanian companies are still looking to hire experienced people, especially specialists in Java and related technologies. However, an increasing number of software development companies prefer employment based on flexible, project-based contracts.

But how much do these specialists actually earn? There are no widely accepted and precise statistics. Besides the official numbers given by the National Institute of Statistics (which are too general to be useful), the head hunting agencies and employees have their own figures.

The numbers I present in this post are based on the statistics from Ghidul Salariilor, the most popular Romanian on-line platform for wage survey. The platform is specialized in the IT industry, and because professionals are asked to give anonymous information about their salaries every three months, it gives the most accurate data possible.

The public salary level for each position is based on the average salary of at least 10, but sometimes more than 100 people working in the given position. I always talk about net monthly income in USD (and in EUR), and I will only present the medium salary, not considering the highest and lowest salaries for the position.

As a general rule, the salaries are highest in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. An average technical position pays 1470 USD (1100 EUR), while the salary for a management position is 2030 USD (1500 EUR). In Cluj, one of the largest provincial IT hubs, the salaries are about 10-15% lower than in Bucharest, and this is applicable for other cities also. In Cluj, an IT specialist working in a technical position earns 1250 USD (930 EUR), while management staff makes around 1875 USD (1400 EUR).

In Bucharest a Business Analyst/Consultant is paid 1560 USD (1160 EUR), a Database Administrator makes 1080 USD (800 EUR), a Helpdesk/Support Specialist earns 810 USD (600 EUR), an IT Support Engineer is paid 1060 USD (810 EUR), and a Network Engineer/Administrator 1000 USD (760 EUR).

A Programer/Developer earns 1560 USD (1190 EUR), a Quality Assurance Engineer 840 USD (630 EUR), a System Analyst 1400 USD (1070 EUR), a Technical Expert/Team Leader 2030 USD (1547 EUR), a Test/Verification Engineer 1250 USD (950 EUR), an IT Manager 2300 USD (1750 EUR) and Project Manager 1860 USD (1410 EUR).

The salaries can vary upon the certificates obtained by a professional. A Microsoft: MCSE, MCP; CISCO: CCNA, CCNP, CCIE; Security: CISSP, CISA; Service Management: ITIL; Project Management: PMP, PRINCE2 can increase the salary of an IT professional with 10-50%.