If the January work slump is hitting you hard, you might be tempted to dive into a drastic career change.
But which area should you delve into?
Perhaps Glassdoor can help you decide, as they’ve released their list of the top jobs in the UK for 2021, based on salary, job openings, and job satisfaction.
It turns out that a product manager is the best thing you can be right now (fairly general, we know, but you could combine this with the list of the best places to work to find your dream role), with a median base salary of £60,221, 1,946 listings, and a job satisfaction rating of 4.1 out of 5.
Wondering what a product manager actually is? According to the average job description, having this title means you’re ‘responsible for the product planning and execution throughout the Product Lifecycle, including: gathering and prioritising product and customer requirements, defining the product vision, and working closely with engineering, sales, marketing and support to ensure revenue and customer satisfaction goals are met.’
Sounds alright to us.
While this is the best overall job due to those three combined factors, it’s worth noting product manager isn’t the best paid or most satisfying job on the list.
The best salary goes to the title of enterprise architect, with an average base of £71,932.
This role, apparently, means you are ‘responsible for the entire infrastructure of the company’s IT platform’, with duties including ‘designing processes, documenting essential IT procedures, tracking project progress, and maintaining a security focus’.
The top 25 jobs in the UK for 2021, according to Glassdoor:
Title, median base salary, number of listings, and job satisfaction rating (out of five):
- Product Manager: £60,221, 1,946, 4.1
- Enterprise Architect: £71,392, 1,517, 4.1
- Dentist: £55,500, 1,721, 4.0
- Full Stack Engineer: £45,000, 1,264, 4.4
- Sales Manager: £50,000, 2,268, 4.0
- Mobile Engineer: £50,602, 960, 4.2
- Tax Manager: £58,000, 973, 4.1
- Cloud Engineer: £55,000, 729, 4.2
- Commercial Manager: £56,206, 805, 4.1
- Business Development Manager: £45,542, 3,178, 4.0
- HR Business Partner: £50,602, 702, 4.2
- Program Manager: £62,747, 1,167, 4.0
- Risk Manager: £68,577, 859, 4.0
- HR Manager: £50,184, 522, 4.3
- Customer Success Manager: £41,000, 858, 4.3
- Devops Engineer: £50,184, 2,040, 3.9
- Data Scientist: £45,542, 934, 4.1
- Information Security Engineer: £50,276, 677, 4.1
- Front End Engineer: £40,741, 1,935, 4.0
- Data Engineer: £45,000, 1,175, 4.0
- Delivery Manager: £57,315, 813, 4.0
- Marketing Manager: £42,154, 2,491, 4.0
- Operations Manager: £45,542, 2,268, 3.9
- Site Manager: £45,542, 1,858, 3.9
- Java Developer: £50, 184, 1,595, 3.9
The job with the highest satisfaction level, meanwhile, is the full stack engineer, with a score of 4.4, and the job with the highest number of job openings is a business development manager (there are 3,178 slots at the moment).
Some interesting changes in this year’s list include the product manager role taking the top spot, after getting second place for 2020 and remaining in the top 25 for seven consecutive years.
Some best jobs from 2020 have dropped out of the top 25 entirely, including finance manager (which last year was at number eight), contract manager, software engineer, and strategy manager.
10 of the 25 jobs are new this year, and the tech field dominates the list.
But the highest rank new addition to the list is the role of dentist. ‘Demand for dentistry is high and as soon as the first lockdown ended in June 2020, consumers increased spending on dental services,’ say Glassdoor. ‘The demand for cosmetic dentistry in particular has risen.’
So, if you’re back on the job hunt, take a look at the world of tech or completely retrain in dentistry. Easy, right?
You can take a look at open jobs for all the top roles over on Glassdoor.
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-- to metro.co.uk
