Salaries for highly demanded IT-based roles such as cybersecurity specialists are set to rise in the United Kingdom in 2018, according to a new salary survey.

The survey, conducted by recruitment firm Robert Walters, said cybersecurity professionals in the UK would get an average pay rise of seven percent, one of the highest salary increases for technology roles in the island nation.

“At this point, salaries for IT professionals are highly inflated, with employers having to compete to secure top talent. In this context, the increases for cyber security specialists are particularly noteworthy,” said Ahsan Iqbal, associate director at Robert Walters.

The demand for cyber security professionals across industries has significantly increased amid growing cyber-attacks over the last few years.

An increase of seven percent in salary means that a professional in a head of Information security role in London with at least ten years of experience would fetch between £105,000 and £170,000 annually in 2018.

Last year, the annual salary of a London-based head of information security was between £95,000 and £155,000.

A  head of Information security role in London would fetch between £105,000 and £170,000 annually in 2018.

Besides cybersecurity professionals, the salaries for other popular technology roles such as Data scientists are also set to rise.

A head of data science role in London can expect an annual salary of £100,000 and £180,000 in 2018– an increase from 2017 where the same role in the England capital fetched £95,000 and £155,000 a year.

The development and infrastructure specialists have also been growing in demand and will get an average increment of three percent in their annual salary this year.

Iqbal said the firms in the UK are increased looking for highly-skilled and experienced IT professionals in the fields of Java, Linux, cyber security, pen testing,  intelligence, architecture and cloud security customer relationship management (CRM).

“In addition to technical skills, employers are keen to secure professionals who can demonstrate communication and project management skills as they look to more closely integrate their IT function into the wider business,” he added.

The skill gap in the cyber security industry in the UK is the major factor in firms’ inability to find the talented individuals needed to fill up these empty roles.

According to Cyber Safety and Education’s eighth Global Information Security Workforce Study (GISWS), the shortfall of cyber-security jobs in the UK was around 100,000 in February 2017.