In the post-financial crisis world, many companies in the financial service industry are still struggling to establish stability through a difficult market environment. Industry-specific challenges like compliance, government regulations, and the ever-increasing need for sophisticated trading and risk management applications requires a diverse set of solutions. These challenges result in a specific emphasis on creating and maintaining back-end systems, security and data management. In 2012, the trends in identity security and payments has caused a spike in demand for the following Tech jobs according to our 2012 IT Salary Guide:

Security Analysts: $99,000 - $132,000
With the continued concern for security breaches and client confidentiality, security analysts with financial service experience are a crucial part of every IT team for companies like NYSE, Credit Suisse & Sun Trust.

In its 2011 U.S. Cost of a Data Breach, the Ponemon Institute reported that the financial impact of hacks continues to rise, with the cost per compromised record now at $214 (up from $204 in 2009) and the total price tag for each data breach event averaging around $7.2 million. In August 2011, hackers were able to steal $2.7 million from 3,400 customers of a major financial institution, which contributed to the $48 billion in identity fraud losses in the United States each year. 

--Booz Allen

Business Analysts: $55,00 - $92,000
Technology trends such as mobile, social, big data and business analytics are changing the way companies process data and gain business intelligence.

Advances in analytic technologies and business intelligence are allowing CIOs to go big, go fast, go deep, go cheap and go mobile with business data...the capacity of today's computers to process much more data in memory allows for faster results than when searching through data on disk. Even if you're crunching only gigabytes of it. 

--CIO Magazine, David Carr

Salesforce Developers: $83,00 - $138,00
The increased need to break down departmental silos and drive value across the customer life-cycle has caused many financial service decision makers to consider Salesforce for a one-stop CRM solution. Heading the cloud enterprise and now the social era, the growth of Salesforce CRM's use within the financial service industry has been significant over the past year.

Though finance and accounting teams are at the heart of any organization, albeit behind the scenes, they haven’t had the tools to keep pace with today’s real-time enterprise where collaboration is king. Tools like Salesforce Chatter offer a great way to leapfrog from transactional functions to a more modern, strategic role.

 --Forbes, Jeremy Roche, CEO of financeforce.com

The right tools in the hands of the right technology professionals is critical for a financial industry to remain secure. Bluewolf delivers diverse solutions for projects involving PeopleSoft, salesforce.com, and Data and Business Analyst resources by connecting the unique demands of financial institutions with the appropriate tools and processes to ensure a seamless and productive business environment. Learn more about industry-specific technology staffing in our 2012 IT Salary Guide.