You cannot say the information technology job market is doing well in 2017, but the sector was undeniably among those least affected by the crisis. That is because, in difficult times, companies see IT as an ally of productivity and profitability — both to cut costs and to expand business opportunities.
A recent report from consulting firm HAYS shows that, in 2016, companies across all sectors invested in management system customization and business intelligence (BI) projects. “No company stopped investing in technology because of the country's situation, quite the opposite,” says Raphael Falcão, director of HAYS Experts.
The study offers a relatively positive outlook for the field in 2017: IT professionals will continue to be seen as strategic allies in boosting company performance, especially in certain specific areas. The spotlight falls mainly on specialists in big data, cloud, adaptive security architecture, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Another expected trend, according to Falcão, is workforce renewal at large technology companies. “We see employers with very traditional profiles seeking people with fresh and ‘disruptive’ skills to try to reinvent themselves and even test other business models,” he explains. Meanwhile, startups are establishing themselves as competitive employers in the IT market, and entrepreneurship is becoming another important career alternative.
For 2018, the HAYS Experts director predicts that IT professionals“ employability will remain on an upward curve. ”Although political uncertainty remains, the new economic direction appeals to the market and creates a more comfortable environment for investment,” he says.
The HAYS report also identifies jobs on the rise and in decline in Brazil for 2017. See below:
Jobs on the rise:
Cloud and DevOps specialist
Information security analyst | manager
Data analyst | engineer | scientist
With cost reduction in mind, companies across all sectors have sought to migrate their data from physical infrastructure (hardware) to the cloud, which explains the growing demand for cloud specialists capable of planning, guiding, and carrying out this process securely.
DevOps specialists, meanwhile, are sought by companies looking to bring a culture of innovation and efficiency to their IT departments, consolidating their shift from a support area to a strategic business core.
According to Falcão, information security analysts and managers gain even greater prominence thanks to the move to migrate data to the cloud, which reinforces concerns about data confidentiality.
Data analysts, engineers, and scientists, in turn, will be in greater demand thanks to the race for big data's benefits. “Many companies still do not know how to use the power of data day to day, but they are trying to get ahead and plan to hire big data specialists as a strategic investment,” says the HAYS Experts director.
Jobs in decline:
Telephony network analyst
Non-virtualized infrastructure coordinator | analyst
The least promising IT areas for 2017 are generally those being superseded by new technologies. This is the case for telephony network analysts, at a time when the arrival of the internet and smartphones is forcing many companies to discontinue their landline networks. “Those working with older telephony hardware will find it increasingly difficult to find opportunities,” says Falcão.
The same logic applies to non-virtualized infrastructure coordinators and analysts. Because it generates high costs, the physical infrastructure needed to store information, such as data processing centers, has been replaced by cloud data.
Links
- http://www.cbsi.net.br/2017/08/estes-sao-os-cargos-de-ti-em-alta-e-em-baixa-no-brasil.html
- https://becode.com.br/cargos-e-salarios-para-iniciantes-ti/
- Guide to Your First IT Job
- http://exame.abril.com.br/carreira/estes-sao-os-cargos-de-ti-em-alta-e-em-baixa-no-brasil/
- https://www.hays.com.br
The market in 2026
Nine years later, credit where it is due: the 2017 list got it right. Cloud, DevOps, information security, and data were the bets — and all four became the center of the market. Those who followed that advice did not regret it.
What changed was the level of specialization required within each of these areas, and the emergence of roles that did not exist. This is the current picture.
On the rise
AI / Machine Learning engineer. The role that was absent from the 2017 list and now leads in compensation — but with more grounded ranges than those commonly repeated. Robert Half's 2026 Salary Guide projects R$ 19,5 thousand to R$ 27,1 thousand for the role in São Paulo; meanwhile, the country's largest public salary survey, from Código Fonte TV, with 17 thousand respondents, reports an average of R$ 14,6 thousand for senior professionals and R$ 20,6 thousand for specialists and tech leads. The “R$ 40 thousand” figures circulating do exist, but sit above percentile 90 even in datasets consisting of big tech and fintech workers. Watch the scope: the market wants people who put models into production — inference, cost, latency, evaluation — not those who only train models in Jupyter notebooks.
Cybersecurity. It stopped being one role and became an entire family: AppSec, incident response, cloud security, GRC. LGPD and escalating ransomware did the rest. The real numbers are more modest than the reputation: the national average for information security analysts is R$ 9 thousand, with a median of R$ 7,5 thousand (CAGED, covering 8,7 thousand registered professionals). According to Robert Half 2026, senior roles range from R$ 11,3 thousand to R$ 19 thousand, coordinator roles from R$ 18 thousand to R$ 24,6 thousand, and only management ranges exceed R$ 22 thousand.
Data engineer. Here there was a quiet reversal compared with 2017 — a market reading, not a definitive statistic: back then the fashionable role was data scientist ; today the shortage is of data engineers. Companies discovered that having someone build models is pointless if nobody builds and maintains the path the data travels.
Cloud architect and FinOps. Still riding high, with an important shift in focus: in 2017, hiring was for migrating to the cloud; in 2026, hiring is for reducing the bill for it. People who know how to analyze cloud costs have a ready market.
SRE and platform engineering. The natural evolution of the 2017 “DevOps specialist.” The difference is that today the person is expected to build the internal platform that product teams consume — Kubernetes, observability, pipelines and error budgets.
In decline
Pure N1 support. It is the sector's most pressured role: the help desk average in Brazil is R$ 2.489, with a median of R$ 2.215 and a ceiling around R$ 3.900 (CAGED, covering 67 thousand professionals) — and triaging repetitive tickets is exactly what AI assistants do well. The caveat is that replacement is a predicted trend, not an established measurement: Gartner itself projects that half the companies that cut customer service staff citing AI will rehire by 2027. It remains a valid entry point — but today it is a door to pass through, not a destination.
Exclusively manual QA. Here the reading is a trend, not a statistic: there is no Brazilian survey showing a decline in QA vacancies — the field even appears among those in greatest demand. What the data shows is the pay difference between those who only test by clicking and those who write automation and work inside the pipeline. That is the direction worth moving toward.
Infrastructure without code. The 2017 prediction about “non-virtualized infrastructure” came true and went further: today virtualization is not enough; it must be declared in code. An administrator who only clicks in consoles — VMware or cloud — is in the same position as a telephony network analyst in 2017.
Junior developer without a portfolio. The most sensitive point on this list. It is not that the market does not want juniors — it is that the simple task that served as a stepping stone now comes ready-made from an assistant. Beginners need to show things they have built, not just completed courses.
What AI did to each role
It is worth separating rhetoric from what is observed in practice:
- It has not replaced anyone who understands the subject. It replaced tasks: boilerplate, first drafts of scripts, code translation between languages, log reading.
- It increased the value of reviewers — this is our interpretation, not a measurement. Generating code became a commodity; knowing that the code is wrong did not.
- It created pressure at entry level and relief in the middle. Seniors became more productive; juniors lost part of the work that trained them. Studies quantifying this effect mostly concern the American market and do not establish causality — but the pattern matches what is observed in job postings here. It is a problem still without a good solution.
- “Prompt engineer” did not become a career. The skill was absorbed by all roles, as happened with “webmaster” in the 2000 decade.
What to do with this list
Three pieces of advice worth more than any ranking:
- Choose the foundation before the fashionable job title. Linux, networking, a little programming, and debugging skills serve every rising role on this list — and will keep serving those on the next one. Start with terminal commands and programming languages.
- Compare CLT employment and PJ contractor offers properly. Contracting through legal entities stopped being an exception: according to Brasscom, between September 2024 and December 2025 the sector gained 125 thousand professionals, but only around 19% entered CLT employment. And here is the counterintuitive finding — when the CLT package is normalized (13º salary, vacation, FGTS, benefits), Brazilian PJ contractors' median falls below that of CLT employees at senior level. Gross pay really is misleading; redo the calculation before deciding.
- English. It separates domestic from international pay ranges, and the difference is in multiples, not percentages: in surveys separating hiring arrangements, the median for people hired directly by foreign companies is more than double that of CLT employees in Brazil. The context is in the shortage of IT professionals in Brazil.
The salary ranges cited come from Robert Half's 2026 Salary Guide, Código Fonte TV's 2026 Salary Survey, and the CAGED database, consulted in September 2026. These are monthly amounts for CLT employment and vary considerably by region, company size, and arrangement — contracts with foreign companies are a different calculation. Use them as an order of magnitude, not a pay table.