Ethan Ang, founding father of NodeFlair
Software program engineers with AI expertise now earn between 13 per cent and 25 per cent greater than their friends, marking a major shift from only a 12 months in the past when AI capabilities had little impact on compensation, in keeping with a brand new business report.
NodeFlair, a tech profession platform based mostly in Singapore, revealed its Tech Wage Report 2026 this week, drawing on greater than 230,000 verified wage knowledge factors throughout roles and markets.
The findings level to a tech labour market during which AI fluency has moved from a fascinating attribute to a measurable monetary benefit.
“AI fluency is not a nice-to-have. It’s now a wage benefit,” mentioned Ethan Ang, founding father of NodeFlair. “Only a 12 months in the past, coding with massive language fashions nonetheless felt extra experimental than transformative for a lot of groups. In 2025, that modified shortly.”
The report additionally reveals a widening wage hole between junior and senior engineers. Salaries for senior, lead and manager-level roles rose 10.8 per cent or extra, in contrast with 5.3 per cent for junior positions and simply 1.7 per cent for mid-level engineers.
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The divergence displays rising demand for knowledgeable engineers who could make architectural choices, handle ambiguity and deploy AI instruments to higher impact.
Ang mentioned engineering leaders described AI as more and more able to dealing with execution duties historically assigned to entry-level employees, e.g writing routine code sooner and at decrease price. Nonetheless, he famous that higher-order expertise similar to system design, trade-off evaluation and navigating complicated necessities stay areas the place skilled engineers maintain a transparent edge.
On the high of the market, the highest-earning 10 per cent of engineers noticed wage will increase of as much as 19 per cent, additional widening the hole between high performers and the broader workforce.
What modified in 2025
NodeFlair attributed the turnaround to 2 converging components: the maturation of AI coding instruments into production-grade workflows, and a shift in how employers assess technical expertise.
In 2024, many corporations have been nonetheless operating pilots, and the productiveness case for AI remained unclear. By 2025, instruments enabling agentic coding workflows had develop into extensively adopted, making the return on AI funding extra tangible and prompting corporations to cost AI expertise accordingly.
For early-career engineers, Ang urged embracing AI reasonably than treating it as a aggressive risk. He famous that, on the bottom, youthful engineers have been faster to undertake AI instruments than their senior counterparts, and that pairing these expertise with sturdy fundamentals in problem-solving and system design stays essentially the most sturdy path to profession worth.
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The subsequent wave
Trying forward, NodeFlair expects the most important wage premiums to accrue to not these holding AI-specific job titles, however to professionals who mix area experience with sensible AI execution — product managers who can prototype with AI, knowledge professionals who can transfer AI fashions into manufacturing, and engineers who can work fluidly alongside AI brokers.
“The largest premiums will go to individuals who can mix area experience with AI execution,” Ang mentioned. “Not simply figuring out the instruments, however figuring out easy methods to apply them to create measurable enterprise worth.”
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Picture Credit score: NodeFlair
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