How much can I earn with an ITIL Foundation Qualification?

As I stated in my post entitled ITIL®4 Qualifications and the benefits of gaining them, more and more organisations are realising the benefits of ITIL® management.  For this reason, the demand for ITIL® qualified people is on the rise.  This post specifically concentrates on wages available for ITIL® Foundation, but there are many positions asking for higher ITIL® qualifications as well.  These higher qualifications are the older ITIL® version 3 qualifications and whilst they are still valid and look impressive on a CV, because of the changes to ITIL® that are currently taking place, I have not gone into detail as far as positions asking for them are concerned.

So, what can I earn with an ITIL® Foundation qualification?

If you look at the chart below you will see that the average wage for positions advertising for ITIL® Foundation certified candidates (both v3 and v4) is £45,000 during the last 6 months.  This does, however, include positions that require other qualifications such as Managing Successful Programmes (MSP®) or PRINCE2. Generally, the rule is that the higher the pay scale the higher the qualifications and experience required. 

The salary distribution of IT jobs citing ITIL Foundation Certificate over the 6 months to 12 June 2019.

Image Source: itjobswatch

If you only possess ITIL® Foundation, then you are probably going to achieve the lower end of the pay scale; up to about £25,000 depending on industry and location.  There are one or two positions advertised that pay higher, but these are few and far between.  The lowest grade salary is offered for positions such as Service Desk Analyst at approximately £17,000 to £23,000 per annum, whilst the higher paid managerial positions will achieve between £40,000 to £85,000 and sometimes more.   These higher paying positions, however, as I stated earlier, require many years of experience as well as more advanced ITIL® qualifications and/or a combination of MSP, Scrum, Agile, PRINCE2 or PRINCE2 Agile.

The most popular jobs asking for ITIL® Foundation:

IT Director pays between £54,000 to £118,000

IT Manager – pays between £30,000 to £66,000

IT Project Manager pays between £29,000 to £65,000

IT Business Analyst pays between £26,000 to £52,000

IT Service Delivery Manager pays between £30,000 to £60,000

IT Application Support Analyst pays between £21,000 to £45,000

IT Service Desk Analyst pays between £15,000 to £31,000

There are currently 515 jobs advertised on Indeed (14.06.2019), all of which ask for ITIL® Foundation (and above).  There are some temporary roles advertised too, such as Infrastructure Engineer that pays £200 to £250 per day and a SharePoint Analyst role for which you could expect to earn £300 per day. 

Some of the most popular employers asking for ITIL® Foundation:

• National Health Service
• Vodafone
• Tata Consultancy Services Ltd
• Hewlett Packard,
• Capgemini
• BT Group
• Fujitsu
• IBM
• Staples
• Sony
• Toyota

Whilst ITIL® Foundation is a necessary requirement for all the positions I have mentioned above and is always a good qualification to have in terms of IT management, it is worth considering that to climb up the pay scale and career ladder, a higher ITIL® qualification may not necessarily be to your advantage.  It might serve your interests better to pursue a project management course such as the ones I have mentioned in this post.  Either way, ITIL® Foundation is a really good addition to your CV.