Organizational size matters when determining industry compensation for privacy professionals – this news was courtesy of the panelists who presented a recent webinar highlighting their research findings as part of the 2023 IAPP Privacy Professionals Salary Survey, compiled as a joint effort by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) and TRU Staffing Partners.

Webinar panelists included TRU’s Founder & CEO Jared Coseglia, alongside IAPP Principal Researcher in Privacy Management Saz Kanthasamy, CIPP/E, CIPM, FIP, and IAPP Research & Insights Director Joe Jones. The group noted that the salary survey results showed a direct correlation between organizational size and privacy employee compensation.

The Bigger the Organization, The Better the Compensation!

According to the survey results compiled from more than 1,400 industry professionals, privacy pros working for organizations with under $100 million of annual revenue reported average base salaries 35% lower than privacy pros working at organizations with more than $40 billion in annual revenue. 

This means that job seekers testing the waters with different sized companies may find that working for larger organizations may be more financially advantageous and the work at larger organizations may be more specialized to suit experienced workers.

Because larger organizations (with huge market presence and deep pockets) are offering higher salaries, they are likely to employ more specialized privacy professionals who focus on a limited number of tasks. In comparison, smaller organizations require privacy employees to wear many hats, but they also get more varied experience. 

Number of Employees Matters Too for Privacy Compensation

A similar theme was observed when considering the number of employees. Privacy professionals at organizations with fewer than 100 employees reported 28% lower average base salaries than those working in organizations with more than 80,000 employees. Four main scenarios were seen from the survey results:

So that raises two questions: what are the salary ranges for privacy jobs and where are these jobs?

Coseglia took the opportunity to match the IAPP survey results to similar research done by TRU’s 2022 & 2023 Data Privacy Jobs Report. He compared base salaries by role title within three key markets that hire privacy professionals and showed the IAPP mean:

Then, he displayed where the privacy jobs are most frequently open for both full-time and contract privacy professionals. Corporations, who do 80% of the privacy industry hiring, currently have the most potential for job seekers.