MSP Salary Guide: Structure Competitive Offers that Don’t Break the Bank

Managed service providers want to remain competitive yet pay employees a market rate salary. Here is some national MSP salary data to help companies structure competitive Tier 1 and Tier 2 job offers that align with national averages.

Tier 1 employees are generally the first to respond to trouble tickets and provide support for basic end-user computer issues. They often work remotely and deliver support over the phone. Tier 2 employees handle more advanced trouble tickets, often fielding both more complex break/fix incidents and issues in conjunction with systemwide configurations that require a deeper knowledge of servers, virtualization and networking.

The salary data below reports salaries of MSP professionals in ranges, with the ranges representing national averages. We gathered the data by conducting more than 5,000 Skype Interviews with MSP professionals entering the job market and by helping more than 500 MSPs fill more than 2,400 MSP jobs since 2012.

How Much to Pay Tier 1 Employees

Courtesy: Bowman Williams

The data overwhelmingly indicates that the statistical average mean (average) salary of a Tier 1 employee working in either a Remote or Field Tech capacity is consistent throughout the United States, irrespective of how many employees an MSP has or its geographical proximity to a major city. The “mean difference,” or difference in salary averages between a Tier 1 primarily working in a Remote Support capacity and a Tier 1 primarily working in a Field Tech capacity, has seen almost no change, with an average statistical difference of less than $1,000 in salary, year-over-year, since 2012. If you take the average salary of a Tier 1 Remote Support and a Tier 1 Field Tech and average those two salaries together, that salary amount is $43,237.

According to the data we collected, MSPs are most risk-averse when hiring at the Tier 1 level, more so than any other skill level. The average salary increase an MSP professional at the Tier 1 level can expect to receive when jumping from one MSP to another is less than $1,000 per year.

Statistically speaking, then, a Tier 1 is more likely to advance from a Tier 1 compensation bracket to a Tier 2 compensation bracket while working for their current MSP employer, not when they leave for “greener pastures.”

On the other side of the coin, the data indicates the second-largest salary increase an MSP professional at any tiered level can expect to receive occurs when advancing from a Tier 1 compensation bracket to a Tier 2 compensation bracket. The mean salary of all the various Tier 1 profiles we recorded was $46,371, compared with the mean salary of all the various Tier 2 profiles we recorded, which was $64,879. The “mean difference,” or difference in salary averages between Tier 1 and Tier 2 employees, was $18,508. This relatively large delta between these two average salaries could potentially afford a Tier 1 a 40% salary increase when advancing to a Tier 2 job title.

That leap in compensation might be a contributing factor to the high turnover rate plaguing the MSP industry at the junior levels, with Tier 1 employees “jumping ship” each time they’ve acquired enough baseline experience to market themselves as a Tier 2 . . . at least on paper.

How Much to Pay Tier 2 Employees

The data indicates that the ubiquitous MSP Tier 2 Technician is still the most frequently filled position and the most in-demand skill set bolstering staff in the managed services industry across the U.S. since 2012.

In fact, according to the data we gathered, the median salary of all the job offers we helped facilitate between MSP professionals and MSP employers between the years of 2015 to 2019 fell within …