The median pay increase across IT roles was 2.75 percent in the 12 months to June, according to a new report. Sixty nine organisations employing 268,000 staff were surveyed.

IT staff numbers remained "generally unchanged" overall, the Pay in IT report found. But a third of staff pay reviews resulted in salary freezes, and this was a major factor affecting staff retention.

Network and systems engineers experienced the largest pay rises, with median salaries between 9.4 and 14.3 percent higher than last year, the report found. IT project managers saw their salaries rise six percent, and operations managers three percent.

Most staff hit "market rate" in the first two to three years of their careers, it said.

The report also highlighted several roles that tend to earn salary premiums: SAP programme managers, analysts, engineers and those with skills in SQL, Citrix, Microsoft .Net and Alpha. Around 20 percent of the companies surveyed said they paid skills premiums.