No one can predict tomorrow, but that doesn’t preclude us from noticing big trends in what’s hot in technology today. Our list is a compilation of the top IT skill areas from leading industry publications, like Redmond Magazine, ComputerWorld, CIO.com, as well as career hubs like LinkedIn and Dice.com. We found much in common between the sources, while each publication offered valuable insight into the unique challenge of answering, What do we need to be prepared for?
As David Foote writes in the recent Redmond Magazine on “IT Skills Poised To Pay,” “It’s difficult to find an employer not struggling to come up with a unique tech staffing model that balances three things: the urgencies of new digital innovation strategies, combating ever deepening security threats, and keeping integrated systems and networks running smoothly and efficiently. The staffing challenge has moved well beyond simply having to choose between contingent workers, full-time tech professionals, and a variety of cloud computing and managed services options (Infrastructure as a Service [IaaS], Platform as a Service [PaaS], Software as a Server [SaaS]). Over the next few years, managers will continue to be tasked with leading a massive transformation of the technology and tech-business hybrid workforce to focus on quickly and predictably delivering a wide variety of operational and revenue-generating infrastructure solutions involving Internet of Things (IoT) products and services, Big Data advanced analytics, cybersecurity, and new mobile and cloud computing capabilities. Consequently, tech professionals and developers must align their skills and interests accordingly to help their employers meet existing and forthcoming digital transformation imperatives that are forcing deep, accelerated changes in technology organizations.”
Similarities abounded depending on how the publication categorized their skills. According to Tom’s IT Pro, “Going through the various lists, surveys, reports, slideshows and job postings, we couldn’t help but notice that a great many detailed elements tended to cluster around specific skillsets or general job titles. For example, we ran into many specific designations for software developers that included mention of specific programming languages (like Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP and JavaScript) or specific frameworks (like ASP.NET, AngularJS and others) and even platforms (like AWS, Apache or Hadoop). So instead of trying to split these up into individual skill areas we decided to simply group them under software development, partly because most developers will have knowledge of more than one of these areas and also to simplify our list of recommendations. However, we do list subdisciplines and more granular information for each of the skill areas to provide readers more insight.”
Top Tech Skills
- Cloud Computing
- Business Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning/ Robotics
- Software Development and Web Architecture
- DevOps
- Network and Information Security
- User Interface Design
- Network and Information Security
- Mobile Development
- Database
AI on The Rise
Artificial intelligence (and machine/deep learning) is the hottest trend, eclipsing the previous “new big thing,” big data. The new catalyst for the data explosion is the Internet of Things, bringing with it new c cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Constant fluctuations in these trends also create disruption and opportunities in the tech job market.
Cybersecurity
According to Redmond Magazine, “The need to protect traditional infrastructure from pervasive and ongoing attacks from a growing number of vectors and sophistication. Evidence suggests pay premiums for cybersecurity will continue to be strong for the coming years as the threat landscape continues to become more complex and confounding. The elimination of traditional boundaries brought about by cloud computing and mobility and a massive new influx of data generated by IoT devices will only exacerbate this need.”
Changes in Salary
37% of IT professionals are planning to change jobs because it’s a candidates market. Here are some insights from research performed by Robert Half Technology.
- Data Scientist salaries are predicted to range from $116,000 to $163,500 in 2017, increasing 6.4% over 2016 salary levels.
- Big Data Engineer salaries are predicted to range from $135,000 to $196,000 in 2017, increasing 5.8% over 2016 salary levels.
- Network Security Engineer salaries are predicted to range from $115,000 to $162,000 in 2017, increasing 5.7% over 2016 salary levels.
- Security, Web Development and Software Development will see the highest salary growth in 2017.
For a complete list of technology pay premium gainers and decliners, check out the comprehensive article published by Redmond Magazine.