The most in-demand tech jobs.

Business intelligence analyst

Business intelligence analysts need experience in database technology, analytics and reporting tools; businesses typically look for candidates with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems or engineering. You’ll want to hire someone with the right skills to understand your business’ data needs and then communicate those to stakeholders. It’s a role with growing importance as business needs pivot to relying on harvesting and making sense of data.

Skills and experience to look for:

• Experience with database queries
• Stored procedure writing
• Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
• Data cube technology
• Strong written and verbal skills

Data Scientist

While you need a BI analyst to help understand and communicate data patterns from a business perspective, a data scientist is the person who helps gather, process and analyze data. They should also be skilled in communicating those findings and offering recommendations to others in the business.

Skills and experience to look for:

• Programming languages (specifically Python or Java)
• Strong analytical skills
• Strong mathematical skills
• A masters or Ph.D.

Database Developer

When hiring a database developer, you’ll want to look for candidates who demonstrate analytical and problem-solving skills. Since they’ll be responsible for developing and managing enterprise databases, you’ll want to go into hiring with a clear idea of what skills you’re hiring for, and what type of developer will best suit your needs.

Skills and experience to look for:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or database experience
• Experience with enterprise database programs like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle or IBM DB2
• Certifications such as Microsoft Certified Database Administrator or Oracle Database Administrator Certified Professional

Help Desk or Support Desk Technician

For customer-facing businesses, the help desk is an important part of running an efficient business. As the first line of defense for customer service and troubleshooting, help desk workers need to have the right technical and soft skills for the job. Technology breaks out the role of help desk technician into three tiers, since the job description and requirements can vary significantly based on the business.

Skills and experience to look for:

• Tier 1: Entry-level positions that require less than two years of experience, an associate’s degree or coursework at a technical school.
• Tier 2: Positions requiring two to four years of experience, a two-year or bachelor’s degree and relevant work experience.
• Tier 3: Four or more years of experience in a help desk setting, bachelor’s degree in a related field and professional certifications.

Network Administrator

Network administrators are responsible for handling LAN/WAN protocol, software and hardware. They spend a lot of time troubleshooting and typically need to be on call in case of an emergency or failure. What you look for in experience will depend on how extensive your network needs are, but there are certain skills and certifications that can help you find the most qualified workers.

Skills and experience to look for:

• Troubleshooting and communication skills
• Analytic and diagnostic skills
• A willingness to be on call after hours
• A bachelor’s degree or five-plus years of related work experience
• Professional certifications

Data Security Administrator

Handling large amounts of data requires a dedication to security to protect your business, employees, clients and customers. Data security admins are responsible for defining network security requirements, ensuring all security measures are up to date, monitoring company-wide security practices and implementing security strategies.

Skills and experience to look for:

• Critical thinking and complex problem solving
• Innovative and proactive thinking
• A willingness to continue learning new skills
• Strong programming, mathematics and general engineering skills
• A bachelor’s degree, relevant certifications and a background in computer science

System Administrator

Like most jobs in IT, a system administrator should demonstrate strong problem-solving, communication and analytical skills but a system admin also needs a strong technical understanding of the company’s specific hardware and software. What you need in a system admin will vary depending on the services, hardware and software you rely on.

Skills and experience to look for:

• Experience with servers, backup and recovery and installing, patching and upgrading software
• Experience troubleshooting and resolving hardware, software and networking problems
• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, associate’s degree or technical training certificate
• Certifications such as the Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA), Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) or Sun Certified System Administrator (SCSA).

Experience With AI

The field of artificial intelligence is seriously understaffed. Specifically, finding technology leaders (CIO/CTO, head of product, etc.) who know how to credibly manage teams made up of AI, Data Science and innovative product specialists will prove to be difficult going forward.

Skills To Envision, Design And Develop AR Apps

Over the last year, we have seen a number of companies produce hardware and software features to support augmented reality and machine learning. The people with the skills to envision, design, and develop applications that take advantage of these new chips and APIs will be in high demand.

Data Science Talent

With the rise of big data and machine learning, data scientists are becoming a key component in many industries -- from finance and banking to health care and drug discovery. Companies will be investing on a big scale in talent acquisition in this field.

Mobile Application Development

Mobile application developers will continue to be in high demand, just as they have been the past few years. The demand will get greater in 2018, though, and successful app developers should be fluent in multiple programming languages, including Java, HTML5, Objective-C, C++, C#, Python and Swift. Also, app developers with UX and UI design skills can offer much more value for project management.

Excellence In Cyber security

Given the recent infiltration of networks, there will be an increased need for excellence in cyber security. Organizations need to ensure they are protecting the data they capture behind the walls of their networks. Stakeholders are becoming increasingly aware of cyber security concerns and therefore demanding companies address the issue. The tech industry will need expertise in this area in 2018.

Talent For SaaS In The Cloud

IT professionals with skills in cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) will be the hot ticket in 2018. Virtualization skills in Amazon AWS, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware for private cloud hosting will, without a doubt, help you stand out from the crowd. Experience with DevOps, containers, the entire cloud stack and IPv6 will also benefit your chances for a top job tremendously.

Ability To Adapt To New Tech

One of the most important characteristics of a tech star is the ability to adapt to new technologies. It is almost impossible to predict what will be the norm six months from now. Someone who is constantly learning will be very successful in the future of this unpredictable field.

Coding And Engineering Experience

An engineering mind and coding skills are now essential for the high-tech industry. Everything is about new ways to build and use products and services that are more intuitive.

Applied Machine Learning

Data science has been growing rapidly as a profession. But if data science applies in settings where we care about the interpret ability and theoretic soundness of the methodology, like any science, applied machine learning is just about the results. Being able to experiment with common neural networks in Tensorflow will outstrip tinkering with R programming as demand increases.

Programming Knowledge

Programming, especially with multi-faceted languages like Javascript and Python, are the most in demand, whether you're an infrastructure engineer, software engineer or even a digital marketing professional. These languages are not only used to build scalable applications but also to automate, streamline processes or crawl data across disparate systems.

Any Skills Related To Analytics

Machine learning and data analytics are going to continue to grow and change the face of the IT industry as we know it today. I’ve even encouraged my daughter to take analytics as her major knowing that it’s going to be a game-changer in the near future.

Cross-Team Functionality And Communication

There’s an increasing amount of overlap between different job functions, and communicating effectively with different members of an organization is essential. Projects require collaboration between developers, marketers, and designers, and not everyone adapts to understanding the different languages and workflows of each team.

Digital Transformation

An important skill is to identify and implement digital platforms across the whole organization that will impact operational efficiencies and increase revenue.

Computer vision engineer

Demand for computer vision engineers has grown steadily since 2013, according to Indeed data. These professionals build and improve computer vision and machine learning algorithms and analytics to detect, classify, and track objects.

Investments in AR and VR are expected to grow from $11.4 billion in 2017 to $215 billion in 2021, according to IDC. Combined with the rise of self-driving cars, "there's a huge amount of growth that is going to happen in the future that directly ties to demand for computer vision engineers,".

Machine learning engineer

Machine learning engineers are advanced programmers who develop AI machines and systems that can learn and apply knowledge. These professionals perform sophisticated programming, working with complex datasets and algorithms to train these systems.

"We see every company becoming an AI company; and as that happens, AI will become a top investment area for any tech department," Mukherjee said. "Machine learning engineers are going to be very high in demand."

Network analyst

Businesses are investing more heavily in their networks as IoT enters the workplace. "More and more things are going to need to be connected in an efficient way, and that's going to be a major driver of demand there," said Forrester researcher Nate Meneer.

Network analysts in the coming years will combine their technical skill set with an understanding of how to apply it to provide real-time trending information on network traffic, and what those insights means for the business, Stanger said.

"That is going to require somebody who understands more than just networking or more than just understanding of how sensors work -- they're going to fully have to understand the business and they are going to have understand things like AI," Stanger said. "That's a radically different job role than today's job role of knowing how networking works or how security works."

Security analyst

Cybersecurity professionals are already in great demand, and that will continue into the future, as attacks grow more sophisticated and technologies to fight them advance.

The role will likely evolve to include more data skills and AI skills, Stanger said. "Security will remain very, very important, and we're seeing changes from a reactive security model to a proactive one," Stanger said. "You're going to see more of a threat-hunting, artificial intelligence-enhanced model."

Cloud engineer

As the vast majority of companies move important systems to the cloud, more and more are choosing a hybrid approach, with multiple vendors. In the coming years, cloud engineers will develop solutions at scale that are a mix of both in-house technology and outside systems -- going beyond Amazon engineers working on AWS or Microsoft engineers working on Azure, Mukherjee said.

App developer

Across both end users and vendors, app developers will be in large demand in 2020, Meneer said. "It's really the intersection of where technical capability comes to face the business need," he added.

This could be a higher level role than simply coding, according to Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels: The developer may be someone who identifies a need and designs what the code would look like, and sends it off to someone else to do the actual coding.

Business intelligence (BI) analyst

BI analysts gather data from a number of sources, include internal software, competitor information, and industry trends, to develop a sense of where the company stands in the industry and how they can both grow and cut costs.

These professionals act as a counterpart to the app developers, who start from the app and take requirements in, Bartels said. The business analyst starts with the business side, and considers what the company needs in terms of apps to make the process work, he added.

DevOps lead

As more app developers and business analysts come on board, DevOpsteams will also need to be expanded to oversee and coordinate work between those groups, Bartels said.

These professionals bring skills in development and project management that are required in many companies, even outside the context of software development, Meneer said. They may be found under different titles in the future, but the skill sets will continue to be in demand.

"Every single company wants to run their engineering organization as efficiently and as effectively as possible, because that's one of the biggest cost enters," Mukherjee said. "DevOps plays a very important role in driving better efficiency and delivering software faster for those companies."

Database administrator

Database administrators will become more in-demand by 2020, particularly as companies move toward more software offerings that include AI, and the ability to create AI-powered models, Meneer said. "Having well-maintained databases is really the secret to allowing those products to work effectively," he added.

User support specialist

As technology becomes deeply integrated into the operations of business units, more employees will need assistance from support specialists, especially as the workforce transitions, Meneer said. "As companies go through digital transformations, suddenly they find their operations increasingly interwoven into these systems," he added. "You're going to need the professionals who can support that."

With all of these positions and new skills on the horizon, employers need to be proactive in providing training to workers, Bartels said.

"One of the things that we've seen is a fast pace of change in the skills that are required and consequently, the importance of having training mechanisms in place to be continually up skilling your workers for the new types of skills that may be coming in demand," Bartels said. "Don't assume that this problem will take care of itself. Be proactive in terms of identifying skills gaps, putting in place training to help close those gaps, making sure that you really are focused on your human resources."

For any tech position, soft skills are also key to develop, Meneer said.

"Employees who offer both technical skills and soft skills such as communication and empathy are really the workers that are in demand right now," Meneer said. "Having a really clear understanding of how the technology is leveraged to improve business processes and how that pulls into strategy are also going to be increasingly important things that shouldn't be forgotten as tech workers contemplate their careers."

SAP

Those with experience in SAP (an Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP program) will be pleased to know that their skills are not likely to become less desirable any time in the near future. In fact, many industries are in great need of SAP professionals, such as the aerospace, healthcare and defense industries. It has been suggested that demand for SAP professionals is quickly surpassing the supply; and similar to many other programs, there are various areas of specialty within SAP. Those with experience in SAP HANA in-memory databases are perhaps the most in demand, at the moment.

Adobe Programs

Adobe has released several new programs and software packages that make creating and analytics even simpler. Adobe Flex is an open-source program that allows for the easy development of mobile phone applications, which is a great addition to the resume of those who already have keen web-development skills. In fact, mobile web development is currently a very strong area of growth within the IT industry. There's also ColdFusion, which may not be a new technology, though it is still in widespread use for those who build web applications. Similar to those who specialize in Flex, this is a great tool to have in addition to your other web-development skills.

Adobe Captivate allows users to make traditional PowerPoint presentations more interactive through the inclusion of videos, animations, quizzes and other personalized options. There's also the Adobe Creative Suite, which is a grouping of several already-popular Adobe programs that helped to define the Adobe brand; within this group of programs, you'll find In Design, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Illustrator. These are all tools that are in high demand within publishing, web development, marketing and beyond.

Share point

Share point is a fairly commonly used program, so there is a definite need for those with keen skills in this area. In fact, "Share point" and "Share point Developer" have become some of the most commonly searched terms, according to Dice.com. However, it's important to understand that within Share point there are various areas that IT professionals can focus on. Those who go the development route will likely want to have skills in web technologies as well, such as .net, XML and HTML.

Microsoft Dynamics

CRM technologies continue to be popular areas within the IT world. Microsoft Dynamics is comprised of a variety of programs falling into the CRM category. Iva de Sousa of Harcourt Recruiting Specialists specializes in recruiting for the IT industry. She explains that, "Microsoft Dynamics is where a lot of small-to medium-sized organizations are going. For those looking to get into this field, going into programming and development is a good area."

VMware

VMware is used to create cloud-based networks that are often more efficient than traditional land based networks. Iva de Sousa suggests that "network server and system administration is big and typically comes with bigger paychecks than a lot of development positions. Knowing VMware is key now."

Professionals with virtualization skills are particularly in demand if they have experience in migrating from traditional to virtual networks.

Alfresco

If you've never heard of Alfresco, then you probably aren't alone. Alfresco is an Enterprise Content Management System (CMS) program and falls into a small, niche area within the IT world. Iva de Sousa of Harcourt Recruiting Specialists explains that "only handfuls of people specialize in certain areas of IT. Alfresco is one of these areas."

Because there isn't an abundance of professionals who are skilled in Alfresco, this tends to be an area that's in constant demand within the organizations that use the program.

Java

This skill has been in demand for some time and is likely to stay in demand for a long time to come. Java is an important skill in developing web applications and social media outlets. As many organizations look for new ways to integrate social media into their marketing strategies, there is plenty of room for IT professionals to earn a living in Java development, in addition to other web 2.0 technologies.

The Bottom Line

Finding your perfect fit in the IT world should be based upon finding the right combination of your interests and your ability to find work. One of the challenges of the IT industry is that things are constantly changing and evolving. IT professionals must always stay on top of the game by learning new technologies as they're introduced to the market. As with all industries, staying on top of the industry's latest and greatest innovations is integral to success, but there are few industries that evolve as rapidly as the high-tech world of computers.

Machine learning

As the name suggests, machine intelligence is a combination of computer systems and human intelligence. The best example of a machine intelligence application is face recognition, which is widely used in smartphones, laptops and on social platforms like Facebook (for photo tagging). In 2018, demand for skilled machine learning professionals is expected to rise significantly in healthcare, finance, and e-commerce sectors.

Big data

50% of enterprises will embrace a public-cloud-first policy for data, big data, and analytics in 2018. Industry experts are suggesting that big data in the future will not be about what data to use but rather about what data to ignore. The focus will be more on data quality. This will drive up the job demand for data engineers. It was observed that 13% of data-related job postings were for data engineers, with less than 1% for data scientists.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a business model where service providers take care of the complete infrastructure and software requirements of the customer in a customized environment. It goes without saying that with the evolution of cloud computing, cloud services and solutions will also grow. Along with it the use of hybrid cloud solutions, crowd sourced storage, server less cloud computing will also increase.

DevOps

This coming year could be the year DevOps goes mainstream. Containers are important to enable technology for DevOps and in 2018; growth in container deployments is expected to accelerate. Demand for Deployment Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Automation DevOps Engineers and Portal DevOps Specialists is expected to see a spike.

Data analytics

With an increase in the number of large data sets to process and derive insights from, effective machine learning algorithms, and systems to operate these algorithms have risen in popularity. Data analytics is a lifeline for the IT industry right now. Technologies and techniques like Big data, Data science, Machine learning, and Deep learning, which are used in analyzing vast volumes of data are expanding rapidly.

To refine data analytics strategy and to be a successful data scientist, gaining deep insights of customer behavior and system performance is a must.Currently, India has l over 50,000 open data analytics jobs in the market, and this number is expected to grow to 100,000 in 2018.

Artificial intelligence

1 in 5 enterprises will use AI to make decisions in 2018. AI helps organisations offer customized solutions to customers and provide instructions to employees on what to say and do — in real time. Older generation text analytics platforms were very complex. Very few companies were successful in analyzing the text data. With deep learning in artificial intelligence, it will be possible to successfully analyse both structured and unstructured text data.

Full Stack Development

Full Stack web development is the most popular developer occupation. According to a survey by stack overflow in 2017, 75.2% of full stack developers are interested in hearing about new job opportunities. 2018 will have a large number of openings for full stack engineers, full stack developers,full stack web application engineers,full stack software engineers and other roles.

UI/UX

2018 is going to be a typical for UX and UI as they will push boundaries, break the rules, and take risks as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) will play a vital role in UX and UI designs. 2018 will see a rise in demand for skilled UI and UX designers, developers, architects, user researchers, usability analysts in India. With over 3.2 million vacancies worldwide, this is a hot skill to add to your profile!

IoT

IoT will become the backbone of future customer value. Adoption of intelligent agents like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant is on the rise. This has given marketers new tools to gain insights into customer behaviour. The Internet of Things market is expected to grow from USD 170.57 Billion in 2017 to USD 561.04 Billion by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 26.9%, states Markets and Markets Research. This is expected to see a corresponding increase in the number of jobs offer in India.