Whether you're an experienced professional or someone getting ready to go to school, keeping an eye on the tech jobs in demand in today's market is important. The field has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. Let's take a look at where things stand.

Coders and Developers—but Not the Programmers

Hardcore programming has declined in demand in the last decade, with the BLS reporting a 7% percent decline to occur between 2016 and 2026. This is largely due to a shift of jobs overseas.

This is not to say that coding skills have stopped having value. In fact, there's been a huge increase in demand for IT jobs in which coding figures, such as data science, engineering, and science.

The big shift that has occurred is that demand has gone from the nuts-and-bolts level of programmers to higher-level coding. An average job posting doesn't have much demand for someone who can identify which registers on a microchip are being changed by a specific action.

AR and VR

Augmented reality and virtual reality systems are starting to have a moment, and folks who want to be on the cutting edge of IT may want to get in while AR and VR are just heating up. Skills required to do AR/VR work are becoming more diversified, especially as mobile platforms like Apple's ARKit are starting to outpace headsets in the market.

That's a Big Backend

Storing data and providing backend services to applications is a growing problem in the IT world. Folks who are looking for a path out of programmer jobs and into the more in-demand developer positions should consider moving toward the backend. APIs, design patterns, frameworks, and systems architecture matter a lot when folks are trying to squeeze a couple more milliseconds of performance out of servers, for example.

Backend development skills translate across a lot of emerging sectors of IT jobs in today's world. Machine learning demands backend support due to massive data collection efforts. Web and mobile apps also have major backend demands. Pretty much, if there's a piece of tech running today, someone needs to provide a backend for it.

IoT Devices

Deploying devices that utilize the "Internet of Things" is another growth sector. 24 billion IoT devices are expected to be deployed by the end of 2020, and they have applications in industry, retail, and transportation. Even farmers need help deploying IoT systems.

Learn more about IT jobs from technology companies near you.

Share