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On the 24th February this year, we posted an insight about the top tech skills that will be in demand in 2020. Little did we know that a month later we would be in lockdown, the job market would crash, and the IT world had to adapt – quickly.
We thought it would be interesting to go back and see what was predicted to be a hot skill and what actually happened. At the time we looked at various reports and tables, but the same skills popped up a lot…
- AI
- Machine Learning
- Cloud
- Python
- Java / JavaScript
- React
- Big Data
- DevOps
At the end of March we went into lockdown. Many projects had already been cancelled or put on hold, there were hiring freezes, withdrawn job offers and a mad panic to be able to work from home.
How did all this affect the IT hiring landscape in terms of in demand skills? Well it seems the predictions were actually still pretty spot on!
Looking at data from IT Jobs Watch (who get this info from analysis of job vacancy posting) the last 6 months have shown the following skills to be the top in both permanent and contract vacancies.
- Azure
- JavaScript
- SQL
- AWS
- DevOps
- Python
- Java
- C#
It’s worth noting that we wouldn’t necessarily expect AI and Machine Learning jobs to pop up on your average job board so may not show up in these figures but we personally have seen an increase in automation and RPA / AI related jobs recently
Cloud has remained a key skill for a few years now, and the percentage of jobs which ask for Cloud has jumped from 25% in 2018 to 40% in 2020, but the average salary has stayed quite steady. Azure seems to be more popular than AWS, with Google Cloud trailing behind. In terms of location London is as usual highest on the list but adverts marked as “working from home” is a close second, just pipping the North of England in third.
With the massive increase in working from home due to Covid, and no signs of that changing any time soon, it’s not surprising Cloud is top of the charts.
No-one is quite sure what 2021 will look like, but it will be interesting to see what the predictions are!