The list of most in-demand IT skills starts off with a surprise. Although IT architecture is a fundamental area of expertise for techies at all levels and in various roles, it rarely makes anyone’s list of hot skills.
The term “IT architect” encompasses a wide range of specialists, from enterprise architects to cloud architects, so recruiters say it makes sense that IT architecture expertise is in demand as companies move forward with all sorts of technology-driven projects.
Beyond that, application development, project management, big data, BI, help desk and cloud all remain high on hiring managers’ lists as IT gears up for the year ahead.
(Download and save or print a free PDF of Computerworld‘s top tech skills for 2016.)
John Reed, senior executive director of IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology, says those hiring managers could be facing a challenge. “The IT market has been really strong, and we’re expecting it will stay that way for the foreseeable future,” he says. “I don’t think you’ll see explosive growth, but you’ll see single-digit growth in demand, consistent with what we’ve seen over the past few years.”