IT CAREERS

Top tech skills you need to have on your resume in 2017

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  • Cloud Computing and Big Data continue to rule the roost, while DevOps and Data Visualization make their presence felt.

A little less than a month is left for the year to end. Annual appraisals are done and dusted. Corporate boardrooms will soon witness hush-hush conversations around new targets for 2017, and detailed post mortem of what went right and wrong so far in the year.

For vital members of the tech workforce in the country, it is the best time to upgrade their resumes with skills that will matter in the new year. Bangalore-based e-learning startup – Edureka – has done extensive research, based on close monitoring of the skills market as well as feedback from its global base of professional learners. This is what they tell us about the top tech skills that will be in demand. While Cloud Computing and Big Data find a place in the top 5 skills list, Data Visualization and software development methodology, DevOps, become skills that will matter in 2017. Here’s the complete lowdown:

1. Big Data & Analytics

Every single day, human beings create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (that’s 17 zeros). 90% of all of the world’s data has been created just in the last two years. This humungous magnitude of data is meaningful to a whole array of businesses, who need specialists to analyze, classify and find insights from this data. According to McKinsey, by 2018, the United States alone will face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of Big Data to make effective decisions.

Big Data is here to stay, and will be in fashion at least for a couple of more years, even by conservative forecasts. The three career streams within Big Data & Analytics – Architect, Development and Operations – open up multiple avenues and job roles such as data scientist, Hadoop developer, data analyst, Hadoop administrator, among others.

2. Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing, the twin brother of Big Data, needs to be befriended in 2017. 120 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute every day; more than 200 million emails are exchanged every minute. All of this is sitting on the cloud. As IoT proliferates further in 2017, specialists that can manage this data will be invaluable. Critical cloud computing skills like Java and Virtualization are must-haves on your resume. The most lucrative Cloud Computing platforms include Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenStack, Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix, among others.

3. Data Visualization

As the name suggests, data visualization is the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format. It enables corporate decision makers to see analytics presented visually, so they can grasp difficult concepts or identify new patterns. Today's data visualization tools go beyond the standard charts and graphs used in Excel spreadsheets, displaying data in more sophisticated ways. Some of the popular visualization tools that show potential for sustained growth in 2017 include R, Tableau and Qlikview.


4. DevOps

Sometime in the middle of 2007, a certain gentleman named Patrick Debois was handed the task of migrating the data centers of the Belgium Government. Patrick was a frustrated man since the biggest roadblock in his project was the fact that his developers (who write code) and operations folks (those that deploy the code) were completely disconnected from each other. They would work in their own different ways, without talking to each other, ultimately jeopardizing Patrick’s project. A year later, another gentleman called Andrew Clay Shafer organized a conference session on finding ways to enhance collaboration between developer teams. To his utter disappointment only one participant -- Patrick Debois -- attended his session. What transpired after the session as casual coffee conversation paved the way for what is today known as DevOps.

Made up of two words – Development and Operations – DevOps is a philosophy that is gaining serious traction with companies – large and small – looking to bridge the gap between developers and operations. DevOps outlines a cyclic approach to various stages of software development like building, testing and deployment of software. Specific tools are used in every stage of the DevOps cycle to improve the final outcome. Centered on two core principles – Automation and Continual Improvement – DevOps has today, become a crucial part of software development. Quick deployment is the new normal, and near real-time integration, deployment and monitoring of applications is today a necessity. Consequently, it has opened up myriad career opportunities in DevOps across the globe.

In 2016, 81 percent of large organizations and 74 percent of SMBs have started following DevOps principles. As more organizations adopt these principles, there will be a remarkable surge in job openings that will require you to have DevOps skills – in understanding the philosophy as well as using the tools.

5. IT Security

With the proliferation of IoT and social data, it is imperative that security of all of this data becomes a priority. Not all data makes sense to every organization. Interestingly, even the ‘waste’ data contains information that could be potentially hazardous to people and organization, if not managed effectively. This truth has led to the growth of IT Security as a lucrative career option of techies. With job titles such as Information Security Administrator and Application Security gaining popularity, IT Security is staring at a growth of at least 18% by 2014. This is surely a good time to start preparing for a ‘secure’ job future!

If you get any of these 5 skills on to your resume, you are assured of huge career prospects in 2017. All the best!


Virtually Real Careers

If you are looking at truly offbeat tech careers, you might want to give these two a shot:

1. AR Engineer
Move over VR, AR is here. After the success of Pokemon Go, Augmented Reality has caught the fancy of the tech world. Spreading its tentacles beyond gaming, AR is not high on the priority list of companies that have customer apps. A career as an AR Engineer is sure to help you rake in the moolah.

2. Cognitive Computing Engineer

Though artificial intelligence has been around for a while, it is just about launching itself in the form of Cognitive Computing. As a Cognitive Computing Engineer, you get to create, test and evaluate cognitive software.  

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