Opportunities Abound in IT
By Elijah Thomas
Information technology (IT) professionals are in high demand by employers.
In 2022, the management consulting firm Janco Associates reported record high levels of hiring for IT professionals. Even in the face of a possible recession, IT professionals are among the best situated to thrive. While they are at greater risk of layoff because of their high salaries, there are so many openings that finding a new job should pose little challenge.
Currently, according to Janco Associates, there are more than 100,000 unfilled IT professional positions in the United States because there are not enough qualified candidates. As of June 2022, the IT sector added 91,000 new jobs and that is expected to hit 191,000 by the end of the year.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the first five months of 2022, IT employment rose by 106,700, which was 69% ahead of those same months in 2021.
Types of IT jobs
IT professionals help support a company’s digital infrastructure and solve computer or networking problems. They create programs and applications for both internal and external use.
There are numerous titles. Indeed lists IT jobs that include IT technician, support specialist, quality assurance tester, web developer, IT security specialist, computer programmer, systems analyst, network engineer, software engineer, user experience designer, database administrator, data scientist, computer scientist, IT director, applications engineer, cloud system engineer, data quality manager, help desk technician, IT coordinator, management information systems director and web administrator.
ZipRecruiter goes on to say that the nine most popular IT jobs are chief information officer, scrum master, IT director, software engineer, network engineer, database administrator, software developer, QA analyst and systems administrator.
Trends in IT jobs
Akraya, a talent consultant firm, identified three IT job trends in 2022: Cloud computing, data science and analytics and cybersecurity.
One of the biggest demands in the IT field are for those skilled in cloud computing. Gartner, a market research firm, predicts that cloud-computing revenues will soon exceed non-cloud revenues.
Cloud computing jobs include cloud architects, cloud engineers and cloud database administrators. Cloud computing jobs typically require knowledge in Python, Java, SQL and other programming languages. They also typically need to have CRM cloud development skills and DevOPs.
Today’s rich information environment means that companies have access to more data than ever before and need people who can manage it, ensure its integrity and allow for the use of real-time data.
Popular data science and analytics jobs include big data engineers, machine-learning engineers, data analysts and data scientists. Typical skills needed are knowledge of Pytorch, Keras and other deep-learning frameworks, mastery of SQL and NoSQL networks. It also helps to have skills in and knowledge of data visualization tools, machine learning and neural networks, and knowledge of the specific industry in which a business is operating. Many of these professionals have master’s degrees.
Cybersecurity is important on both micro and macro levels. The need for specialists in cybersecurity has grown as more workers are remote and the network needs to be defended against attacks from cybercriminals.
Cybersecurity jobs include cloud security architects, cyber threat analysts and disaster recovery specialists. These professionals typically are familiar with NIST, CIS and other cybersecurity frameworks and a wide range of other software.
