Hiring tech talent isn’t easy. Employers have to scour to find needle-in-the-haystack tech professionals, offer attractive salaries, and do it all while competing with the company down the street looking to do the same. While recruiting for all tech roles is challenging, hiring managers told Dice in its recent hiring survey that these five roles are above and beyond the most difficult to fill. Nothing here is surprising, except that many of these positions have landed on our lists before, showing the problem has only grown over time as unemployment rates among tech pros shrink and every company hires tech talent to move the business forward.

Software Developers

While the role is broad, the work that software developers do is very specific and that’s to drive innovative initiatives forward. They’re the creators, and companies want them to design and develop software solutions to address business needs, solve real-world problems, and fix bugs, among other things.

Java Developers

Hiring managers were sure to draw a distinction between software developers and Java developers.

Security Professionals

No company wants to make headlines for being the victim of a data breach, which is why so many firms today are hiring tech pros with security experience to secure their systems. Companies are looking for a variety of professionals in this category, including those who can identify risk areas and others who can react quickly in the event of a hack.

DevOps

We first began to see DevOps emerge as notable role in 2012; demand for the position has only increased as development and operations teams increasingly work together to shrink development time. There was concern the position would eliminate the role of System Administrators altogether, but that hasn’t happened (and won’t for the foreseeable future).

.Net Experience

Despite being an established skill in the tech world, Microsoft’s .NET software framework continues to be in demand, and related roles are hard to fill. Companies need tech pros with .NET experience who also understand the software development life-cycle, and can deploy custom applications while providing support once applications are in production. The message to tech pros with .NET backgrounds: use this challenging market to your advantage and negotiate to get the ideal job that provides work-life balance, inspirational leadership, compensation and exciting challenges.