It’s September, and with summer beginning to recede in the proverbial rearview mirror, it’s worth taking a moment analyze the companies most hungry for technologists over the past 30 days, as well as the tech skills that saw the highest number of related job postings during that period. Hopefully, you can put that information to good use if you’re currently applying for a new role. 

As with previous analyses, we relied on Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country. Some trends have definitely held steady—for example, the biggest employers of technologists include healthcare firms, defense contractors, business-services and consulting firms, and Amazon, which has been using the pandemic to continue its rapid expansion: 

Perhaps this employer trend was inevitable. Despite the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s largest companies have the funds and infrastructure to not only endure a few quarters of disruption, but also continue to expand upon their longer-term plans. In addition, many of these firms also depend to varying degrees on federal contracts, which are a consistent source of longer-term income even in uncertain times.

And what kinds of skills do these (and other) employers want? Turning yet again to Burning Glass, we can see that some of the most ubiquitous programming languages and technologies dominate yet again:

Companies are always hungry for practitioners of SQL (structured query language), the standardized language for relational database management. Without their databases, most companies are nothing. Database administrators, data engineers, data analysts, and data scientists have become increasingly important players in firms’ drive to prosper, as they’re the technologists who can not only plan and build optimized structures for everything from customer to internal data, but also analyze it for the crucial insights that can mean the difference between success and failure. 

It’s also no surprise that Java, Python, and JavaScript remain much in demand among skills, especially in the context of software development and software engineering—these languages are the bedrock for many firms’ tech stacks. While it’s great (and fun!) to learn newer languages such as Kotlin and Swift, especially if you’re working on mobile-app development, mastery of these tried-and-true languages will help you secure a job in any number of fields.

Based on this skills list, it’s also clear that companies are very interested in technologists who know every part of the software-development process, from team leadership and planning (Agile) through debugging and everyday JIRA requests. While it’s great (and often vital) to specialize in a particular aspect of technology, trying to be as well-rounded as possible can also help you when it comes time to seek a new position.