As we approach the end of the year, employers everywhere are starting to plan out 2021. What skills do they need to launch and complete their most mission-critical projects? Which kinds of specialists will complete their growing teams?

Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as many employers deciding to let their employees work from home for the foreseeable future, many open technologist positions are also remote. With that in mind, we turned to Burning Glass (which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country) to ask two simple questions: When it comes to remote-technologist positions, which skills are most in demand? And which employers have been hiring the most remote technologists of late?

Top Remote Skills

Let’s start with remote skills. From the chart below, taken from nationwide job postings over the past 60 days, it’s clear that employers are on the lookout for remote technologists who know some of the most popular programming languages (including Java, Python, and JavaScript). There’s also a lot of appetite out there for technologists who can manage software projects—just look at the demand for project management, software development, DevOps, and software engineering skills:

In many ways, these skills are an encouraging indicator. Employers seeking management and programming skills are likely focused on their long-term technology roadmap. In contrast to earlier this year, when employers everywhere were scrambling to readjust their tech stacks to the new work-from-home environment, as well as making rapid changes to their revenue models and product rollouts to deal with the pandemic, it now seems like “back to business” for many  firms.

Top Employers

As with previous times we’ve run this analysis, it’s clear that healthcare and defense contractors are some of the biggest drivers of remote technologist employment. The reasons behind this are pretty clear: Healthcare is always a massive industry, even without the influence of a global pandemic, and defense is always putting federal dollars to use. 

The presence of education firm Pearson on this list is interesting, and could reflect the need for technologists to create and perfect remote-learning platforms for students and educators. As we move forward, trust that education tech will remain a burgeoning industry.